Sports
Brian Daboll vs. Wink Martindale: Inside the Giants coaches' messy divorce
The relationship between New York Giants coach Brian Daboll and defensive coordinator Wink Martindale came to an explosive end Monday, less than 24 hours after the team finished a disappointing 6-11 season.
Neither side looked good as details emerged about the final hours of their partnership, with Daboll’s firing of Martindale’s two most trusted assistants, Kevin and Drew Wilkins, and Martindale’s responding by saying, “F— you” and storming out of the room, according to team sources granted anonymity by The Athletic because they are not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. The Giants announced Wednesday the sides had “mutually agreed to part ways.”
Even in a decade full of dysfunction, the Martindale blowup stands out as a low point for the Giants. Such an ugly departure leads to an obvious question: How could a relationship that appeared so promising dissolve into such acrimony?
Martindale was available for Daboll to hire in 2022 after a surprising departure from the Baltimore Ravens after 10 years as an assistant, including a top-three scoring defense in three of four seasons as defensive coordinator. A contractual stalemate and a desire for a fresh start led to Martindale’s exit from Baltimore.
Martindale had options, but he was drawn to the Giants due to his fondness for ownership after interviewing for the team’s head-coaching vacancy in 2020. The 60-year-old Martindale has made no secret of his desire to become a head coach, and he saw success in New York as a pathway to reaching that goal.
Daboll and Martindale didn’t have a pre-existing relationship beyond squaring off as coordinators. That competition created a mutual respect, and they found they had similar personalities when they started working together.
“I’ve always respected him,” Martindale said last January. “I think we’re very similar personality-wise. You know that when you meet somebody.”
Landing a lauded defensive coordinator like Wink Martindale in 2022 was a coup for Brian Daboll, a first-time head coach. (Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Despite similar wiring as hyper-competitive football lifers, Daboll and Martindale brought different temperaments to the sideline. And it didn’t take long for those differences to surface, with tension starting to build during their first training camp together.
“You could probably see it building a little bit,” a team source said. “Like the defense is getting installed and you might have 12 guys on the field and Dabes is losing it, and he’s calling out coaches, and he’s making it personal.”
Martindale presents a brash persona, cultivated with his standard attire — sunglasses, long-sleeve white compression shirt and basketball sneakers — that makes him look like a WWE rendition of a football coach. But he prides himself on his composure.
Though it’s not uncommon for NFL head coaches to lose their cool, multiple team sources said Daboll goes overboard, particularly during games.
“On game day, he’s a madman,” one team source said. “It’s just brutal.”
That shouldn’t come as a revelation to fans who have witnessed Daboll’s red-faced tirades directed at players for mistakes during games. And it has rankled assistants to have to endure Daboll’s rants while they’re trying to coach.
“It’s to the point where you’ve got to take your headsets off or take one ear off,” another team source said. “He’s just constantly screaming. It’s like, ‘Jeez, I can’t even think.’”
Martindale spent the previous decade working for Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who has a much calmer sideline demeanor. Martindale didn’t appreciate the change to Daboll’s style.
“Wink didn’t like that at all,” a team source said. “The stares and how he just kind of looks at you, Wink couldn’t stand it.”
Martindale’s philosophical differences were hiding in plain sight to outsiders as early as October 2022. His comments in a news conference now read like thinly veiled criticisms of Daboll’s sideline outbursts.
“What I tell the players all the time is, ‘What I owe you during the game is my composure,’” Martindale said. “There’s some people telling me I need to be more animated on the sidelines. You’re not going to be animated if you’re thinking about the next play, what you’re going to call next.”
Martindale was more overt about his displeasure with Daboll’s eruptions behind the scenes.
“Wink would just walk in (to a coaches’ meeting) and say something like, ‘When such and such did this, I stayed calm. I just went onto the next play,’” a team source said. “He’d throw stuff out there and see if he could get (Daboll) riled up. Dabes knows it. Dabes isn’t stupid. It would just float on by in the meeting, and nobody would say anything.”
As evidenced by his explosive departure, Martindale isn’t the type to quietly endure something he doesn’t like. So there were the snide comments in meetings and the public allusions to his preferred coaching style.
“His personality kind of fits his style of defense — blitz zero, man coverage,” a team source said. “He’s not a loose cannon. He’s very calculated. But he just doesn’t give a s—.”
