Phil Mushnick in the New York Post wrote a nice tribute to Dave Jennings, the former New York Giants punter, who went on to become a radio analyst for the Jets and Giants. Jennings, 61, died Wednesday due to Parkinson’s Disease.

Mushnick writes:

Jennings was beyond remarkable; he was extraordinary, as brave and as stoical as any innocent condemned to the gallows. And Jennings suffered — quietly, increasingly — from Parkinson’s for nearly 20 years.

“He never complained, not a word,” said ESPN broadcaster Bob Picozzi, tight with Jennings since 1977, when Jennings, the Giants’ fourth-year punter, began to seriously pursue a sportscasting career, co-hosting Picozzi’s Connecticut radio show.

“He just didn’t like talking about it. It was his problem, and no one else’s. He’d just say he’s doing fine, then politely change the subject. He’d make it easy on you.”

Mushnick thought Jennings should have been on the network stage:

Jennings was the most prepared NFL analyst I ever heard on TV or radio. He not only dutifully attended practices to find out what was up with the Jets (1988-2001) and then the Giants (2002-08), he went deep — he knew the NFL rulebook far better, I’m sure, than any radio or TV analyst — not that many bothered or today bother to learn then apply the rules to the games they work.

Jennings was my go-to guy for any and all rules. We’d talk rules for hours, especially those that made little sense or were most butchered by big-ticket network experts. He was so far ahead of the rest that it seemed insane that no national NFL TV network would hire him to work its games.

“It’s not my call,” said Jennings, who never — not even once — campaigned for a national TV gig through this column. On and off the air, he was a straight-talker, not a self-promoter.

Of course, no matter how well he might have served a network’s TV audiences, Jennings was a former punter, not a former quarterback. Quarterbacks get the girls, the endorsements and the TV gigs. Whether they’ll be any good at it doesn’t much matter because there’s no shortage of freshly retired QBs.