Martinez out for year, felling latest captain Giants notes
The Captain’s Curse struck the Giants again.
Tests confirmed Monday that Blake Martinez suffered a season-ending non-contact torn ACL when he was juked in pursuit of Cordarrelle Patterson on the fifth play of Sunday’s game. The injury leaves the reeling Giants defense without its most durable starter, surest tackler and best coverage linebacker.
Martinez soon will join fellow co-captain Nick Gates (broken leg) on injured reserve, which is where co-captain Saquon Barkley (torn ACL) spent most of last season. The Giants still are awaiting updates on Sunday’s hamstring injuries to receivers Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton.
“You hate it for Blake because he’s a guy that brings a lot of leadership and passion to this team,” coach Joe Judge said. “When you see him and Gates get hurt and lose the rest of their season, everybody hurts for them because they know what they put into it in terms of their own performance, but also to really help the team going forward.”
So, now what? Veteran runstuffer Reggie Ragland becomes a starter, Tae Crowder goes from Martinez’s sidekick to indispensable and the Giants will consider spending more time in nickel packages with safeties Julian Love or Jabrill Peppers as undersized box defenders.
Crowder, who was the “Mr. Irrelevant” final pick of 255 in the 2020 draft, took over Martinez’s role wearing the helmet with a radio transmitter connected to coordinator Patrick Graham. When Martinez missed time last season, the Giants turned communication over to safety Logan Ryan, but the decision was made that on-field play-calling is best initiated at the second level.
“Tae is prepared,” said Giants linebacker Azeez Ojulari, Crowder’s college teammate at Georgia. “It sucks to lose Blake, but injuries are part of the game, so we’ve just got to keep going.”
Judge revealed one of the timeouts burned in the loss to the Falcons was a “communication issue where the headset went down.”
“There were some things we want to clean up here or there,” Judge said, “but in terms of Tae jumping into the position as a signal-caller — something we work on during the week to make sure he’s ready if it comes up — I
thought he did a good job. He was very good with making sure everyone had the call, got it directly, got his guys lined up.”
But Crowder is not ready to be the $10 million-peryear Martinez. Nor is Ragland, who started 32 games in three years for the Chiefs and six last season for the Lions.
Martinez had 144 tackles or more in each of the previous four seasons for the Packers and Giants. Where Martinez played all 137 defensive snaps in the first two games of this season, Crowder played about 50 percent and was victimized for one of the biggest plays — a 56-yard completion — during Washington’s comeback rally against the Giants in Week 2. He bounced back with a team-high 11 tackles and a pass defended Sunday.
“I thought he showed some physicality, some real aggressiveness with how he played,” Judge said, “so I was really pleased with what Tae did in the game.”
The Giants rank No. 21 in total defense and No. 16 in scoring defense, both below the preseason top-10 expectation. They have been especially poor in the four- and two-minute drills, allowing 34 points (six scores) on seven possessions in those situations over three games. The one stop was a forcedfumble three-and-out by Ojulari late in the first half against the Falcons.
“The aggressiveness that we played with right there,” Judge said, “that was really the theme of what we want to go forward with.”