ALBANY – Following the preseason opener in Detroit on Thursday night, all the Giants will return on the charter flight back here to resume training camp. All except one. Dave Tollefson will break away from the team and head to Omaha, Neb.
“God bless Coach Coughlin,” Tollefson said yesterday.
Tom Coughlin gave permission for Tollefson to go home to be with his wife, Megan, for the birth of the couple’s first child, a son they plan on naming Tucker. Megan is due on Aug. 15, but will be induced to accommodate Dave’s football schedule. A day or two later, Tollefson will return to camp and hopes to continue his development at defensive end, where he’s one of the top reserves looking to fill some of the void created by the retirement of Michael Strahan.
“This is a big deal,” Tollefson said. “[Coughlin] was understanding. He has kids and grandkids. This is my first child, I’m really grateful he does understand. It’s huge for me for my son to be proud of his father, since I didn’t have one.”
Coughlin never hesitated with this decision.
“When we are in camp, the most important thing we do is prepare for football. However, the real world certainly continues to exist for all of us beyond this camp,” he said. “The birth of a child is a special, once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
The tale Tollefson tells is represented by the shoulder-to-elbow tattoo on his left arm. It is a tribal design, with symmetrical black shapes on the outer arm forming a menacing bull for his astrological sign, Taurus. Imaged on the inner arm, in red, are jagged markings forming “Niles,” his maternal grandfather’s name.
Tollefson’s mother, Debi, was pregnant with twins, a boy and girl, when her husband, a man with the Norwegian surname Tollefson, divorced her.
“I have my father’s last name, but I never met my father,” Tollefson said. “My grandfather did a lot to raise me, we lived in a house he owned in Concord, Calif. I felt like I owed it to him. I don’t carry his name on my birth certificate, but it’s with me.”
He could have changed his last name but instead is “reinventing it,” with the birth of his son a seminal moment in that process.
“I wasn’t a bastard child but all my friends had dads. I didn’t have a dad,” Tollefson said. “My mother didn’t remarry until I was done with college. Knowing how he treated my mom with his last name and the kind of man he was to leave us, [because] I’m having a kid, I want my son to be proud he has my last name.”
Saying he has Viking heritage, Tollefson, 26, plays with a passion, looking for something to conquer. He nearly won a national championship at Northwest Missouri State and was a 2006 seventh-round draft pick of the Packers. He spent time on the practice squad in Green Bay and with the Raiders. The Giants signed him last October.
Strahan’s absence means there’s a need for a new member of the defensive end rotation. The Giants signed Renaldo Wynn, entering his 12th NFL season, to help, but that doesn’t mean Tollefson isn’t in the plans.
“He has tremendous energy and great desire to be a very good football player,” Coughlin said. “He is smart and he works hard. He has a football mentality. He has a lot of plusses.”
He also is the proud owner of a Super Bowl ring. He played in all four postseason games, and against the Buccaneers he threw Jeff Garcia to the ground just as the ball was released. The next week, as Tony Romo was attempting to bring the Cowboys back and avoid a Texas-sized upset, Strahan slightly tweaked a groin muscle in the final two minutes and waved Tollefson onto the field. He buzzed around Romo and the Giants held on.
“I got a guy like Osi Umenyiora to watch, a proven finisher,” Tollefson said. “I’m trying to get my game up to where I can finish. I don’t want to be an ‘almost’ guy any more.”