Brodric Martin had his routine down pat.
Every Monday morning, Martin, the Detroit Lions‘ third-round pick, would start his week with a healthy breakfast, a workout and a trip to the training room, and at 9 a.m. he would poke his head into Western Kentucky defensive coordinator Tyson Summers’ office with the same question: “How we gonna stop, the run, Boss?”
“He was literally wanting me to give him a scouting report at 9 a.m. Monday morning on what we were doing in the run game,” Summers told the Free Press last week. “And it was every Monday, cause he would say, ‘I know they’re doing this differently, what you got for them? What do you need me to do?’ He’s very much a team player, team guy.”
The Lions traded up to take Martin with the 96th pick of last month’s draft, making him the only new addition to the front line of a defense that gave up the fourth-most rushing yards in the NFL last season.
A massive 6 feet 5 and 337 pounds, Martin projects to play nose tackle behind Isaiah Buggs for the Lions this fall, though Summers said his skill set is not confined to being a two-down run stuffer.
“We (tied for the lead in) the country in takeaways and … defensive touchdowns and so a lot of times what you don’t see in all these statistics is, like I said, all these bad balls that are thrown, the interceptions that we have, and a lot of those are still coming from him,” Summers said. “What he ultimately only gets is a pressure, a quarterback hurry, the guy’s having to get out of the pocket, he gets no statistics. But he was a big, big reason for us having the amount of takeaways we did, it just showed up on other people’s stat sheets.”
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Martin made 31 tackles at Western Kentucky last season, with 1.5 sacks and seven quarterback hits.
He played primarily as a two-gapping nose tackle or in a one technique over the center in Western Kentucky’s odd-man fronts, and occasionally out of a 2i when the Hilltoppers went to four down linemen.
But Summers said he used Martin as a three technique over guards in a late-season game against Auburn, and sometimes as 4i in that game against the Tigers’ tackles.
Lions general manager Brad Holmes mentioned Martin’s play against Auburn, when he had three tackles in a closer-than-it-appeared 41-17 loss, as one performance that caught his eye. Western Kentucky trailed, 27-17, with eight minutes to play before Auburn ran for two late touchdowns.
“From a stoutness standpoint, we did, we played him in a lot of different fronts and made him play a lot of different techniques,” Summers said. “He can play them all and really plays aggressive in the run game, is able to two-gap from any technique, which was really able to help us. It allowed us to play with some of these lighter boxes in the run game. We were trying to focus on the pass, because he was able really to play dang-near B gap to B gap and there wasn’t a center that we played that could block him one on one.”
A defensive quality control assistant at Georgia in 2017-18, Summers said Martin compares favorably to former Bulldogs linemen Julian Rochester and John Atkins, the latter of whom spent parts of three seasons with the Lions.
“He reminds me of those guys that we had, those big, massive guys that could run off those teams,” Summers said. “He could have walked on at the University of Georgia and been in their rotation without blinking.”
Martin spent his first four college seasons at North Alabama, starting 16 of the 25 games he played with 81 tackles. He transferred to Western Kentucky in 2021 and helped the Hilltoppers win the Conference USA East championship.
Summers said Martin keyed an overtime win over Florida Atlantic late last season, when the Hilltoppers were melting in the south Florida heat and he got on his defensive teammates about their performance. And he said Martin is studious enough to have a long, productive NFL career once he learns the nuances of the program and how to play with more consistent pad level.
“They’re going to have a hard time blocking his big body in the one-on-one,” Summers said. “He’s not going to be a 6-3, 280-, 290-pound guy that’s in there. That’s just not who he is and that’s not how he plays. But people are going to be able to play to his strength, ball’s going to come out quick. He’s going to have a lot of batted balls and production in those type of ways. And play within his game.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.