New York Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale has spent his entire coaching career on the defensive side of the ball. Beginning with coaching college at Defiance in 1986 to his current position under Brian Daboll, he knows the ins and outs of how to make a defense work.
Maybe we haven’t seen that as much in New York as we’d like, but he’s had a lot of youth under him the last two seasons. That’s not an excuse, it is a fact. We have seen glimpses of what this defense is capable of this season, but the consistency isn’t there yet.
Still, Martindale is a formidable opponent. Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford even went so far as to say that Wink is “as challenging a coordinator as there is to go against.”
#LARams QB Matthew Stafford called #Giants Wink Martindale ‘as challenging as a coordinator as there is to go against’
— Ryan Dunleavy (@rydunleavy) December 28, 2023
Stafford is a 15-year veteran quarterback who spent 12 years trying to revive a failing Detroit Lions organization before being traded to the Rams after the 2021 season. Since joining the Rams, Stafford has elevated the level of play on the field and led the team to a Super Bowl victory in his first season there. It was the Rams’ second-ever Super Bowl win.
There’s been a lot of drama around Wink and Daboll this season — do they get along or not, are they on the same page, etc? But the bottom line is, it doesn’t matter if they get along and it doesn’t matter if they like each other. What matters is their ability to work together. That’s been shaky at times this season, but it doesn’t mean they are ready to part ways.
The Giants are in for a lot of changes this offseason, but front-office consistency matters. Consistent coaching schemes matter. There are a lot of reasons this season went the way it did, but right now the focus is on the Rams and shutting down Stafford & Co.
It won’t be an easy task, but maybe this ‘challenging’ coordinator has something up his sleeve for Sunday.
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