Brodric Martin came on strong at the tail end of his first year at Western Kentucky and parlayed that into a strong spring.

Now, the redshirt senior defensive tackle who came to Bowling Green by way of North Alabama is ready to take on a bigger role as the Hilltoppers head into the 2022 season.

“Honestly, that was probably the best thing to ever happen to me,” Martin said when asked about his late 2021 success. “At the end of the season, it helped me with my confidence. I feel like the confidence is probably like 70% of this football thing, or what I do. It definitely helped a lot.”

Martin played in all 14 of WKU’s games last year after spending the previous three seasons at North Alabama. In 2021 with the Hilltoppers, the Tuscaloosa, Ala., native had 31 tackles, with 4.5 for loss and 2.5 sacks. He also had a breakup, quarterback hurry and fumble recovery.

His best performances came late in the year, though.

He was a team captain for WKU’s Nov. 13 game at Rice and, in a Conference USA East Division-clinching win at Marshall, Martin had three tackles, with half a tackle for loss, plus a fumble recovery in a crucial situation. After the Herd had gone ahead 14-0 early, DeAngelo Malone hit Marshall quarterback Grant Wells to force the fumble, which Martin recovered, and WKU went on to score 36 unanswered points in the 53-21 victory.

He followed it with a seven-tackle performance, including half a sack, in the Hilltoppers’ C-USA championship game loss to UTSA at the Alamodome, and finished the season with three tackles – with a team-high two sacks – in WKU’s 59-38 Boca Raton Bowl victory over Appalachian State.

Martin continued his strong play during the team’s spring practices and was named the team’s spring defensive MVP.

“It definitely gave me confidence that that’s what my team and my coach thought of me,” Martin said. “It helped a lot. With the confidence I built, it helped me be able to lead the younger people we’ve got coming in.”

The coaching staff has seen the change in Martin from his first fall with the program to this fall after his increase in productivity on the field late last season.

“It’s night and day,” WKU defensive line coach Kenny Baker said. “Kind of a throwback or shoutout to the way DeAngelo and Juwuan (Jones) kind of set the precedent, even before I got here. … He just understands what it takes to be a dominant player and to be a leader. The biggest thing is the leadership piece and the rest of it he’s working on his own. I’ve seen him take a tremendous step, because he didn’t even know that he didn’t know when he first got here, but he’s done a nice job with that.”

The 6-foot-5, 330-pound Martin can often be seen hyping his teammates up after stretching near one of the end zones at Houchens-Smith Stadium early in practices, and said that’s something that’s come natural to him.

“I’ve always been an outspoken guy,” Martin said. “I’m always bigger, so people will naturally want to see what I’m doing. It’s just all natural. I love being in the front leading my team. I love doing that.”

The Hilltoppers are now led defensively by Tyson Summers, who took over after Maurice Crum left for a position at Ole Miss early this year. Martin said while he always has things to work on personally, the change in defenses hasn’t made too much difference in what he does along the line.

“It changed a little bit. At the end of the day, I’ve still got to dominate my position – the nose position,” Martin said. “It changed a little bit scheme-wise, but mentality-wise everything else is still the same.”

The Hilltoppers have experience on the line with Jones, a longtime starting defensive end, and tackle Darius Shipp, who also started each of the team’s games last year. Shipp missed the spring due to injury.

“I feel like all the guys that are returning – we’ve all stepped up because we all know we have a bigger role to fill just because we’ve lost star players,” Shipp said. “But we lose one star, another star’s got to rise.”

Defensive tackle Mike Allen, like Martin, saw more action as the season progressed after transferring from Wake Forest. Bowling Green graduate Terrion Thompson is back after seeing plenty of action in the spring with Shipp out – Baker calls him “my Swiss army knife” and that “I can plug him in, he knows all the spots, he’s very fundamental and very physical.” WKU brought in transfers at defensive tackle in Lorenzo Hernandez from Monmouth, Dareon Goorum from East Central Community College in Mississippi and Hosea Wheeler from Sacramento City College, and also have Dante Walker, Jake Jackson, Marcus Patterson, Reid Jamerson and Deante McCray on the roster at defensive end, as well as Keaton Law and Chase Jones at tackle.

Martin said it’s a line “by committee” and despite many new faces with longtime starters in Malone and Jeremy Darvin gone, people are “going to find out who they are pretty quick.”

WKU held its first scrimmage of the fall Saturday. Head coach Tyson Helton said the offense got the best of the defense early and that he’d like to see the defense get to the quarterback more, as well as correct some breakdowns in coverage in the secondary.

WKU is scheduled to open the 2022 season Aug. 27 against Austin Peay. Kickoff is scheduled for 11 a.m. at Houchens-Smith Stadium.

“We’ve got a lot to work on,” Baker said. “The thing I liked is the effort piece. It’s important to them. We didn’t have a great scrimmage. It’s not the end of the world, but it was important to them and they immediately came back up there – ‘Coach, what can we get better at? What can we fix?’ I do like that piece, the hunger, the effort, but also we’ve got a long way to go in terms of techniques, fundamentals and the monkey on our backs in terms of just the sun and just being in shape.

“ … We go against a tempo offense our first couple opponents. That’s great for us. I tell the guys all the time, ‘Practice execution becomes game reality.’ If we can line up and do right out here with all these different elements we’ll be all right on game day.”{&end}