NFL

Tuck holding out hope Osi still has the heart of a Giant

Justin Tuck was wearing a white T-shirt with Giants in blue across his chest yesterday. He wears the shirt proudly.

The question for the defensive captain of the Giants: Is Osi Umenyiora as proud to wear the jersey as he is?

“I don’t know how to rate that,” Tuck said. “If I’m, I guess 100 percent proudly, is he 95? I don’t know.

“I know he loves it here.

“I think, in the back of his mind, he doesn’t want this to end up where he’s going to another team.

“But I haven’t had to go through the situation that Osi’s having to go through yet, so . . .”

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It is a situation that is dragging a proud organization and proud player through the mud every day it drags on. The player screams: honor your promise. The organization screams: honor your contract.

The New York Football Giants’ Mud Bowl.

Eyeball-to-eyeball, and neither side blinks.

And Opening Day against the Redskins is five weeks away.

Where is the urgency?

It is time to institute The Tuck Rule.

Because sooner rather than later, this will become a distraction.

“I’ve been around this game long enough to understand that sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to go, and you adjust,” Tuck said. “That’s not saying it won’t be a distraction for other guys so . . . for me personally, no.

“But if I see it becoming a distraction for some of the young guys — even some of the older guys that maybe don’t understand it as much as I do, then that’s when you kind of start to maybe try to talk to [general manager] Jerry [Reese] or talk to Coach [Tom] Coughlin or Osi and see if we can put an end to it at that point,” Tuck told The Post.

At last — a flicker of light at the end of this dark Big Blue tunnel.

Tuck is the most respected man in the Big Blue room. If there is anyone who can stand between Reese and Umenyiora and send a Tear Down That Wall, Mr. Gorbachev message to both sides, it is him.

I asked Tuck: Are you nearing that point?

“Me, personally, no, I’m not,” Tuck said. “I guess you can call me long-suffering [smile]. I can go a long time with this. Because at the end of the day, man, it’s about Osi and the Giants and what’s best for both units.”

Sorry, but The Tuck Rule must be enforced immediately. Before so much bad blood boils over that all of East Rutherford is covered with it.

Umenyiora either wants to be a Giant badly enough, or he doesn’t.

The Giants either want Umenyiora to be a Giant badly enough, or they don’t.

How will it end?

“I wish I was a fortune-teller, I don’t know,” Tuck said.

What is your gut feeling?

“Gut feeling? Obviously I’m the most optimistic person in the world right now so, gut feeling, I would say I see it ending up with him being a Giant,” Tuck said. “But who knows? I don’t think anybody involved in this situation knows.”

But at some point you will go in and try to use your clout as defensive captain to . . .

“If it gets to that point,” Tuck said. “We’ll see what happens, I don’t know.”

But you will do that . . .

“If I need to do it, yes I will,” Tuck said.

He needs to do it, and do it now. He needs to get Reese and Umenyiora together and get them to agree to tear up the last year of the player’s contract and offer an incentive-laden 2011 contract based on sacks, strip-sacks and playoff games won. The Giants get the best of Umenyiora for one more year, and Umenyiora can shop his services around the league after this season.

Tuck still believes it is a good sign that Umenyiora is not out of sight, out of mind.

“He could have been holding out,” Tuck said.

So what do you read into that?

“I read into him wanting to be here,” Tuck said. “But to Osi, I guess the ball is in the Giants’ hands. I guess he’s already given his demands, or what he would like to see happen.”

Perhaps Tuck should bring defensive end Dave Tollefson into the mediation room with him. Tollefson, after dipping his toe in the free agent waters, signed a one-year deal — for the fifth straight time.

“Is the grass always greener? I kind of found out it isn’t,” Tollefson said.

steve.serby@nypost.com