The rift was minimized last season by the ultimate salve: winning. The Giants unexpectedly raced out to a 6-1 start, with Martindale’s blitz-happy scheme contributing to victories over former MVP quarterbacks Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson — a particularly sweet win over Martindale’s former team — and Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers.
The Giants made the postseason and won their first playoff game since Super Bowl 46 in 2012. No one outside of the team had any reason to suspect dissension between Daboll and Martindale.
“When it’s going good, you put up with it,” a team source said. “When it’s not going good, it compounds.”
Most observers believed the Giants’ misery this season started with their 40-0 Week 1 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in front of a national audience on “Sunday Night Football.” But a team source said there was an extraordinary amount of tension on the sideline during the Giants’ preseason opener in Detroit.
Even with most of the starters resting, Daboll was incensed by mistakes made by players who wouldn’t make the roster. The TV broadcast captured Daboll giving special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey, who was fired Monday, a death stare after the Giants allowed a 95-yard punt return for a touchdown in the third quarter of the 21-16 loss. The entire staff felt Daboll’s wrath during that exhibition game.
Brian Daboll’s 👀 at Giants special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey after that 94-yard punt return for a TD by the Lions. 🥶 pic.twitter.com/PWEo5Bk9yL
— Ralph Vacchiano (@RalphVacchiano) August 12, 2023
“That kind of set the tempo for the year,” a team source said.
The Giants never recovered from a disastrous 1-5 start. The offense, which drew much more of Daboll’s attention, was a mess. But the defense wasn’t much better during the rocky opening stretch. The Giants allowed 441 yards in a 30-12 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in Week 3 and 524 yards in a 31-16 loss to the Miami Dolphins in Week 5.
The season bottomed out with a 30-6 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 9. Quarterback Daniel Jones tore his ACL in the game, but drama from the defense surprisingly drew the spotlight.
Safety Xavier McKinney told ESPN of the coaches, “I don’t think they’ve done a great job of letting the leaders lead and listening to the leaders and the captains.” Consistent with how he handles any hint of controversy, Daboll downplayed McKinney’s comments the next day. McKinney said “everything is good” two days later.
The story could have ended there. But during his news conference later that week, Martindale spoke extensively about how hurt he was by McKinney’s comments, creating another cycle of headlines. It was the opposite of Daboll’s approach.
The growing tension boiled over during a 49-17 loss to the Cowboys the next week. With undrafted rookie quarterback Tommy DeVito’s making his first career start, the Giants were steamrolled by the Cowboys. Dallas gained 640 yards as the Giants’ record dropped to 2-8.
Fox sideline reporter Tom Rinaldi noted on the broadcast that Daboll and Martindale engaged in a lengthy discussion that started at the end of the first half and continued as they came out of the locker room for the second half. Tensions were running high as the Giants got destroyed by their rival for the second time in two months, with numerous “animated discussions” on the sideline between players and coaches.
All of the simmering discord came pouring onto the surface before the Giants’ Week 12 game against the New England Patriots when Fox’s Jay Glazer reported that the relationship between Daboll and Martindale was in such a “bad place” that a split was expected. After a dominant defensive performance sparked a 10-7 win over the Patriots later that day, Daboll gave Martindale a game ball in the locker room in a presentation that was viewed as performative by team sources who knew the relationship was fractured.
🗣 Postgame speech pic.twitter.com/SwunL7mKzp
— New York Giants (@Giants) November 26, 2023
Impressively, Daboll and Martindale managed to mostly shield the players from their feud. That was important to keeping the team together during a surprising 4-3 finish with DeVito and veteran backup Tyrod Taylor at quarterback.
Players view Daboll as a players’ coach, even though they can be on the receiving end of his sideline explosions. A veteran player said the outbursts are mostly an accepted part of playing for Daboll, even though they can be counterproductive in situations when emotions are already running high.
Players complained that Daboll’s predecessor, Joe Judge, worked them too hard in practice and held excessively long meetings. Daboll seems to have a better sense of how to manage players, with lighter practices and shorter meetings. The Giants held a rare Wednesday walk-through in Week 18 and then delivered a spirited effort in a 27-10 season-ending win over the Philadelphia Eagles.
“He does a good job of keeping everybody together and feeling the pulse of the team,” a team source said.
That touch will be needed now more than ever with his staff. Daboll must find a new defensive coordinator and fill a handful of other assistant jobs that were opened during a mini-housecleaning Monday.
