Even after the young lion with the booming leg arrived to boot him off Bill Parcells’ Giants, Dave Jennings never stopped treating Sean Landeta like a champ. It is why Landeta was so glad he got to say goodbye Tuesday, hours before his old friend succumbed much too early at 61 to Parkinson’s disease.
“Even though he couldn’t respond to me, he couldn’t move or talk, he could follow me with his eyes,” Landeta told The Post. “I’d like to think he knew I was there and he could hear everything I said to him.
“Hopefully, that’ll always remind me, when you’re going to see somebody, don’t put it off. You might be sorry you did.”
Landeta, 52, spent 40 minutes standing beside the hospital bed inside Jennings’ Upper Saddle River home talking to his old friend, reminiscing about their illustrious football lives.
“I just told him how good it was to see him,” Landeta said. “I told him the last time I saw him was when they (Giants) put him in the Ring of Honor at Giants Stadium. I helped him put his jacket on.
“I told him how much I appreciated his friendship. There were times when I’d come over, and down in his basement, if you loved sports like he did and I did, you could just hang out there — he had a Man Cave long before it became popular.
“I told him he and I were so lucky to do what we wanted to do for a living, how great that he was able to stay in it (broadcasting) after football. I’ve been doing the same thing.”
Jennings had been a four-time Pro Bowl Giants punter from 1974-84 when Landeta replaced him in August of 1985.
“He was the one who told me I had made the team,” Landeta said. “He said, ‘They just released me.’ As happy as I was I made the team, I felt sad for him. I said, ‘Thanks. I think whichever one of us they didn’t keep would end up with the Jets.’ The next day they picked him up.”
Never in his wildest dreams did Landeta think he would be a Giant.
“Ironically, when I was at Towson, I received a letter from every team in the league, a questionnaire to fill out,” Landeta said. “And the only one I didn’t fill out was the Giants questionnaire because he was there, and I thought, ‘They don’t need a punter. That’s one place for sure I won’t go.’
“I remember when the Giants signed me, they asked me my thoughts about Dave. I said, ‘If I could have half the career he had, I’ll really have a great career.'”
Landeta went on to punt for a record 22 seasons, with four other teams, was the punter on the 1980s All-Decade team, won two rings as a Giant. Class following class.
“He was one of the best punters in NFL history,” Landeta said. “He had perfect form as a punter.”
And as a gentleman. When Landeta began as his successor, Jennings took him under his wing. “He knew I didn’t know my way around,” Landeta said. “I’d go over and we’d watch Monday Night Football. If he had an event in the city, he’d introduce me to people. The things he did, he did not have to do.”
Harry Carson remembers Jennings similarly. “Dave was the first player I met when I came to the Giants,” Carson recalled. This was in 1976, at Pace University. “He was very welcoming. He was that introduction for me as to what a Giant was all about.”
Hall of Fame Harry last saw Jennings a year-and-a-half ago over dinner. “I could tell something was going on from a neurological standpoint,” Carson said. “We started catching up with one another and tried to reminisce about certain things that transpired in our past lives.”
Carson, 59, recalled going to the first of his nine first Pro Bowls in 1978 in Los Angeles with teammates Brad Van Pelt and Jennings.
“I was reminiscing with my wife this morning,” The Captain said. “Dave and Brad are gone. I’m the one that’s sort of left over.”
On his way home from seeing his old friend for the last time, Landeta found himself riddled with conflicted emotions.
“I tried to think of the good, that this guy lived a wonderful life,” Landeta said, “but at the same time, it was cut short.
“By the grace of God, that could happen to any one of us.”