NFL

TIGHT END SPOT IN GOOD HANDS

There is a place Kevin Boss goes when it is time to do his thing.

Not a place on the field or in the huddle or the locker room. There is a place in his mind where he goes to get away from anything and everything, allowing him to direct every fiber of his being on his most important task.

Catching the football.

“I think it’s one of those things you see the ball and you forget about everything else,” Boss said. “It’s like one of those like when you’re in a movie and everything goes silent, you can’t hear anything, you just focus on the ball. You don’t really concentrate on what else is around you or the consequences of what’s going to happen. Your number one job is to get that football, so you don’t really think about what’s going to happen.”

Nothing sounds easier and at times nothing looks easier than getting two large hands around a softly thrown pass, gently cradling it into the body almost as if it was a pillow. The term “routine catch” is often spoken, but in reality there is little routine about the job Boss at tight end for the Giants must master as the replacement for the lightning rod Jeremy Shockey. Boss in his second season must become a better blocker to come close to approaching Shockey’s standards, and it remains to be seen if he will be able to duplicate Shockey’s hell-raising ability – especially earlier in his career – to shed and pulverize would-be tacklers.

Boss, though, need not take a back seat to Shockey or most anyone else when it comes to one significant skill. As far as the physical talent of catching the ball, Boss is, well, boss, and he roused the interest of all Giants fans with his 45-yard catch-and-run to ignite the Giants in Super Bowl XLII.

“People describe me as like a natural pass catcher,” Boss said. “I think that’s what it comes down to. . . . I was just blessed to catch the ball naturally, I guess.”

Throughout the summer, passes were sent his way and disappeared into his grasp. He went days and weeks without a drop and often turned his entire body to make the reception, providing an inviting target for his quarterback. Where others at times box the ball into their body, Boss almost always inhales it with his paws.

What is his secret? He wears size single-XL gloves, nothing out of the ordinary for someone standing 6-foot-6 and weighing about 260 pounds. “There’s some guys who wear three-XL gloves, so my hands aren’t abnormally big,” Boss said. “I don’t know that I’d want real big hands. It seems like they’d get in the way.”

He practices the art of the catch over and over. In college at Western Oregon – a Division II school not exactly churning out NFL talent – Boss would stay after practice and catch balls from the Jugs machine. With the Giants, he does the same, with one of the equipment managers firing footballs at him. As a rookie last season, he shared a New Jersey apartment with his older brother, Terry, and the two did not go to sleep until Terry threw Kevin 100 passes right there in the living room.

Terry plays professional soccer as a goalkeeper for the Charlotte Eagles of the United Soccer League and after his season is finished will join the New England Revolution of the Major Soccer League.

“He’s got them good hands, too,” Kevin Boss said with a laugh.

Good hands assure Boss of nothing as he moves into the lineup for the Super Bowl champion Giants. But when listing the necessary attributes for a tight end, it’s not a bad place to start.

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