The problem with Martindale has been eliminated, as the veteran coach is free to seek employment from any team after agreeing to sacrifice the $3 million remaining on his contract with the Giants, a league source said. But as Daboll embarks on a pivotal offseason, it will be interesting to see whether the dynamics that led to the ugly divorce with his most prominent assistant cause him to make any changes.
“I’m confident in what we do, how we do things,” Daboll said Monday, hours before everything blew up. “Certainly, there’s a lot of things that we can improve. That’s what the offseason is for, really, in every aspect.”
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos of Brian Daboll and Wink Martindale: Kevin Sabitus, Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)
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LONDON — A local boy sleeps in his own bed, plays in front of a king and queen and makes a Cinderella run to the Wimbledon semifinals. Sounds like a Hollywood script that might never see the silver screen.
But it’s no fairy tale — it’s Arthur Fery’s out-of-nowhere performance over the last 10 days.
Fery, a virtually unknown British wild card with a triple-digit ranking, has become the emotional heartbeat of Wimbledon while legitimately diverting some national attention from England’s World Cup quest.
The royal treatment at his matches across the All England Club has come in more ways than one.
Fery, who grew up five minutes from Wimbledon and is staying at home during the tournament, first played before grass-court king Roger Federer, Wimbledon’s eight-time singles champion, during Monday’s fourth-round victory. Two days later, he beat No. 9 seed and French Open runner-up Flavio Cobolli of Italy in the quarterfinals 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-0 in front of Queen Camilla.
Ranked 114th, Fery had never reached the semifinals of an ATP Tour event, let alone a major, before his brief chat with the queen following the match.
“She just said, ‘Congratulations, keep going,’” 23-year-old Fery told reporters later. “I told her it was my birthday on Sunday, so it would be great to play the Wimbledon final on my birthday.”
That’s still a match away. To get there, Fery will have to get past one of the hottest players on tour: No. 2 seed Alexander Zverev, who is fresh off his first Grand Slam title at the French Open. Looming on the other side of the draw is a highly anticipated showdown between defending champion Jannik Sinner against 24-time major winner Novak Djokovic.
If Fery can continue his magical run to the end, he would become the first British wild card to win a Wimbledon title.
Arthur Fery reacts after defeating Flavio Cobolli in the Wimbledon quarterfinals on Wednesday.
(Maja Smiejkowska / Associated Press)
Born in France, Fery’s family moved to Wimbledon when he was an infant. His mother played professional tennis. He was a top British junior but chose to sharpen his game for three years in the U.S. collegiate system at Stanford, as many of his compatriots have done.
“I came out with a lot of hunger coming out of that, and I was ready to attack the pro circuit,” Fery said.
After struggling with bone bruising in his arm that limited him to playing mostly on the lower-tier Challenger circuit in recent years, Fery is finally healthy and playing consistently.
His path to the last four in London has been a masterclass in clutch come-from-behind performances. The Brit has stared down near-certain elimination in multiple matches, repeatedly breaking his opponents’ momentum with Houdini-like on-court acts.
At 5-foot-9, Fery possesses a skill set perfectly suited for low-bounding grass.
His compact strokes, low center of gravity, and elite movement allow him to hug the baseline, take time away from opponents, and confidently execute delicate volleys at the net, according to ESPN analyst Chris Eubanks.
“He defends well,” said Eubanks, a 2023 Wimbledon quarterfinalist. “He can scrap. He can claw. He can dig his way back into points. And when he ventures forward, he’s very, very comfortable at the net. This is a picture-perfect example of someone whose game is built for the surface.”
Still, it’s hard to fathom the multitude of milestones for Fery, who briefly reached the No. 1 ranking in college and earned 2023 Pac-12 Singles Player of the Year honors before leaving early to pursue a pro career.
He arrived at Wimbledon with just one main-draw victory at a major, a losing record as a professional, and only one previous ATP quarterfinal, at Queen’s Club last month. He’s now 11-8, won his first two five-set matches, and is the first British wild card to reach the Wimbledon men’s semifinals in the Open Era. The only other men’s wild-card semifinalist was Goran Ivanisevic, who won the title as a wild card in 2001.
Fery, who started the season ranked No. 185 and will climb to at least No. 36 after the tournament, said there were a “lot of first times” as he reflected on his unprecedented run. “First five-setter, longest match that I’ve ever played, first time breaking into the top 100, first second week in a slam, all at home, five minutes from where I grew up. It’s a great story for me,” he said.
