Giants' Bobby Okereke and Xavier McKinney as durable as they come

Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale is in his 36th year of coaching. He started his career as the secondary coach at Defiance College and on Sunday will complete his 19th season in the NFL.

Two of his players, inside linebacker Bobby Okereke and safety Xavier McKinney, have played every snap this season. It’s remarkable, and for Martindale, it’s almost unprecedented, as he told Newsday.

“The only other ones I can think of were Ed [Reed] and Ray [Lewis] when they were young,” said Martindale, who coached the Hall of Famers in Baltimore.

Okereke and McKinney are in elite company.

“You couldn’t take Ray off the field,” Martindale said. “There are times with linebackers where you do want to take them off the field when they can’t run like they used to. It’s a credit to them that you don’t want to take them off the field.”

Lewis won two Super Bowls with Baltimore. Reed was there for one championship.

Any way you slice it, the durability of Okereke and McKinney this season is astonishing. That the Giants haven’t won enough shouldn’t take anything away from their accomplishment.

“I think linebackers, generally, especially if you have the green dot [as the defensive play-caller], you will be on the field for 96, 97, 98% of the time,” Okereke said. “But to not miss a snap, to not, knock on wood, have an injury during the game where you have to come out, to switch your helmet or whatever, I’ve been blessed and fortunate to play every snap with my teammates.”

There is a sense of pride for Okereke, even in a season in which the Giants will finish with only five or six wins.

“For sure,” he said. “I just do everything I can to keep myself healthy. I love this team, I love playing football. I’ll do everything I can to stay on the field.”

He’s not kidding. At times this season, Okereke has played with a broken rib, a fractured pinkie and a nagging hip issue.

As for McKinney, he seems indefatigable.

“If we had to play another season again [now], I could do it,” he said. “That’s how good my body feels good.

“It’s shocking to know how good I feel. Last year and previous years after the season, my body was beat up. But I feel good. I don’t have any complaints.”

Perhaps it is his pending free agency that is buoying McKinney, who seems to be primed to hit it at the perfect time.

Okereke said he and McKinney have never talked about their streaks.

Said Okereke: “I don’t know if he’s superstitious. Either way, we both understand we’re captains, we’re leaders on this defense and on this team. We just hold ourselves to a high standard of play and leadership.”

Okereke has been a revelation this season, a rare free- agent acquisition by the Giants who stayed healthy and contributed significantly.

For McKinney, the season was not as seamless.

After the Giants’ 30-6 loss at Las Vegas in November, McKinney told ESPN that he believed players were not being heard by the coaching staff. He seemingly meant Martindale, who told reporters later in that week that he was hurt by the accusation, one he said he’d never heard before in his coaching career.

Looking back on that situation, McKinney said he believed the media tried to create a storyline “out of nothing.”

“[Wink and I] talked it out,” he said. “For me, that’s always the best thing. We had a conversation one-on-one. You always want to be transparent. We were transparent with each other. We both love each other, we both respect each other.

“Relationships aren’t going to be 100% perfect. I think it was one of those things. We talked it out. We don’t have to agree all the time but we still love each other, respect each other, and that’s what matters.”

Martindale agreed with that assessment.

“We turned the page and everything is good,” he said. “That’s the truth. Ever since then, we’ve communicated well and he’s been great. And it’s been fine ever since.”

What isn’t fine with these Giants are the results this season. They were a playoff team in 2022, the first year under coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen. This year, they have won five games, beating the Cardinals, Patriots and Packers and the Commanders twice.

But for McKinney, one thing would change the tenor of this season: Beating the Eagles on Sunday at MetLife Stadium.

“It would be [expletive] incredible,” he said. “It’s been rough, but that? That would be great.”

By Kimberly Jones

kimberly.jones@newsday.comkimjonessports

Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.