How Giants Defense Has Been Different Under Wink Martindale

Coach Gene Clemons looks at how the New York Giants defense has been structured and deployed under Wink Martindale.

Author:
Gene Clemons
Publish date:
Nov 5, 2022 1:58 PM EDT

In this story:

The New York Giants defense has been able to bend but not break most of the season. A major reason for the defense's success is their ability to utilize an abundance of defensive backs at any time during the game.

Defensive coordinator Wink Martindale is known as an attacking style, 30-front defensive coordinator, but the truth is that the defense resembles more of a 40-front. Over 80 percent of the snaps only have two legitimate defensive linemen on the field. The other two positions on the line are occupied by outside linebackers/ edge rushers.

They play with two linebackers, but only one linebacker routinely sees over 80 percent of the snaps. That means the defense is primarily lined up in a nickel (five defensive backs), and they play dime (six defensive backs) more often than others around the league.

So how do the Giants get away with playing so many defensive backs during a game? Well, they don’t--the team is 26th against the run this season. But that is because they have made a concerted effort to limit offenses' passing attacks. They rank 12th against the pass and are middle of the pack in total yards surrendered.

Where the defense does shine is in its scoring defense. They are tied for seventh in the NFL in scoring defense, averaging 19.6 points per game. This means many of their yards are given up between the 20s, but they get stingy in the red zone, where they usually hold opponents to field goals or shut them out.

How can so many defensive backs get on the field simultaneously? Flexibility is the answer. Martindale has five defensive backs who are comfortable in space and used to covering receivers at his disposal. They are uniquely adept at operating in the box and are all quality tacklers. What they lose in size, they make up for in speed and aggressiveness.

That starts with the two safeties, Xavier McKinney and Julian Love. McKinney’s diversity dates back to his days at Alabama. At the same time, Love discovered his ability to operate in multiple roles early in his tenure as a Giant, where he went from corner to safety to corner.

Darnay Holmes is a guy who was a standout as a cornerback and safety in college and parlayed that into his starting nickel position today. Dane Belton played like a linebacker at Purdue, so he has a lot of experience being in the box, and Landon Collins has long been known as a box safety.

You can put several combinations of three or four of those safeties on the field with Adoree' Jackson at one of the cornerback positions and a combination of Fabian Moreau, Nick McCloud, and Cordell Flott or Aaron Robinson if/when healthy at the other.

That gives the defense a level of continuity on the outside with the ability to cause all types of chaos inside because you rely on those outside corners to play man-to-man while the safeties inside operate as linebacker/safety hybrids and disguise coverages while mixing in blitzes.

The closer they get to the end zone, the more difficult it is to score on them because you can’t spread all of that speed out and run through it. They can get everywhere quickly, essentially suffocating an offense.

The results are evident when you look at the team's statistics: Four of the top five defensive tacklers play in the secondary. Love leads the team with 58, followed by Jackson with 43, and McKinney with 38. Fabian Moreau comes in at fifth with 32 tackles. Those are impressive numbers from a secondary, especially when considering their position's duality.

But that should not be surprising since the secondary is on the field for more snaps than any other position on the defense. McKinney has not missed a snap on defense this season. Jackson has taken over 93 percent of the snaps, and Love has been on the field for over 91 percent.

Moreau, who was not even in the Giants plans at the beginning of the season, has taken over 65 percent of the snaps at the other cornerback position. Meanwhile, the highest percentage of snaps taken by a player, not in the defensive backfield is 82 percent by defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence II. In comparison, Tae Crowder has taken the most snaps at linebacker with 78 percent.

It must be a difficult pill for the interior linebackers to swallow in this defense, as traditional linebacker accounting statistics don’t tell the story adequately. All credit must be paid to Crowder, Jaylon Smith, and all the other interior linebackers who have needed to hold things down around the line of scrimmage with the interior defensive linemen.

They must take on and try to shed blocks in their pursuit of the tackle. It also means a much more physical brand of football than you would commonly see from today’s NFL linebackers. Only Crowder is fourth on the team in tackles with 39, and Smith is eighth in tackles with 26. They both make it work because they have the speed to operate at the pace of the defensive backs.

And for as good as the defensive line has played this season, especially Lawrence, this defense seems to be set up to only be as good as their defensive backfield will allow them to be. Very rarely do you see a defense led from the back half of the field, but in today’s football, there is a lot of logic to it.

If the strength of most offenses is the passing game, why not put more players on the field to disrupt their best assets? It has worked for the Giants so far, and post-bye week, their schedule allows them to make a run for the playoffs. If Flott and Robinson can return healthy, it only strengthens that unit.