Osi Umenyiora does not get a ride up the Canyon of Heroes for ending his self-imposed lockout yesterday.
What he does get is a chance to write the final chapter of his Giants career the way he wants it written.
It’s entirely up to him.
He has outplayed his contract. He is grossly underpaid. He comes back now anyway, with two years left on that contract, for his teammates, for his fans.
It means there must be no turning back now for him.
You made your point, Osi. Loyalty is a one-way street in the NFL.
Now go get the quarterback.
You come back less to honor your contract, much more to honor your teammates and fans.
Don’t let them down now.
No one will remember, or care, that you lost your staredown with Jerry Reese once you start chasing Michael Vick from Exit 16W to the Walt Whitman Bridge and back, once you show LeSean McCoy you are not soft, once you help Justin Tuck and Jason Pierre-Paul and Mathias Kiwanuka break Tony Romo’s make-or-break season.
There are plenty of Giants fans who will never understand one of their own complaining about a $3.1 million salary. There are plenty who took your side the second a no-name like Charles Johnson signed his six-year, $72 million ($34 mil guaranteed) contract with the Panthers.
And none of them want you to be an unhappy distraction now with the Redskins 26 days away.
None of them want you to ask out again.
All of them want you to put on that blue 72 and be that sack-happy menace again.
Your decision to return is a boost to the spirits of a fan base disillusioned over the loss of Kevin Boss and Steve Smith, and over Reese wading in the free-agent pool while the Eagles dove headfirst into the deep end.
Sack the soap opera once and for all, pull the plug on the young and the restless saga that has tormented you and storm around the edge as only you can toward that second Super Bowl ring.
“I don’t think he’s gonna let that affect his play, or affect how this football team prepares for the game,” Tuck said, “but it ain’t necessarily over.”
Then take it out on the quarterback.
“When he steps on the football field, his focus is as high as anybody’s,” Tuck said. “He knows how to separate the two. A lot of guys don’t have that capability. I know he does.”
Tuck chuckled when someone asked if Osi might refuse to enter a game or take a play off if his contract disenchantment were to rear its ugly head.
“That’s not Osi,” Tuck said. “That doesn’t bother me at all.”
JPP — Just Pressure the Passer — is just fine rotating again between Umenyiora’s right end position and left end. Tuck could tell Umenyiora was ready to return by the way he reacted in the meeting room during film sessions.
“I know him well enough to know when he’s itching to get back on the football field,” Tuck said.
Umenyiora, lining up as the starting right end, showed only flashes of his dynamic self in his first practice. He trudged off alongside Dave Tollefson in a sweat-soaked gray T-shirt, the stationary bike that had been his constant companion empty outside and lonely.
“Who wants to ask the first Osi question?” Tom Coughlin asked, with a smile.
Coughlin was relieved L’Affaire Osi had seemingly ended; they all were. Coughlin is in no rush to play Umenyioura, whose balky knee must be monitored, Monday night. He is in a hurry to embrace a committed Umenyiora.
“We want all of him, not part of him,” Coughlin said.
Umenyiora added to Tuck and Kiwanuka and JPP makes for a Fearsome Foursome. “They make my job a whole lot easier,” safety Antrel Rolle said.
Umenyiora isn’t the first player to play on a contract he thinks is unfair, and he won’t be the last. Ask Shaun O’Hara and Rich Seubert about the system.
“Is it fair? No,” Tuck said. “But there’s a lot of things in life that’s not.”
You can’t fight City Hall. And when you do, and you lose, you move on. To the real enemy: the quarterback.
steve.serby@nypost.com