On Monday, listeners sat through Mike Francesa's long interview with Jerry Reese on WFAN only to come away having heard zero questions about Osi Umenyiora, who claimed on Sunday night Reese and the Giants offered him half of the guarantees they gave Mathias Kiwanuka and were making him look like a "greedy pig."

Today, in an interview with Ryan Ruocco and Stephen A. Smith on 98.7 ESPN Radio, the subject of Umenyiora's situation finally came up. And while he wasn't asked about the specifics, such as the guaranteed money, Reese did address the situation by reiterating many of the same things he said on Saturday in his post-draft presser.

"I’m not going to discuss Osi’s contract situation with you guys. I can say this to you, though: the New York Giants are a better football team with Osi Umenyiora on our team," Reese said when Ruocco asked him if he has the urge to "throw (Umenyiora) a bone" for his years of production. "We respect him as a football player. Our goal is to have Osi play football with the New York Giants and retire as a Giant. That is what we would like to do first. All of our options are open as I have said before but Osi makes us a better football team, I do know that."

At that point, Smith interjected by serving less as questioner and more as judge and jury in asking Reese how he responded to "some of the erroneous things that came out of his mouth" about Reese.

(Pauses to remind everyone none of the accusations Umenyiora has made, including those in the affidavit, have been proven or disproven. Continuing...)

"I don’t carry grudges. That is the offseason, that is part of the job," Reese said. "In the offseason there is always some controversy about contracts. It is not just one person, it can be several different people with contract situations. That is part of my job, it is never personal, I don’t think it is personal with respect to players and it definitely is not personal with respect to me. It is just part of the business."

Reese continued, "We will get through this and we will see what happens moving forward. It is part of the business. It is not a big problem for me to have guys say some things. I think sometimes some people say things that they obviously really don’t mean. Everybody is trying to make as much money as they can for themselves and their families and everybody understands that and it is not personal."

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A few other quotes from Reese from the interview:

On WR Victor Cruz possibly on "Dancing with the Stars" one day: "Victor looks like he is a pretty good dancer. Funny you should say that, I was kind of buzzing through the TV last night and I saw some of that and I saw Donald Driver, Donald is pretty good. I think Victor would be good on that. Victor is a smart guy. I think Victor wants to focus on football more than anything else right now. He had one good year. One good year don't make you a great football player. It means you had one good year. And he is a smart young man and I think he wants to focus on what is most important and that is football. I think he is doing the right thing. Maybe at some point later on his career he may be able to do that but right now I think he is focusing on trying to be a good football player."

On QB Eli Manning hosting Saturday Night Live this week: "Yeah, I think I have to tune into that. I don't ever watch that show but I think I am going to tune in to check this out. He is a funny guy. You guys are not around him that much but he can be pretty funny."

On whether the running game will be better this year: "I hope so. People say this is a passing league. I still think you have to run the ball in this league. We ran the ball pretty good at times. But we are the giants, I don't think we are ever going to go all the way from [running to] we are a passing team. I think we like to run the ball first and play-action pass, that is who we are but it is really nice to have a quarterback who if you have to throw 40 times, the guy can do it and do a good job. That is a good product to have in your system."

Mike Garafolo: mgarafolo@starledger.com