To be clear, my "hasn't done squat" is referring to his body of work. He has played in a ton of games, and while his production has been efficient per snap, it didn't all add up to big overall numbers. It didn't earn him more playing time. In my eyes, it was "cleaning up". Hence why that didn't translate to a bigger role.
I mean, this is sort of re-writing history. I'm going to try to give the most fair and accurate assessment of Martini here as I can from memory.
As a true freshman, Nyles Morgan was the backup to Schmidt. Martini was slotted at WILL behind Jaylon Smith. This is because, as you accurately noted, he does not have an idea athletic/physical profile for MIKE.
But then Nyles Morgan played so poorly that eventually Martini... a guy who hadn't spent any time training at MIKE before Schmidt went down... was able to effectively supplant him after just a couple weeks of playing the position. Granted, the reason that Martini got the "start" against USC was more-or-less by default because of Morgan's targeting ejection. But from Navy onward Martini got more and more reps at MIKE in relief of Morgan who the coaches were beyond frustrated with... and in those snaps, he played better than Morgan. The best illustration of this (from my memory) was the Northwestern game.
Then Martini got hurt against USC after a monster start to the game. It's worth noting though how terrible the defense was a whole in that game. So it's hard to judge anything about "effectiveness" from that season for either Morgan or Martini except to say that Martini was individually more productive when he was in and was more decisive attacking plays.
Then this year, he gets moved to SAM. So he played WILL for half a year, then MIKE for half a year, and then SAM for a year. It's hard to really grasp what he can or cannot do when they keep moving him around. What is up with the staff and not keeping Woodberry Forrest kids in a single positions?
So Morgan now has two full years of training at MIKE in this scheme, and Martini has half of a year. The ideal scenario seems to be one where Morgan has put it all together and starts at MIKE and plays well. But I also think the staff needs to find a way to get Martini on the field... and he doesn't seem ideally suited for SAM. Whether as run-stuffer at WILL or some other role, I don't really understand how anyone can look at the film he's put out at MIKE/SAM/his special roles against the option and not say he's showing something very good.
Either way, it'd be disingenuous to act like Morgan has shown more positive things on film than Martini. And there needs to be a contingency plan at MIKE. Maybe the simplest shift is letting Bilal/Martini be your guys at WILL and have Coney train at MIKE behind Morgan.
