Last year, when he played with the Browns, Blake Costanzo furnished his apartment with a futon mattress, a television and ... nothing else.

This season, the 49ers' special team standout has splurged. He's rented a recliner for the place he shares with practice-squad wide receiver Joe Hastings.

"Yeah, he still just has a mattress on the floor," Hastings said. "For a couple weeks, we had no furniture. No dinner plates. Literally, nothing. If you look at our apartment, you wouldn't think we played in the NFL."

The bare-bones lifestyle is fitting. Costanzo is now making a $700,000-a-year living thanks to his ability to get by on very little.

Not blessed with eye-popping size or speed, Costanzo, 27, a thrice-waived, five-year veteran from non-scholarship Lafayette College, has improbably become one of the NFL's top special-teams players.

Two years after he was selected to SI.com's All-Pro team, Costanzo is bidding to earn a trip to the Pro Bowl in Honolulu this season. Entering today's game at Arizona, Costanzo leads the 49ers with 13 special-teams tackles and has 21 "knockdowns," according to special-teams statistics compiled by the coaching staff. No other Niner has flattened the opponent more than 10 times.

Impressive numbers. But they become truly inspiring for anyone who's seen Costanzo, generously listed at 6-foot-1, 235 pounds, peel off his jersey and shoulder pads to reveal ... that the maniac on the field looks like your mechanic off it.

San Francisco special teams coordinator Brad Seely has joked that Costanzo looks like he should be picking up towels in the locker room. Costanzo tells people to "look it up" when they refuse to believe he's an NFL player.

"He's just a guy, physically," Seely said. "He's just a guy, but he has something else to him that is not a measurable. He's not the biggest guy. He's not the fastest guy. He's not the strongest guy. But on Sundays, he's a pretty, pretty good football player."

Seely coached Costanzo in Cleveland the past two seasons and recruited his star pupil to San Francisco, where he's been a natural fit in coach Jim Harbaugh's blue-collar, who's-got-it-better-than-us locker room.

Earlier this season, when told that Seely said he looked like a locker-room assistant, Costanzo replied, enthusiastically, that he's actually helped equipment managers fold towels in Cleveland and San Francisco.

A native of Franklin Lakes, N.J., Costanzo was shaped by his parents' hard-working example.

His mom, Susan, works as a hairdresser out of their home and his dad, Charlie, is a salesman for a trucking company who built each of the houses the family lived in when Blake was growing up. As a child, Charlie Costanzo helped raise his four siblings after his own dad died when he was 11.

"My dad always taught me about sacrifice, toughness and accountability," Costanzo said. "He made it clear how good we had it. It's kind of like a who's-got-it-better-than-us type of thing. I could relate when coach Harbaugh first said that. No doubt."

Costanzo's sparse apartment furnishings reflect his roots. He doesn't waste money, he says, because he knows how hard it is to make.

In the offseason, he lives with his best friend and former college teammate, Chris Partridge, in Hackensack, N.J. Partridge is the head coach at Paramus Catholic High, and Costanzo devotes much of his offseason to coaching and mentoring Partridge's players, many of whom are from the inner city.

Harbaugh has said the 49ers aren't a Hollywood team. And Costanzo is pure Hackensack.

"Blake is the definition of blue collar," Partridge said. "He's worked for everything he's ever had. He doesn't take a day off. He's always positive. He's always got this positive energy around him and people around him feed off that energy. The kids feed off that energy. I feed off that energy."

Through football, Costanzo discovered in junior high that he possessed a "rage for competition." His teams at Ramapo High won two state titles, and Costanzo, an all-state pick as a senior, played linebacker, guard, tight end and fullback. Scott Rubinetti, his coach for his first three seasons at Ramapo, describes the teenage Costanzo as an "animal" and a "machine."

"I watch him on TV now, and after special-teams tackles, or every big play, you see Blake somewhere in the picture," Rubinetti said. "He's running off the bench, tackling guys in the end zone. He was the same way all the way through high school. He was the most emotional, intense human being on the field."

Colleges might have loved Costanzo's passion, but they weren't enamored of his size. At 6-foot, 195 pounds, Costanzo landed at Division I-AA Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., where he had a standout career as a linebacker. Against schools such as Fordham, which ignored him out of high school, Costanzo often punctuated tackles by screaming to the opposing sideline, "How do you like me now, coach!"

But Costanzo's most impressive work came following his final college game.

Since NFL scouts don't scour the Patriot League, he made his own highlight video and mailed it to NFL general managers. Each package included a letter from Lafayette defensive coordinator John Loose in which Loose explained why Costanzo would succeed in the NFL.

Since Lafayette didn't have a pro day - predraft workouts where scouts evaluate NFL-eligible prospects - he attended the workout at Hofstra. While the nation's top prospects were invited to the NFL combine in Indianapolis, Costanzo labored at Lafayette under the supervision of a fellow senior who was studying for a career in sports medicine.

"I don't know where he got the training stuff - the Internet or somewhere, I guess," Costanzo said. "It was like, 'Who would think anything of that stuff would work?' "

But it did. Based on his highlight video, Costanzo got a call from Jets special teams coach Mike Westhoff and New York signed him to a free-agent contract after the 2006 draft.

Early in his first training camp, Costanzo, buried on the special-teams depth chart, was told by a few veterans that he wouldn't play in the preseason opener. Desperate to get into the game, Costanzo asked an assistant coach how he could open eyes and earn playing time.

The advice: Square off against Anthony Schlegel, a rookie linebacker from Ohio State the Jets had drafted in the third round. Costanzo embraced the suggestion and sought out Schlegel during every drill and special-teams session.

"I went at like it was my Super Bowl," Costanzo said. "I was killing him. I remember coach (Eric) Mangini would put on the highlight tape of practice and I would try to drive him back into the punter, into the ground. Smush his face."

The face-smushing earned him playing time in the exhibition opener, but it wasn't the last time he'd have to prove himself.

The Jets waived him at the end of training camp in 2006. And they did it again in 2007 before he landed on the Bills' practice squad. After playing 19 games in two seasons in Buffalo, he was waived for a third time following the 2008 season.

He finally flourished the past two years in Cleveland, where Seely, then the Browns' special teams coach, wanted Costanzo on his side after watching him play in Buffalo.

Costanzo came to San Francisco, in part, because he had a staunch advocate in Seely. But he's picked up another fan in Harbaugh, who has recognized Costanzo's passion is all he needs to succeed.

"We go on road trips and he packs a great attitude and a toothbrush and that's it," Harbaugh said. "He's there to play ball."

NFL on TV today Chiefs at Jets, 10 a.m. Channel: 5 Channel: 13 Channel: 46 49ers at Cardinals, 1:05 p.m. Channel: 2 Channel: 40 Raiders at Packers, 1:15 p.m. Channel: 5 Channel: 13 Channel: 46 Giants at Cowboys, 5:15 p.m. Channel: 11 Channel: 3 Channel: 8 Raiders: Playing pass defense in NFL is nearly impossible, and now comes Aaron Rodgers, Jermichael Finley and the Packers. B8