Zak out to keep job a little longer

THERE was a time when Zak DeOssie wasn’t sure if he was ever going to snap again, a notion that’s hard to comprehend around the Giants considering DeOssie has been about as durable a long-snapper as Eli Manning has been a quarterback.

DeOssie’s right wrist had just undergone surgery in December to repair a ruptured scapholunate ligament that ensures the bones in his hand move in unison with his wrist. Even surgery couldn’t guarantee the Giants’ longtime fixture on punts and field goals would be able to regain the kind of grip strength necessary to fulfill his job.

“The prognosis after surgery anticipates a limited range of motion,” DeOssie said on Wednesday at the Giants’ practice facility. “But we worked our butt off to get that range of motion back and I feel really good. Also, I’ve had to start from scratch and relearn the fundamentals of snapping again which has helped.”

DeOssie, the longest tenured Giant next to Manning, missed the final four games of the 2015 season after playing in 140 straight. He says his wrist, initially injured in Week 3, is fine now, but the Giants were uncertain enough about his health to keep Tyler Ott on the roster, marking the first time in DeOssie’s 10-year tenure there are two long-snappers in training camp. Ott, in his second season out of Harvard, was the long-snapper for the Giants final game last season. If DeOssie proves healthy and his skills aren’t diminished, he’ll keep his job. But right now he welcomes the company.

“It’s obviously different,” DeOssie said. “I’ve always been by myself. But Tyler is a good snapper. He throws a beautiful ball and it’s nice to have someone here to bounce ideas off and have someone who knows how to snap and have a fresh set of eyes on every single snap.”

DeOssie, 32, is one of four remaining players from the 2011 Super Bowl team along with Manning, Victor Cruz, and Jason Pierre-Paul. His roots to the Giants extend to when his father, Steve, was a linebacker and long-snapper on the Giants’ 1990 Super Bowl team.

“He says his ’90 team would have beaten both our ’ 07 and ’11 teams, but that’s his opinion,” Zak said jokingly.

Sitting out the final four games of the 6-10 season was tough enough, but the frustration was compounded when his long-time coach Tom Coughlin was fired and replaced by Ben McAdoo.

“I’ve been with coach [Coughlin] the entire time,” said DeOssie, a fourthround draft pick by the Giants in 2007. “I view him as a father figure and was sad to see him go. But, unfortunately, that’s the business we’re in. You don’t have time to dwell on it. You just have to move forward. But when it was happening, it was the end of something that meant a lot to me.”

What he learned from Coughlin is part of his football DNA and serves as an example for younger players on the team to follow.

“It’s important to carry over the lessons we learned from coach and those were a lot,” DeOssie said. “Obviously, the punctuality and the effort that coach always preached is something any player that ever played for him will always have with him for the rest of their life outside of football. But it’s always important to incorporate the new aspects of the McAdoo regime. I think he’s found a good balance between the two especially when you look at the new corps of young players coming in, millennials for a lack of a better term. It’s catering toward them and we’re seeing positive results.”

DeOssie accepts his role as a bridge from the Giants’ glory days to the present.

“Thing about football,” he said, “is you learn your lessons from the past and cherish the memories. But you’re also open to change and new personalities and new players showing how they can contribute on and off the field. It’s a beautiful part of the game.”

Times and coaches may have changed, but DeOssie hopes his job stays the same.