The gap with his fellow semifinalists is understandably massive.
Entering Wimbledon, Djokovic, Sinner and Zverev’s combined records include 29 Grand Slam titles, 2,088 match wins and 155 tour-level titles. Fery was 6-8 in tour-level matches with zero titles.
But he has singlehandedly lifted the tournament for locals. With top hopes Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu withdrawing before the tournament and the rest of Britain’s singles prospects falling one by one — 18 men and women were eliminated by the third round — Fery became the nation’s last knight standing.
If his first name inevitably evokes Arthurian legend, Fery’s march through the draw gave Britain reason to believe again. No sword, no Round Table, just world-class shot-making, a lion’s heart and a Centre Court crowd thrilled to rally behind him.
“This is really quite something to see on home soil,” said Russell Fuller, the BBC’s tennis correspondent, who compared it with Raducanu’s stunning U.S. Open win in 2021 as a qualifier.
Fery earned every bit of it.
In the first round against Damir Dzumhur, Fery dropped the opening set and trailed by a break in the second before surging back. Against Zizou Bergs in the third round, he faced a 4-1 deficit with a double break in the fourth set, and again fell behind 4-1 in the fifth, before somehow surviving.
Then, stepping onto Centre Court for the first time against former top-10 stalwart Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria in the fourth round, Fery clawed out of a 2-sets-to-1 hole and a break down in the fourth set to clinch the victory in a fifth-set tiebreak.
“He carries himself with humility, but he’s a fierce competitor, and he’s got a ton of belief in himself,” said Stanford men’s coach and former top-60 player Paul Goldstein, who flew to England Tuesday to see his former charge compete against Cobolli.
While Fery attempts to outmaneuver Zverev on Friday, the other semifinal features a 2025 Wimbledon semifinal rematch between seven-time Wimbledon winner Djokovic and top-ranked Sinner, who defeated the Serb in straight sets on his way to the title. It’s also their second Grand Slam semifinal meeting in 2026. At January’s Australian Open on hard courts, Djokovic bested 24-year-old Sinner in five sets before falling to now-injured Carlos Alcaraz in the Melbourne final.
Arthur Fery hits a return during his Wimbledon quarterfinal win over Flavio Cobolli on Wednesday.
(Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
Djokovic, 39, enters the match after surviving a grueling five-set, 5-hour-plus quarterfinal slugfest against No. 3 Félix Auger-Aliassime that concluded just minutes before Wimbledon’s 11 p.m. curfew. But the seventh-seeded Serb has a way of defying Father Time and he has had two days to recover on a surface where points are shorter and generally less taxing on the body.
Italy’s Sinner, who defeated Alcaraz in last year’s Wimbledon final, has been efficient if not at the level that saw him capture five consecutive titles before crashing out in the second round at the French Open. After a first-round scare here, the four-time Grand Slam champion has dominated opponents behind his improving serve, winning 80% of his first-serve points. He hasn’t dropped a set since the opening round. Sinner leads the head-to-head with Djokovic 6-5.
According to Eubanks, Djokovic must disrupt Sinner’s movement to break his rhythm, and take his chances.
“He’s got to play similar to how he played in Australia, where it was just all-out aggression,” Eubanks said.
For Sinner, he added: “His serve can be a neutralizing force for what Novak is going to try to do.”
On the other side of the ledger, Fery’s poise under pressure and deft use of the home crowd will be paramount to continue his surprise run against Germany’s Zverev, whom he called a “step up again” from his last five matches. Zverev, 29, is seeking his fifth major final and first at Wimbledon.
“I’m ready for it,” Fery said. “I have nothing to lose. I’m just going to go out there and … put my game on the court, do what I’ve done, believe in myself. We’ll see where that takes me.”
Home has never been closer to Centre Court. Nor has Arthur Fery ever been closer to tennis history.
Sports
Pirates star pitcher makes unfortunate history after being taken out in middle of perfect game bid
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Jared Jones was flirting with Major League Baseball history on Wednesday night — he got it, but it was not what he originally envisioned.
The Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher retired the first 18 batters he faced, but he was taken out in the middle of his perfect game bid after six innings.
