New York the perfect place for the Tommy DeVito show
It’s hard to imagine Tommy DeVito’s story taking off as it has from anywhere else but the New York launching pad.
If he was an undrafted rookie quarterback pressed into unexpected service due to injuries who wound up playing pretty well and winning a few games for, say, the Texans or the Broncos or the Seahawks? He’d probably be added to a few fantasy lineups, garner a couple of mentions on the sports-dedicated outlets, and generally remain in the cultural weeds.
He’d be Tyson Bagent, who was an even more improbable starter for the Bears this year. Google him.
If he was from California or Arkansas or Florida and found himself at the center of the Giants’ remarkable turnaround, outperforming the quarterbacks who were supposed to be the stars of the team and infusing a winning charisma into a locker room that was teetering toward disarray just a few weeks ago when they were 2-8, he’d get local respect but wouldn’t be the kind of folk hero with his own mythology that he has become.
He'd be Mike White. Remember him?
But the two elements of this narrative — plus the fact that he plays the NFL’s glamour position — have converged in a city with the most efficient and productive star-making machinery in the country, melding him into a cohesive narrative in easy-to-swallow pill form. And so DeVito, the kid who is living all of our backyard dreams about growing up to play for and lead the local team to victory, has quickly evolved into something that transcends just sports and local news.
Throw in the heavy lean toward his Italian-American heritage, the large and loud family, his Rat Pack agent, the endless tailgate, the hand gesture that has become a signature celebratory move, and it’s a recipe as irresistible as Sunday gravy.
He’s become a national icon. A living and breathing meme. A blazing streak across the sky of our collective consciousness from which we can’t turn away. It’s not limited to Giants fans, not even sports fans. Tommy DeVito the persona has transcended Tommy DeVito the player.
There are few things that New Yorkers love more than their local sports teams and their fellow New Yorkers (or, in this case, Cedar Grovers in northeastern New Jersey). DeVito has both of those elements covered. Instant cred. And we all know that New York orders for the table when it comes to national discourse. Whatever we like, that’s what everybody has to eat.
Even being crowned NFC Offensive Player of the Week, an honor that was announced on Wednesday, felt more like the league’s nod to this DeVito zeitgeist than a proclamation on his actual impact on the field. Try though they probably did, the marketing folks over at the NFL could never figure out a way to name Taylor Swift a Player of the Week at any point this season. DeVito will have to do for them.
Sure, DeVito had the game-winning drive in a prime-time game. Yes, he is the only starting quarterback since the NFL began tracking statistics on the position in 1950 to complete at least 80% of his passes, rush for 70 or more yards, commit no turnovers and take no sacks. But how many quarterbacks win that award with just 158 passing yards (which, by the way, is the second-lowest total in his four starts and the five most recent games in which he has played the majority of the snaps)? Zach Wilson had to have the best game of his career with twice the touchdown passes and nearly twice the passing yardage DeVito did just to get the corresponding AFC nod.
“It’s cool, I guess,” DeVito said, downplaying the recognition as “outside stuff.”
DeVito certainly is enjoying this ride, but he also knows all of the attention — all of the non-football “antics,” as he called them — comes with costs.
“You’d like to say it’s all blessings,” DeVito said. “There have been little things here and there.”
Some are nagging inconveniences like the mob of cameras around his locker for his media availability on Wednesday. Others, like strangers showing up uninvited at his parents’ house where he is living hoping to meet him, are a bit harder to adjust to. Certainly, neither was happening when he was on the practice squad.
His coach understands the perils. Brian Daboll’s last job was as the super successful offensive coordinator of the Bills, working and excelling in the town where he grew up raised by his grandparents. It’s obviously a much smaller scale than we have here, but the dynamic on a personal level is similar.
“It's a little bit different because a lot of your family are around, so they kind of live it with you as compared to if you’re working somewhere else, maybe they're not right in the boat with you,” Daboll said of that experience. “So, there's a lot of things that are going on for you and you’ve got to do a really good job of focusing on keeping the main thing the main thing, which is your preparation . . . It's not always going to be perfect, there’s going to be people tugging at you in different areas. The commitment of staying focused, of doing your job well is important.”
DeVito said he and Daboll have discussed this often.
“We talked about it a bunch, especially when I first started to, uh, flourish, if you will,” DeVito said.
Generally, though, DeVito handles just about everything with a natural self-assured coolness, from two-minute drives to autograph signings at Jersey sub shops.
It’s probably because he is from here. He knows the drill. Even if he has never been in the center of a storm like this, he’s familiar with the weather patterns that produce it. And, when he was playing college ball at Syracuse close enough to get lashed with the occasional spinoff cell from the ever-churning downstate hurricanes, he even got a few practice reps in the middle of the chaos.
“I’ve dealt with the New York crowd before,” DeVito said. “They can love you or they can be the complete opposite. It depends on how certain things are going. People are tough. But they expect the best. That’s what I try to give them.”
It’s a classic New York tale, with a classic New York character as the lead.
“I know how it is,” DeVito said.
He, more than anyone else from anywhere else, very well should.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
