Giants’ Wink Martindale on blitzing Bill Belichick’s Patriots too much: ‘We’re on to Cincinnati’
Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale dunked on the suggestion that he blitzed Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots too much in the preseason with a snappy comeback:
”We’re on to Cincinnati,” Martindale said twice with a smile, echoing Belichick’s famous line, appropriately with the Cincinnati Bengals on deck Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
Belichick had said after last week’s preseason game at Gillette Stadium that New England’s offense couldn’t run play action with rookie QB Bailey Zappe because of Martindale’s aggressive scheme.
”Well, with what the Giants were doing, there’s a lot of reasons for some of the things that we did just to try to manage the game,” Belichick said. “So, just leave it at that.”
New England pointed out that the Giants had blitzed Zappe in his NFL debut on 17 of 33 dropbacks, and that the Giants had blitzed 21 times — compared to 28 total blitzes over four preseason openers the Patriots had faced in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021.
Martindale, a veteran and one of the NFL’s best and most aggressive minds on defense, had his rebuttal ready on Thursday.
