Cal Football

Martin Getting it Done on the Field and Recruiting Trail

By Jim McGill

April 16, 2021

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As one of the earliest commits in Cal recruiting history when he made the call for Cal back in January before his junior season, 2022 Inglewood High School QB commit Justyn Martin‍ has had plenty of time to continue to build his relationship with the Cal staff.

“I talk to Coach Musgrave most every day so my relationship with Cal and the staff is just growing and growing and getting better every day,” said Martin.

“I scheduled my official for June 18. I’m excited about what they have to offer and progressing through this offseason. Hopefully when recruiting gets going, I’ll be there first week.”

What have the conversations with Musgrave and the Cal staff focused on?

“I’ve been talking with them about everything,” said Martin. “We’ve talked about what they were doing with their spring game and how spring practice went, how my games have gone and about our future and what we plan on doing.

“The receiving corps at Cal is really good. And J Michael Sturdivant‍, I watched him running track and he’s really good. I’m excited about how the receiving corps are coming together.”

AS an early commit, Martin has the luxury of helping build his recruiting class around him and he’s more than doing his part to make the Bears’ 2022 class a stellar one.

”I talk to a lot of Cal targets,” said Martin. “I talked to Kevin Green‍ this last week. Ephesians Prysock‍ -I talked to him right off the bat after his Cal offer. I think he was excited about that offer. Hopefully this one ranks high for his options but I think he’s serious about this one. I talked to Nicholas Anderson‍ this morning. I’m talking to as many Cal recruits as I can, trying to work my magic. I talk to a lot of players and they seem to be excited about the program.”

The 2021-22 season has been an abbreviated one for Martin with just three games so far but he’s just glad for the opportunity to be on the field.

“The season has been kind of up and down but at least we’ve been able to get out there and play and just do something for our junior year,” said Martin.

“The reality is, Justyn started off a little slow this year,” said Inglewood OC Malik James. “That was him trying to do too much, trying to live up to being a Cal commit, trying to prove himself taking over for a quarterback who threw for 67 touchdowns and 4200 yards. When you have that pressure on you and you’re a Cal commit in your first year as starter on varsity in a program that’s really grown by leaps and bounds, you can try and do too much but he’s slowly settled himself and has come around.

“It’s a testament to his support system -his mother, his father, the coaches. We just support him by not babying him. A lot of times, the parents of the starting QBs make excuses when their son isn’t achieving all they could but they don’t make excuses. They tell us to keep working with him and we’ve seen him grow every day in practice.

“We run a pretty complex defense. We show multiple fronts and disguise a lot of coverages. We run six or seven different coverages -as close to a college defense as possible. We play multiple coverages: Roll-3, cover-3, Tampa-2, cloud-2, man-2, cover-2 and more. We have 15 interceptions in three games. My brother is the head coach and DC. I played DB in college. Our safety coach played safety at Washington. We have four coaches who were defensive backs at the next level.

“We stunt a lot and play a lot of different fronts. Practice is hard. So when he got to his first game, he thought, ‘This is not what I’ve seen in practice’ and overthought it, thinking they must be disguising something. But he got settled and more comfortable and he’s hitting his stride.”

Hitting his stride indeed. Martin set a state record last week in their blowout win over Muir at the Rose Bowl, throwing for 8 tds in the victory.

“That was probably the most athletic team we’ve played all year,” said James. “They blitzed well. But he stepped into the pocket, identified coverages. They sky’s the limit for the kid. He’s grown mentally and physically. He’s pushing 6’5/215-220 now.

“Justyn’s going to light up the scoreboard come fall. Cal fans should definitely be excited for Justyn. I believe the national programs will be coming after him but I think Cal’s done a great job recruiting him and I believe it’s a really good situation for him at Cal. I think he’ll end up in the Top 100 and that will make them look good.”