Bill Belichick Reportedly Irked By Blitz-Happy Giants Defense

Belichick reportedly wasn't happy that the Giants ran more blitzes than usual for a preseason game.

Despite keeping things relatively vanilla on the defensive side of the ball, New York Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, who has made no secret of his desire to run a blitz-happy defense, couldn’t help himself in Thursday night’s preseason opener against the New England Patriots.

According to Pro Football Focus, Martindale’s Giants defense blitzed New England quarterback Bailey Zappe on 17 out of 33 snaps and blitzed 21 times overall on 59 New England plays (35.6 percent), numbers that irked Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.

Blitzes Patriots QBs faced in Week 1 of the preseason, per @PFF:

2017: 6
2018: 9
2019: 8
2021: 5
2022: 21 https://t.co/YudlF6Qkh0

— Zack Cox (@zm_cox) August 12, 2022

The amount of blitzing done by the Giants is more than what Belichick is used to seeing in the preseason opener.

“With what the Giants were doing, there’s a lot of reasons for some of the things that we did just to try to manage the game,” Belichick said. “So, just leave it at that.”

The Giants ended up with just one sack and four hits on Zappe and Brian Hoyer, the latter who started the game for the Patriots.

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According to the official gamebook, the Giants finished with one sack and four quarterback hits. Pro Football Focus had the Giants with 11 total pressures on the Patriots’ 40 pass attempts.

“It was vanilla,” said inside linebacker Darrian Beavers of the Giants’ defensive plan. “It was just really basic, just to see the guys flying around doing the best they can. I feel they kept it basic so we could fly around.”

If that’s basic, imagine what the blitz-happy Martindale has in store for when he wants his defense to be a pest to opponents.

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