Justin Tuck Announces His Retirement
Goosebumps
Not an easy day in the Casa de Clem, as I have now blogged about the retirements of Cindy Crawford and Justin Tuck in the last eight hours. Those two combined to create countless happy tissues for me. Okay, that’s not completely true, but you get the point.
It’s hard to talk about Tuck without sounding like a cliche machine. After dealing with studs like Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora over the years, it was nice to have a superstar like Tuck that would quietly go about his business without doing his contract negotiations or spats through the media. He went from a third round draft pick to one of the best defensive linemen in the league. He was probably the deserving Super Bowl XLII MVP and being able to move him around on the D-Line was key for the immense amount of talent the Giants unit had back then.
In fact, this season was the first in a while where you really felt hopeless up front on defense as a Giants fan. JPP was hurt and has never been anyone’s idea of a leader. Tuck was dominant on the field and by all accounts, a great person off of it. He was always the embodiment of the Giants pride that Coach Coughlin preached and I am truly bummed he couldn’t spend the last few years of his careers with the Giants. Now please rip the number 91 off of Robert Ayers Jr.’s back, and while you’re at it, do the same with number 44 and Andre Williams. We don’t have nearly the amount of players with the talent or drive of Justin Tuck, and that is Big Blue’s biggest problem as of right now. Thanks for the memories and the trophies, Justin.