Blake Martinez talks Washington loss, looks ahead to Falcons with Moose & Maggie

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The New York Giants are 0-2 for the second straight season under Joe Judge, but when linebacker Blake Martinez joined Moose & Maggie Tuesday for his first turn on the Giants Report this season, he noted that there’s a lot he’s already seeing to believe another 0-5 isn’t in their future.

“It feels completely different from last year to this year. You see things starting to click, and on defense, we’re growing as a unit,” Martinez said. “The rookies are coming along, and it’s been awesome to see. You’re starting to see a complete team working together, and we made a lot of strides from Week 1 to Week 2. Giants fans, I promise you it will keep getting better.”

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Losing in the NFL hurts any time it happens, but especially in a crucial division game – and doubly so when you lose in the manner the Giants lost on Thursday night in Washington.

“When we look at the film it’s little things here or there, and if we did a few things differently, three or four plays, it’s an easy win on Thursday,” Martinez said. “You can look at that one play, but there are a lot of plays before that where if we capitalized on them, we might not even be in that situation. There, you don’t know exactly what happened and how, you just knew they were going to get another opportunity, and they capitalized on it.”

Defensively, Martinez and his mates take some of the responsibility for putting the team in that position, and responsibility for figuring out how to fix it.

“I think overall it comes down to communication and execution, and winning the key moments. It’s a domino effect of mistakes that ends up compounding, and we don’t make those key stops to get off the field and be the dominant D we know we can be,” Martinez said. “It’s truly cleaning up the small things. If we can do that and be consistent, we’ll be okay. We’re all competitors and don’t want to be in position, but as a group, our culture is coming to work every day and doing what we needed to do.”

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The Giants had high expectations coming out of training camp, Martinez saying that the team felt they can “compete with anyone,” but they’re just going to put one loss behind them and move on.

“For us to be where we are, we’re not happy about it, and moving forward, we’re going to be hungry and keep showing improvement as we go,” he said. “A loss like this sticks in the pit of your stomach, but I’ve gotten better over time at understanding you can’t let it fester – you have to put it in the past, make the corrections you need to make, and move on.”

And coach Joe Judge echoes that every day.

“He always preaches the same thing: come to work and be ready to work every day,” Martinez said of Judge. “Attention to detail is the number one thing these past two weeks, and we have so many good players out there that if the full 11 works together as a unit and stays consistent, we can be a force to be reckoned with.”

Now it’s on to Atlanta, and a date with former MVP Matt Ryan and a “unicorn” in first-round pick Kyle Pitts.

“Ryan is an amazing quarterback, and we can’t allow him to be in the MVP groove, but if we can go out there and execute our game plan, I feel extremely positive,” Martinez said. “And Pitts, he’s a unicorn-like athlete who can do everything and is a matchup nightmare. You have to understand that and know where he is at all times, and see if there’s any tendencies.”

The Giants will have had 10 days or so to do just that come Monday…and perhaps that’s why, even after all that needling from Moose last season, Martinez STILL hasn’t seen Ted Lasso!

“I’ve heard it’s amazing…I promise I’ll start it tonight!”

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