New DC says speed, aggression will be Giants’ trademarks

A new guy in charge invariably wants to put his stamp on the team or the group he is directing. Shane Bowen has arrived to run the Giants’ defense, and the new coordinator is intent on not making the mistake of showing how smart he is by adding pages and pages to the playbook.

“The last thing I want to do is have so much scheme we can’t focus on our style of play, the technique, the fundamentals and paralyzing ourselves before the snap,” Bowen said Monday. “I want to make sure that when that center has his hand on the ball, we are lined up. We’ve got our cleats in the ground and we are ready to roll and attack and play ball and we are not overthinking out there.’’

Oh, the Giants will look different in 2024 on defense. How could they not? The past two years, they were one of the most recognizable outfits in the NFL under the orchestration of Wink Martindale. His core belief was all about creating pressure with unpredictable rushers using creative rush lanes. In 2022, the Giants were first in the league in blitz rate at 39.7 percent. In 2023, Martindale blitzed more often — 45.4 percent — and the Giants were second in the NFL to the Vikings.

This is in stark contrast to what Bowen brings with him from Nashville, where he was the defensive coordinator the past three years. In 2022, the Titans were 26th in the league with a blitz rate of 18.1 percent. Last season, the Titans were 24th at 22 percent.

Martindale’s relationship with head coach Brian Daboll devolved as the Giants endured losing in 2023, culminating in Daboll, the day after the season, firing two defensive assistants Martindale brought with him from the Ravens. Martindale, 60, cursed out Daboll and stormed out of the building. He is now the defensive coordinator at the University of Michigan.

Bowen, 37, was with Mike Vrabel in Tennessee and the Giants will more closely resemble that style of defense. Bowen has to come in and learn the strengths and weaknesses of the roster, of course, but his approach calls for the unleashing of the front four to create pressure without having to send extra bodies. With the addition of Brian Burns in a trade with the Panthers, the Giants have Burns and Kayvon Thibodeaux as edge rushers and Dexter Lawrence as one of the league’s most lethal pocket pushers on the interior of the defensive line.

“Like the front four, being coordinated with their rush lanes, working together, finding ways to affect the quarterback,” Bowen said, “and then being able to use that to be multiple on the back end. But we have done the gamut. We have brought four, we have brought five, we have brought six. We’ve done some of the zone-pressure stuff, overload stuff. So we have it all.

“That will evolve as we go, but my history has been, if we’ve got four guys that can rush, we are going to let them go rush.”

What this likely means is less dropping in coverage for Thibodeaux and less blitzing for inside linebacker Bobby Okereke, who had more sacks (2.5) in his first season with the Giants than he did in his previous four years combined with the Colts.

For the players returning on defense, it may, put succinctly, be this: “It just feels like everything is going to be simplified,’’ Okereke said.

Cue the familiar refrain at times like this, when the new coordinator arrives to fix whatever might have been broken. If that previous system was fairly basic, the new idea is to install more bells and whistles. If that previous system was unpredictable and risk-taking, the new guy in town is intent on going back to the basics. Do more or do less?

“Yeah, it’s a dance, obviously,’’ Okereke said. “It takes both.’’

Okereke picked up Martindale’s system so swiftly last year — his first with the Giants — that he was almost instantly voted in as a team captain and was entrusted with relaying the defensive calls to his teammates. Okereke did not want to see Martindale leave. Now there is a new defense to master.

“People talk about playing fitball and people talk about playing football,” Okereke said. “You can play fit-ball, and everybody is in their A gap, B gap, setting their arm and playing fundamentally sound defense, and you can play football where everybody is playing physical and violent and coming downhill. We’ve got to find our happy medium, somewhere on that spectrum.”