Go ahead and loathe him, Tyree said last week as he home-schooled one of his six children. he counts Harrison, who abruptly reneged on an agreement to write a foreword for Tyree’s memoir, among the haters.
“As much as they despise me,’’ the Patriots slayer said, “tell everybody I like them.’’
The fact is, Tyree once despised himself. he was a misfit before he was a miracle worker.
When the Patriots and Giants meet today for their first regular-season matchup since that Super Bowl, Tyree will be nowhere near Gillette Stadium.
Two years removed from a marginal NFL career, Tyree, 31, will be appearing at the Uptown Lounge in Morristown, N.J., in exchange for the restaurant letting him host a baby shower there.
He’s cool with that, too, because his values have changed since he went from recklessness to redemption. Once a rootless Giant lost in an alternate realm of boozing, pot-smoking, and drug-dealing, Tyree found his better self on a journey that took him from sinner to big Blue savior, from a jail cell to a blizzard of ticker tape in new York’s Canyon of Heroes, from a prized football profession to a life of faith and family in which a man’s worth no longer is measured by yards gained or one of the most indelible catches in the American sports experience.
Now he has room in his heart for you – no small feat, since he once had little room for anyone.
“I was done with him,’’ said his wife, Leilah. “He was so self-absorbed, it was emotionally draining.’’
On March 2, 2004, Leilah learned she was pregnant with their second child. she spent hours trying to share the news with Tyree, a Jersey kid who played at Syracuse before the Giants picked him in the sixth round of the 2003 draft and turned him loose on special teams. he had been named the NFL’s special teams rookie of the year soon before Leilah lost track of him of that night.