Chuck Martin discusses Miami (Ohio)'s challenges against Kentucky

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While Mark Stoops was previewing Kentucky’s Week 1 matchup in Lexington, his opponent, Miami-Ohio head coach Chuck Martin, spoke about the Redhawks’ challenge against Kentucky during his Monday press conference in Oxford.

On Saturday, Martin will begin his ninth season on the Miami sideline after four years as an assistant at Notre Dame with jobs in South Bend ranging from defensive backs and safeties coach to a two-year stint as offensive coordinator in 2012 and 2013, the former being the BCS National Championship runner-up season, Martin’s first year with the offensive playbook. Since taking over an 0-12 team at Miami in 2014, Martin’s RedHawks won a MAC Championship (2019) and reached bowl eligibility in five of the last seasons with the best record in the MAC since 2016.

Here’s what Martin had to say on Monday about opening up with the ‘Cats in 2022:

Excited for only his second game versus the SEC

Though Miami-Ohio is no stranger to Power 5 opponents, Saturday will mark only the second time a Chuck Martin-coached Miami team competes against the SEC. His other run-in with the best conference in football was back in 2016 when the RedHawks drew Mississippi State in the postseason.

With that in mind, Martin opened his Week 1 press conference by saying, “We’re super excited for the season to start, and then the opening game, you get to play an SEC team, which we have not done since we lost to Mississippi State back in the Tropicana Bowl back in, I think was ’16. So we’ve only played one SEC team since I’ve been here in eight years so the opportunity to play Saturday night, SEC team on the road, (it’s) quite an opportunity, it’ll be quite thrilling for everybody involved, players and fans.”

Miami had a 37-yard field goal try with five seconds on the clock to beat Mississippi State, but it was blocked, resulting in a 17-16 victory for the Bulldogs.

Martin’s breakdown of Kentucky

Looking ahead to his first opponent, Martin said, “We know the task ahead of us. They’re a really good team, probably the best Kentucky team, they’re saying, maybe ever. They were really good a year ago, won 10 games, beat Iowa in a bowl game.”

DEFENSE COMMENTS

“Their strengths are obvious. Coach Stoops is a defensive guy. They have a defensive mindset. They played tremendous defense a year ago. They run and hit; they fly around; they create turnovers; they get after the quarterback; they close space on defense like every great defense does; they’re really sound; they’re really physical.”

OFFENSE / WILL LEVIS COMMENTS

“Offensively, their quarterback, people are talking about is a minimum first-round draft pick a year from now. He’s everything, obviously, the NFL guys are looking for. He’s big and strong, 6-4, 235. We’ve got a whole cut-up of him running over SEC linebackers when he scrambles or designed runs. So he is a huge run threat. That’s not really why the NFL likes him; the NFL likes him because he can throw a post route about 75 yards in the air right on the money, so he’s got this big strong arm.”

Later in the press conference, Martin added, “Their quarterback is bigger than everybody in our defense besides probably our nose guard.”

As for the rest of the offense, Martin said, “They were really physical in running the ball a year ago. They’ll be really physical and they’ll run the ball again. That’s who they are. They do a great job with their play-action games. They do a nice job with RPO games. They do a nice job with their movements. You can tell it’s a Coach Stoops-coached football team he’s built in the right way.”

Another good line: “Their offensive line blocks out the sun.”

Kentucky recruiting in Ohio

Martin didn’t just compliment what Kentucky will bring to the field this coming Saturday, he also pointed out Kentucky’s wins on the recruiting trail in Miami’s own state.

“They’ve done a really good job recruiting,” he said of Kentucky’s recruiting efforts. “They’ve got a lot of Ohio kids. They’ve hurt our league with all their Ohio recruiting. Before he got there, they didn’t recruit Ohio. But they’ve got a lot of talented kids from Ohio, so it’s a great challenge. Great opener. We’ve played a lot of games like this. They’re exciting. They’re fun. It’s a great opportunity.”

Kentucky’s roster lists 19 players from Ohio and the new two-deep depth chart includes 12 native Ohioans.

Self-scouting his Miami team

For Martin’s take on his own team, he said:

“Offensively, for us, obviously, we feel good with our experience. You got nine starters back. You got (Jaylon) Bester and Tyre (Shelton) back, who were tremendous players for us back in 2019 before they both got hurt. (They) haven’t really played much the last two years, so we’re excited about our offensive line, we’re excited about our receivers, we’re excited about running backs, tight ends, quarterbacks. We feel like, you know, we’ve been young on offense the last couple years and now we’ve grown into a time where we’ve got a lot of guys that played a lot of football for us.

“Defensively, obviously, it’s a changing of the guard. We lost a lot of guys. We’re excited about the group. We have a lot of new faces. There’ll be a lot of–I think we’ll call a lot of new names Saturday night. Obviously, (Oscar) McWood and (Matthew) Salopek at linebacker with Jacquez (Warren) gives us three guys that we feel really good about. (Austin) Ertl, (Anthony) Collier, and Kobe Hilton inside have played a lot of football, so those six guys in the middle of our defense have played a lot of football. We feel good about John Saunders as the one corner… and then our D-ends will be a whole new cast of guys and the whole back end of our defense will be a whole new cast of guys, so we’re going to play a lot of guys and a lot of guys that have opportunities to play. There’s still some jobs to be won on the defensive side of the ball, particularly at the safeties and the nickel positions.”

Magnified mistakes, physical disadvantage against the SEC

After breaking down both sides of the ball for each team, Martin pointed out the obvious physical advantages Kentucky will bring to the field against his RedHawks.

“(We) probably won’t have a physical advantage,” he admitted. “It really will probably be a physical disadvantage. So you add all that in and then you say OK, you’re up against it physically now. Now it comes down to, how prepared are you mentally? How much do you know what you’re doing? How much can you rely on your techniques and how hard are you going to play? And how hard are you going to strain? Because some of the things will be up against you, so you got to make up for it by playing with incredible passion and playing with incredible desire and playing with your brain.

“You better be where you’re supposed to be because, you know, Kentucky’s skill guys on both sides of the ball get from point A to point B quicker than MAC guys. That’s a fact. So if you make a mistake, it’s going to get magnified. So you have to be on your business all the time. If not, you see the tapes from a year ago and they throw a lot of deep balls and when they played the non-SEC games, they just kept throwing the ball on people’s heads. Again, not because people weren’t in position, but not used to the speed of somebody coming by you that fast and next thing you know he’s by you and their quarterback can throw it 60 yards and it’s over. So you have to be on point with everything mentally to give yourself a chance.”