Winkin' and not blinkin', Martindale on even keel for Giants
Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale during training camp in East Rutherford, N.J., on Aug. 3. Credit: Noah K. Murray
If you were a teenager in Southern California in the late 1950s, you may have pestered your parents to let you commandeer the big black-and-white television in the family room each afternoon and watch a show featuring fellow youngsters bopping to the beat of the day’s most popular music hosted by a local disc jockey from Santa Monica Pier.
It was a program called “Wink’s Dance Party” and the eponymous Wink was Wink Martindale, then just starting a television career that would eventually lead to his becoming one of the most well-known game show hosts in the country.
There is almost certainly no one in the Giants organization who knows or remembers any of that, either through firsthand experience or some strange fascination with the trivia and nostalgia surrounding short-lived, hardly influential mid-20th century pop culture.
But if you were to say those three words from the show’s title — “Wink’s Dance Party” — these days, well, they might smile and have their own idea about the reference.
Don “Wink” Martindale, the longtime defensive coordinator for the Ravens, has come to New York to lead that side of the line of scrimmage for the Giants. He’s brought a playbook full of blitzes and pressures. He’s brought swagger and old-school bravado. He’s brought a glowering scowl and steely stare, the kind of demeanor you’d expect from a guy who attended a school called Defiance College in Ohio. He’s even brought some of the players who had success under him with the Ravens.
And yes, he’s brought his moves.
Sometimes, when the players are filing into their meeting room, defensive backs coach Jerome Henderson will turn on some music and the 59-year-old Martindale will start to … shake it.
“Yeah, he’s danced a couple of times,” safety Julian Love said with a laugh. “On occasion. When the mood’s right. It’s a bit rough. He’s not the best. But we want energy from our coordinator and we’ve got that.”
Welcome to “Wink’s Dance Party 2022,” the football version. It’s nothing like the original TV program, and like nothing many of the Giants have known before.
“I run a different style meeting than everybody else,” Martindale said. “But it’s because I want people talking. It’s the same reason why I come up and ask them about their family and how they’re doing. Just get them talking. It’s a process and you get a defense that comes together because they all know each other and they’re not afraid to communicate, they’re not afraid to work out problems, they’re not afraid to celebrate together. In building a unit, that’s what you do.”
Linebacker Jihad Ward played under Martindale in 2019 and 2020 and thus familiar with that style, so much so that they’re practically family. He calls his coach “Uncle Wink.”
“We had good times back in the day,” Ward said of their two-year stint together in Baltimore. “I'm glad to reunite with him. It's a good feeling.”
And a good scheme.
“It doesn't matter what [play] we're going to go with, we're going to come at you,” Ward said. “That's the type of defense that we're running, and it's been really successful. Just trying to bring it up here, that's what Wink is trying to do.”
The three main coaches for the Giants — head coach Brian Daboll, offensive coordinator Mike Kafka, and Martindale — all find themselves in new surroundings this season. But of those three, only Martindale is in a role he has held before.
Maybe it’s that comfort in the job, that confidence in his own ability, that lets him avoid sweating things that might give younger, less-experienced coaches ulcers.
Not even losing a starting middle linebacker about a week prior to the start of the season with the release of Blake Martinez seemed to faze him.
“I don’t expect anything,” he said when asked if that roster move was unexpected. “It’s just you get here to work, and you say, ‘OK, here we go.’ It’s been like that.”
The possibility of not having his top two edge rushers on the field Sunday in injured Kayvon Thibodeaux and Azeez Ojulari? Simply an opportunity for a one-liner.
“We’ll have a plan,” he said. “I know Custer had one, too. We’ll see what happens.”
And while most young coaches might shy away from putting too many expectations on a team that has so many holes in its personnel and is still learning its new schemes, Martindale has no issue with setting high expectations.
“If I didn’t think we could be the best defense [in the NFL],” he said, “I wouldn’t have taken this job.”
He took it, to be clear, to help him get a head coaching gig. The expiration date on his candidacy for such a title is getting close and maintaining the status quo with the Ravens wasn’t going to impress anyone. Resurrecting the Giants, though? Bringing that organization back from the depths of the past decade and helping it reclaim some of the defensive dominance that was a hallmark of its championship teams that are starting to fade into history? That would be something to bring to an interview.
In the meantime, the Giants benefit from having him as long as he is here.
On Wednesday this week, he walked out of the main building of the team’s facility, stared at the empty practice field before the players filled it for their workout, inhaled the cool autumn-like air, and nodded knowingly.
He’s been here before. Not here, exactly, with the Manhattan skyline to his right and the NYs painted on the helmets, but at the beginning of a regular season. At the start of the hunt.
“Well,” he said. “It’s time, huh?”
Gather ‘round. Tune in. “Wink’s Dance Party” is about to come on.
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.
