Blake Martinez will get to know his new Giants teammates and defense using distance learning 

There is always a period of adjustment when a player comes to a new city to be part of a new team. That’s just part of free agency in the NFL. Crank up the level of difficulty on that transition a few clicks if the just-signed player is expected to be a leader on the squad.

Blake Martinez is facing all of that. The Giants signed him to be their new starting middle linebacker, the quarterback of their defense, earlier this month. After four years with the Packers as one of the most productive tacklers in the league, he’s going to find himself in the center of a foreign scheme, surrounded by teammates he’s never met, and in charge of maneuvering them around the field in games and practices this fall.

Martinez, it seems, has the personality and tools to do all of that. It’s a challenge, yes, but it’s certainly been done before.

Never like this, though.

Because Martinez isn’t actually coming to the Giants. At least not physically and not quite yet. Normally he would have been on his way from his home in Arizona to New Jersey at some point this week, prepared for the start of the Giants’ offseason training program that was scheduled to begin on April 6. That start date has long since been erased from the calendar, however, as the Giants and the NFL adjust their offseason plans around the new realities of dealing with the spread of COVID-19.

So Martinez will remain in Arizona, lucky enough to be training in the new weight room he and his father recently finished building (“the timing couldn’t have been better!”) and figuring out ways to forge the football ties that typically fuel a defense without having anyone actually be with anyone else from that defense.

This offseason, it’s not just the free agents who are facing a litany of things that are new. Welcome to virtual team-building, 2020 style.

“I’m excited to be a Giant,” Martinez said. “Can’t wait to get over there.”

Until that time, he’ll be a work-from-home linebacker.

“It will be interesting to work through,” Martinez said on a conference call on Monday. “We’ll just use interesting ways to have fun and interact without having to be with each other. Whether it’s playing video games or chatting on a Zoom call or a Skype call or whatever, just to kind of get to know each other and bond that way so when we do step into the facility the first time it’s not something like ‘Hey, I’m Blake.’”

That process is in its infancy right now. Martinez received an iPad from the Giants that includes film clips of the defense from the 2019 season, but he hasn’t yet been given the new playbook. That will come shortly -- and digitally. He and others were supposed to receive the playbooks on April 6, but it is unclear now exactly when they will.

“We’re kind of in limbo right now,” Martinez said. “We’re kind of working out those types of things and waiting for the next steps within the virus protocol and what we’re allowed to do… Once I am able to get the playbook that will be my starting point of writing notes down, doing the things necessary to know I know all of the plays and checks and everything.”

The lack of physical proximity will be a challenge for every team. The Giants are no exception.

“I think you grow a lot [in the offseason], whether it’s just working out as a team, growing as a team, you grow that comradery where it’s like ‘OK, this guy next to me is working his butt off to get better and it’s helping the team out,’” Martinez said. “You grow that respect, not even having to say anything but just by working.”

They’ll also miss out on valuable time on the field. Offseason workouts are governed strictly by rules that allow for certain levels of competition during different phases, but the ability to learn something in a meeting room and then see it in action – even if it is at a walking pace – is invaluable.

“Overall, I think that’s the biggest disadvantage of this whole thing is the OTA reps and the ability to walk through things as a group or whatever it ends up being,” Martinez said. “It helps you out so much.”

To that point, the teams that have players who are fast learners, disciplined studiers, and, in a word, smart, will likely thrive if and when the coronavirus restrictions are lifted and the football season begins. The Giants, so far, have been stocking up on such types of players in free agency. Martinez is certainly among them.

How the Giants' coaches will go about their offseason installation has yet to be finalized, but just as nearly every teacher and professor in the country has had to adjust to distance learning in the last few weeks, they are doing the same. It may help that their head coach, Joe Judge, is a dissertation short of his doctorate degree in education. It also will help that for many of the 20-something players, remote learning is nothing entirely new.

“It will be something I’ve kind of been used to,” Martinez said. “At Stanford we did a lot of video stuff, conference things, so I kind of have an understanding of how I thrive while learning through that. It’ll be weird obviously to not sit in the same room and get to know each other that way, but it’s one of those things where you just kind of make the most of it.”

That’s about all anyone in the NFL can do these days.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.