Chuck Martin was Notre Dame’s secondary coach the past two seasons. Now that he’s an offensive coordinator, he’s bringing an interesting perspective to his offensive players, giving them an idea of what it’s like on the other side of the ball.
“Defense, and being successful on defense, is completely different,” Martin said. “Defense is about disruption. They’re trying to do everything they can to disrupt you from timing to your schemes. I would say defense is like a rock concert. The louder, the crazier, the more jumping, hooting and hollering, the better the defense is. And offense is like an orchestra. You need 11 pieces not only doing their job, but they have to do it at the right time. It’s not good enough to run the dig route right, you have to do it at the right depth and the quarterback has to take the right drop. He can’t take a five-step drop instead of a three-step drop because the timing’s off. He took a good drop and made a good throw, and you ran a good route, but it’s still not going to work because our timing’s off. On defense, if Louis Nix throws the center out the way and runs up the field, the corner could fall down and there’d be a guy wide open, but you sack the guy. That’s just defense.”
And if you couldn’t tell by that, yes, Martin admitted that anyone who knows him knows he prefers being on the defensive side of the ball.
“That’s where my roots are,” he said.
