Step aside Daniel Jones from Duke who is getting paid…..
Tommy DeVito…The guy who has helped the team WIN FOUR games in a row is a Jersey guy, Italian-American, that lives at home…….
(I hope they win again today…..)
At Natoli’s Italian Deli in Secaucus, N.J., in the shadow of MetLife Stadium, one can now order the Tommy DeVito hero — chicken parm a la vodka — just like the breakout Giants quarterback likes it.
In the past month, Mr. DeVito, raised across the Hackensack River in Cedar Grove, has rocketed from third-string obscurity to star on the often-dismal New York Giants, keeping their long-shot playoff chances alive and becoming an icon of the greater Meadowlands metro area.
Mr. DeVito, 25, grew up loving the Giants and his mother’s chicken sandwiches and watching his father, a plumber, fix boilers. Now he is known as “Tommy Cutlets,” a nickname he scribbled on fans’ white tank tops during an event at Primo Hoagies in nearby Wayne. He posed for selfies pursing his fingers Italian-style in his signature touchdown celebration.
A hometown N.F.L. hero might seem like an anomaly in an era of free agents, multimillion-dollar contracts and teams without local roots. But when Mr. DeVito materialized in the Meadowlands, he drove home the truth that a “New York” team has actually played in one state over for nearly half a century. That state is now staking an ownership claim….
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And they love the overflow DeVito contingent smoking cigars in the parking lot during pregame tailgating, amid tables of chicken parmigiana heroes handmade by a cousin and a feast of Italian food laid out in aluminum trays.
On Tuesday morning, having slept only an hour after his son’s triumph, Tom DeVito Sr. was back to the boilers.
“It’s heating season, so it’s business as usual for me,” he said. “I’m the donkey of the family.”
Given his son’s sudden stardom, he said, “It’s gotten to the point I tell my workers, ‘I’m not going inside because as soon as I walk in the house everyone’s got their Giants jerseys on.’ I can’t get any work done.”
He added: “Every five seconds my wife sends me another media request — I have 818 text messages to return. It’s just so overwhelming for him and us.”…
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But Mr. DeVito’s image has become intertwined with his ethnicity. “It’s the New Jersey thing — people still talk about ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Jersey Shore,’ and it’s all fed into that, and people seem to eat it up,” Mr. Urbina said….
image…The man they call Tommy Cutlets is now mobbed by reporters after practices…