Tommy Devito

 

Tommy Devito

My plan has been to only post once a month or so, but this story is too good to wait. 

Non-Sports fans can go now, but you will miss a real feel-good story.

 

The New York Giants Football team is having a less than successful season.  Their number one quarterback was injured early in the season.

Their number two QB was injured soon after.

Enter number three QB, Tommy Devito.

Tommy was an undrafted pick who was on the scrub team.  Typically, in this situation, the scrub QB would finish a game for the number two and the team would find a new back-up for the next game.

The number three Qb’s job is to hand the ball off, not make mistakes and then disappear.

(This is my uneducated estimation of situation, probably totally off base, but bear with me.)

It is not like a number three QB is a bum.  It is just that being a QB in the NFL is such a demanding position that only elite athletes make it to the back up position, the number three guy plays patsy for the defense team in practice.

Tommy Devito is a Jersey kid.  He is not some bum that just happened to get a contract as a number three sub, anyone who makes the sub team in the NFL is an elite athlete, but few undrafted players, as talented as they may be, ever make it big, especially at the quarterback position.

Tommy was a big High School NJ star.  In College, he started for Syracuse, a division 1 school for several seasons, and finished at Illinois with some very impressive stats.  Tommy is not a stiff athlete, but apparently, he does not have the metrics of most pro quarterback candidates. 

Well Tommy Devito has won three games in a row for a very mediocre team.  He has done it by not making stupid mistakes, passing with great accuracy, running the ball with surprising skill and understanding and adjusting to a complicated Pro Football system that usually takes a top rank rookie a year or more to learn.

What does Tommy have that has made him successful (for now at least) is he is Jersey tough. 

Tommy lives and grew up 10 minutes from Giant Stadium.  He is Jersey Italian tough.  I have married into a Jersey tough family, so I have some experience.  They are a special kind of tough.  Family is huge.  Sundays are Italian gravy dinners.  Respect is demanded…let us just say they are special people, and Tommy Devito is the stereotypical Jersey Italian tough.

He lives at home, well yeah, who else could make dinner like his Italian mom.

Tommy has fast become a New Jersey favorite of this New Jersey team…yes, the New York Giants play in New Jersey.

In his first win as a giant QB, after a touchdown pass, Tommy made a NJ Italian hand signal that means…well it can mean many things depending on the situation, much like the “Happy Day’s” Fonsie “Ehhhhh!”

Now after every TD, the whole stadium gives the hand signal “Ehhhhh!”

His success so far is not just on his undeniable talent, but also on his coolness under extreme pressure that is just part of his Jersey culture.

Tommy enters the field to the theme song of “The Soprano’s.”

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0HlY3bRI53/

The New York Giants will probably not make the playoffs this year. 

Tommy Devito will probably not make it in the league beyond a backup position in years to come, but for now he is the only fun sport thing happening in the New York area.

In a sports world full of prima donnas, it is refreshing to find a lunch pail Jersey kid make it for a while in his own home town.  Will success spoil Tommy Devito?  I doubt it.  The reason for his success is the reason it will not go to his head. 

He is New Jersey Italian tough.  He is bringing the Sunday gravy* to the NFL.

 

*Gravy is tomato sauce with meat for anyone not Italian.  Took me a while to learn.