The Pittsburgh Steelers were reeling at the inside linebacker position after losing two starters, Cole Holcomb and Kwon Alexander, to season-ending injuries in back-to-back weeks. Enter Blake Martinez, who signed off of the Carolina Panthers on Tuesday as part of the reinforcements to the position group. Martinez was out of football in the summer before landing with the Panthers and now could be forced into action as soon as this week when the Steelers play the Cincinnati Bengals.
Speaking to the media for the first time since he arrived in Pittsburgh, Martinez said it's been a huge storm of events that has led him to a fifth stop in his crazy NFL ride so far. Drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the fourth round of the 2016 NFL Draft after a four-year college career at Stanford, he has since played for the New York Giants and Las Vegas Raiders before a brief retirement, and then landed on the Panthers practice squad earlier in November of 2023.
"It’s been a wild journey these last eight weeks," he said. "Carolina reached out after Shaq [Thompson] got hurt and asked if I wanted to play. So, I started working out and training again. I signed to their practice squad and got reached out to by the Steelers."
Martinez hadn't yet appeared in a game for the Panthers when he got the call from Pittsburgh that they wanted to bring him in. He said that Carolina had a path set out for him to start playing games, and they wanted him to stay, but the chance to move from a 1-9 team to a 6-4 team was too appealing.
"I know when I was choosing to come here, they made a late push to sign me, but I ended up choosing here. Had the opportunity to come here and a historic franchise like this, you can't turn that down. The opportunity to make the playoffs and the type of chances I was going to have, seemed like the best option."
He said he honestly had no thoughts of playing for another team other than the Panthers when his retirement ended, but is thrilled for the chance Pittsburgh is giving him.
Martinez played in four games, starting two, for the Raiders in the 2022 season. While he's been working himself back into football shape with the Panthers, moving to Pittsburgh has been another shock to him.
Steelers' Martinez Starting To Figure Out Things In His New NFL Home
Martinez is jumping onto a moving train, as Head Coach Mike Tomlin likes to say, and reporters were eager to see if he knows if he'll have a role on Sunday against the Bengals. He said for right now, he's just trying to get his bearings and figure out where the meeting rooms are.
Martinez is focused on being a sponge, listening, and learning. He said his first day with the team was a lot of new instruction, but he's congenial and willing to absorb the information from the coaching staff and his new teammates. At the end of the day, he said football is football, and he should be acclimated pretty quickly.
"Someone who is going to come here and work," he said of himself. "Whatever opportunities they put me in, I'm going to play to the best of my ability and help the team win."
The 29-year-old Arizona native is looking forward to learning the terminology of Pittsburgh's defense and once he gets up to speed on that, is excited to make an impact. He complimented the team's linebacker room for welcoming him to the squad and added that they'll be a big help in getting him ready for when his number is called.
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