Player Profile - Sean Landeta

The New York Giants brought in the most veteran of all veteran punters alive, Sean Landeta, to protect against the inability of the next-most veteran of all veteran punters alive, Jeff Feagles, to start on Sunday against the Dallas Cowboys. This is no doubt in respect of Wellington Mara's final wishes that a New York Giants punter never be younger than him.

As a refresher for all those football fans that don't remember Sean Landeta's career, we at NFL Hits are pleased to provide a profile of Sean Landeta as the first of an occasional feature*:

Sean Landeta was pulled fully-formed from the kicking toe of Zeus in 450 BC in a suburb of Athens, Greece. He attended school at Towson College (now University), which he created to give him an opportunity to play college football. In 431 BC, a particularly rough intra-conference rivalry with Syracuse caused him to be conscripted into the Peloponnesian War (later named the USFL).

Sean became the first punter in NFL history before it was known as the National Football League and was instead known as The Roman Empire. While many of his exploits were lost to the sands of time, some survive to this day, including:

• The Italian peninsula was once named Landeta due to its unique shape. When he moved to the New World, the peninsula was renamed.


• Sean once lost a kicking job to Paul Bunyan. As the legend goes, Babe's corpse still circles the Earth in low orbit to this day.


• His contributions to the Allied cause in World War II made the American purchase of Werner von Braun's contract from the Axis unnecessary until 1945.


• When Rick Johannson of Scottsdale, AZ, had to battle Satan for his soul in 1985, Rick selected Sean to defend him in a punting battle with Satan. This ended up being unnecessary since Satan's hooves were a distinct disadvantage. However, Sean did drop-kick a football into Satan's immortal groin to remind Satan of his place.


• To add a degree of difficulty to his kicks, Sean had Baltimore columnist Mike Preston's lips grafted to his ass in an elective surgery in 1989.


• Sean whiffed on a punt so hard on December 4th, 1994, in Soldier Field that flood warnings were issued in Muskegon, MI. 47 people died that day, but Sean kicked a football around the Earth so hard as to cause the Earth to spin backwards and reverse time.


• He has the largest callus in medical history on his kicking foot. The density of this callus requires Sean to force the football out of its gravitational pull on each kick.


• He once booted the smirk off Al Michaels' face. The resultant injury caused him to miss six weeks of action.


• Sean has a wife, Pam, and an undetermined number of children.

*As always, “occasional feature” means “whenever the hell we feel like it.”