Now, the Pirates certainly have their reasons — the 24-year-old Jones hasn’t thrown more than 81 pitches in eight starts since returning May 20 after missing all of last season while undergoing ulnar collateral ligament internal brace surgery on May 21, 2025. He was yanked with 77 pitches and likely would have needed more than 100 pitches to record the 25th perfect game in MLB history.
Jared Jones of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches during the first inning against the Atlanta Braves at PNC Park on July 8, 2026, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
However, Jones left the game after getting zero run support, so when the Atlanta Braves tacked on three runs late for a 3-0 victory, Jones instead found himself in the wrong chapter of the history books.
According to Opta Stats, Jones became the first pitcher in the modern era (since 1920) to pitch at least six perfect innings and not record a win.
“It does suck. Something’s cool coming on, but I’m on what? My eighth start off of surgery? I completely understand it, and it is what it is,” Jones told reporters after the game.
Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Jared Jones (17) makes his way to the field to warm up before pitching against the Atlanta Braves at PNC Park. (Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images)
JUSTIN VERLANDER ANNOUNCES HE WILL RETIRE AFTER THIS SEASON: ‘I’VE REALIZED THAT TIME HAS COME’
Jones said he didn’t entertain attempting to complete the perfect game.
“Not with the pitch count,” he said. “Not really ever expecting to go nine right now, so that was never in my head.”
Joey Bart, traded to the Braves from the Pirates on June 18, followed a double by Mike Yastrzemski with a 422-foot, two-run homer to left-center field off a slider from Dennis Santana. Drake Baldwin added an RBI single to center in the ninth for good measure.
It was the second time in less than a week that a pitcher was taken out of the game with a perfect bid through six innings — the Miami Marlins took Eury Perez out after seven innings in which he had 92 pitches. Perez, too, is in the midst of returning from injury and has surprisingly found himself right in the postseason mix.
He was pulled for Lake Bachar to start the eighth, and the Marlins allowed eight runs to the Athletics in the final two innings, but held on to win 9-8.
Jared Jones (17) of the Pittsburgh Pirates delivers a pitch during a MLB game against the Cincinnati Reds on June 27, 2026, at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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The Pirates are 4.0 games out of the final wild card spot, which is held by the Marlins.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON — The Dodgers are scheduled to visit the White House on July 23 to celebrate their latest World Series title.
“President Trump is excited to welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers BACK to the White House to celebrate their World Series championship!,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement to The Times.
The date falls on a scheduled off day in the middle of a nine-game East Coast road trip for the Dodgers. The team will play three games in Philadelphia against the Phillies July 20-22 before ending the trip with a three-game series against the New York Mets July 24 to 26.
The visit continues a tradition from the Dodgers’ two previous World Series championships. They were hosted by President Biden in 2021 and President Trump in April 2025.
After the Dodgers claimed their second consecutive World Series title with a dramatic Game 7 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays, a visit to the White House was planned, but it wasn’t until Thursday that a date was officially booked and confirmed.
Questions swirled around whether players would decline the visit this year after it did not happen during a scheduled visit to Washington in April.
Kiké Hernández said in 2018 he was unsure he would have gone had the Dodgers won the World Series the previous year. Mookie Betts said he was undecided and needed to talk it over with his family when last year’s visit was announced. After winning his first World Series with the Boston Red Sox in 2018, Betts skipped their trip to the White House the following year during Trump’s first term.
Both players, along with every returning member of the 2024 team who was with the team during its road trip, participated in the visit. The only notable absence was first baseman Freddie Freeman, who remained in Los Angeles to nurse an ankle injury.
Manager Dave Roberts, who indicated in comments to The Times in 2019 he might not go to the White House if Trump was president, also participated in last year’s ceremony.
Asked at the Dodgers’ fan festival in January about the possibility of returning to the White House, Roberts told The Times’ Bill Shaikin: “For me, I stand by: I’m a baseball manager. That’s my job.”
“I was raised — by a man who served our country for 30 years — to respect the highest office in our country,” Roberts said. “For me, it doesn’t matter who is in the office, I’m going to go to the White House. I’ve never tried to be political. … For me, I am going to continue to try to do what tradition says and not try to make political statements, because I am not a politician.”
Clayton Kershaw, who retired after last season but was on Team USA for this year’s World Baseball Classic, told The Times in the spring that he was aware Dodgers fans are split over whether the team should visit the White House again this year, but he said he is looking forward to it.
“I went when President Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”
Times deputy sports editor Ed Guzman contributed to this report.
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