If he makes it and lives up to what the Giants hope and need him to be, Oshane Ximines will be unlike any player who has come through the franchise in nearly a decade.

Finding and developing homegrown pass rushers is essential to the lifeblood of any legitimate defense, and the Giants are woefully lacking in this process. The last player they drafted who turned into a high-pressure defender was Jason Pierre-Paul, a first-round pick in 2010. The demise of the Giants can be traced back to several factors, and the dearth of young (or old) pass rushers is far closer to the top of the blame list than it is the bottom.

Can a player taken near the end of the third round, with the 95th overall pick, lift the Giants out of their malaise and rise up as someone capable of one day reaching double digits in sacks? If so, Ximines will buck a recent Giants trend and transform from a small-school wonder into an indispensable piece to a defense that needs more of them.

“It’s my favorite thing to do,’’ Ximines said of sacking the quarterback. “I’ve been a pass rusher ever since I started playing football, and it means everything to me.’’

This is the type of player the Giants and former general manager Jerry Reese missed on badly in his tenure: the mid-round draft pick imported to be a situational pass rusher. Owa Odighizuwa in 2015 was a big swing and miss. Damontre Moore in 2013 was a failure. Clint Sintim in 2009 was a bad scheme fit then compromised by injuries. Pierre-Paul, taken with the No. 15 overall pick, sticks out as an exception.

Perhaps current GM Dave Gettleman got it right last year with Lorenzo Carter, a third-round pick from Georgia who had four sacks as a rookie and showed promise he can develop into a legitimate pressure-applying player.

Ximines is a gamble in that he is the first player drafted into the NFL from Old Dominion. While studying him, the Giants certainly noticed the seven-tackle, two-sack, 2.5-tackle-for-loss game against Virginia Tech in 2018, showing the ability to create havoc against a higher level of competition.

One of the prerequisites for taking a player from a lower level is he must dominate that level. Ximines did that, with 12 sacks as a senior to finish with a school-record 33.

Ximines showed up at his first NFL minicamp at 253 pounds, spread evenly over his 6-foot-3 frame. At outside linebacker, the Giants have Carter, expected to gain extensive playing time, and Markus Golden, signed as a free agent, hoping to rekindle the pass-rush prowess he showed with the Cardinals (12.5 sacks in 2016) before injuries cut his effectiveness the past two seasons. There is always a spot for those capable of getting to the opposing quarterback.

The Giants need all the help they can get, after registering just 30 sacks in 2018 — tied with the Patriots for 30th in the league. Only the Raiders, with 13 sacks, had fewer.

“Listen, my first year at Carolina, we had 60 sacks,’’ Gettleman said. “It was nuts, OK? Do I want to have 60 sacks every year? Who doesn’t? I know Pat [Shurmur] wouldn’t be upset. But at the end of the day, it’s about moving guys off their spots.’’

At first, Ximines must show he can earn a uniform on game days with his work on special teams, but there will not be any hesitation to give him snaps on defense if he proves the moves and counter-moves he impressed the Giants with in college can work at this level.

“It is a pretty big jump coming from Old Dominion to a bigger stage,’’ he said. “You’ve got to take everything one day at a time, just like I do everything else in life, and I just plan to do that.’’

One thing Ximines has to grow accustomed to is being called “X-Man.’’ It is how Gettleman and Shurmur referred to Ximines the day they selected him, rather than try to pronounce his name (it’s Oh-Shane Zim-ah-nes) and it was assumed it was a nickname Ximines carried with him to the Giants. This is not the case.

The reaction? He loves it.

“On the draft-day phone call, that’s the first time I heard X-Man, and it kind of surfaced on the internet,’’ Ximines said. “I got a few of my friends back home calling me that now, and I just feel like it’s going to keep going in the right direction.”