Wink Martindale shooting his shot with John Harbaugh is hard to ignore

Wink Martindale didn’t exactly leave the New York Giants on good terms.

That’s putting it lightly.

After a very public fallout with former head coach Brian Daboll, which ended with a door slam and a swift exit out of the building, it felt like any chance of a return to East Rutherford was dead on arrival. But with John Harbaugh now running the show, that door might not be as closed as it once seemed.

Martindale made that pretty clear where he stands when talking about his future on the Talkin' Ball with Pat Leonard podcast:

“I’d love to finish up, you know, with John. I’d love to come back to the Giants. College? Not doing it. Not doing it. I’m retired from college football. You can have that. But the pros, specifically the Giants, I can.

You know, they got a great coordinator (Wilson), and he’s going to do great things there for, you know, for the Giants. He’ll probably be a head coach in two years, so maybe there is that opportunity.”

Wink Martindale isn’t ruling out Giants return with John Harbaugh now in charge

After not meshing well with the college game, following a two-year stint at Michigan, the longtime defensive mind is looking to get back on the coaching horse. And it's absolutely no surprise he'd be looking Harbaugh's way.

Martindale and Harbs go back more than a decade in Baltimore. They built some of the most aggressive defenses in the league together, and apparently those memories never truly faded. So it's understandable he'd be interested in a reunion. If the 62-year-old is going to coach again in the NFL, doing it with someone he's already spent 10 years with would make a ton of sense.

The issue is that everything else suggests this would be a one-step-forward, two-steps-back move.

Harby is wired differently than Dabs -- he’s been around long enough to manage personalities and keep things from boiling over the way they did Round 1. And nobody’s questioning what Martindale has done in the past, but Big Blue already has Dennard Wilson in place, and the defense is being built under his vision.

Bringing a stubborn, stuck-in-his-ways-type coach back into the mix could mean unnecessary turbulence, which is the last thing this team needs as it enters Year 1 under Harbs.

There’s also the bigger picture of where the league is heading. Defenses are getting more adaptable, more never let them know your next move, and a lot of that is coming from younger minds who are willing to adjust on the fly. Martindale’s style is what it is. When it works, it’s a problem for offenses. When it doesn’t... let's hope it does next week.

The appeal of getting the band back together will always be there, especially with someone tied to both the head coach and the organization. That doesn’t mean it’s the direction they should go.