A week before the NFL Draft, Giants quarterback Eli Manning was asked by The Post what he hoped for from the team’s newly imported young talent, and he didn’t hesitate.“Get a skill position guy who can help us get carries, get catches, in...  Read Full Story

The more tragic stories such as Junior Seau’s apparent suicide Wednesday unfold, the less Harry Carson is surprised. Maybe Seau had personal demons no one knew existed. Or maybe he paid the ultimate price for all of those years when concussions were considered a fact of the machismo NFL life.

“When I heard it, I have to say in the past I would have been shocked,” the Hall of Fame Giants linebacker said. “But I’m not shocked anymore.”

Carson, early in his career back in the early 1980s, said he contemplated suicide while driving over the Tappan Zee Bridge. Then he thought about leaving his infant daughter without a father.

“I knew years ago that there would come a point in time where, whether it was transitioning to the game, or there would be guys having these neurological issues, that players were going to be committing suicide,” Carson said. “I said that years ago.

“Whether it’s Dave Duerson, whether it’s Andre Waters, whether it’s Ray Easterling from two weeks ago, there are guys who are committing suicide.

“So people who look at me, they wonder about me, because I’ve been so out there in regard to the whole trauma brain injury thing,” Carson said. “I’m fine.”

Carson said he predicted a rash of NFL suicides because of the neurological damage that can occur from playing the game.

When Deion Sanders spent four days filming a commercial for DirecTV with Eli Manning a few weeks ago, he found out something about the two-time Super Bowl MVP that he never knew.

Eli is funny. Really.

“He really is hilarious, man,” Sanders told the Daily News. “I can see what they’re saying now. His timing is impeccable. He’s hilarious. He’s a professional. He threw some one-liners out there that are really going to take this commercial to another level.”

It's not personal, Jerry Reese insisted. It’s only business, no matter how ugly his feud with angry Osi Umenyiora gets.

That was the reaction by the Giants GM to essentially being called a liar by Umenyiora for the second offseason in a row. In an interview on ESPN Radio in New York on Tuesday, Reese dismissed the defensive end’s sharp words as “offseason chatter.”

That’s exactly what he called it last summer, too.

“I don’t carry grudges,” Reese insisted. “That’s the offseason. That’s part of the job. In the offseason there’s always some controversies about contracts. It’s never personal. I don’t think it’s personal with respect to players. It’s definitely not personal with respect to me. It’s just part of the business.”

It’s been a dirty business between Reese and Umenyiora, though, as the defensive end continues his years-long battle for a lucrative contract extension. After several years of threatening to hold out or even retire, Umenyiora began making his fight personal in 2011 when he swore in a court affidavit that Reese reneged on a promise to give him a new contract or to trade him.

When Ahmad Bradshaw was a rookie with the Giants in 2007, Brandon Jacobs welcomed him and took him under his wing.

Now it’s Bradshaw’s turn to do the same for David Wilson, the Virginia Tech running back the Giants took in the first round of the NFL draft.

“I plan on using him as my project,” Bradshaw said Monday. “He’s a very talented running back and he’s from Virginia. Two Virginia guys in this running back corps is going to be dangerous. I expect to use him as my project to get him better, to get him smarter and just to mature him a little bit, just to help him understand the NFL.”

Bradshaw, who lives about three hours away from Wilson during the offseason, is already handing out advice to the rookie. He said the first thing Wilson needs to do is learn how to block because “If you can’t protect that quarterback, you can’t get out there. That’s how we look at it now.”

That’s just one of the many things Wilson will have to learn, and Bradshaw knows the experience can be overwhelming. The Giants’ offensive playbook is thick and the plays, signals and assignments are complicated.

The ongoing contract unrest between Osi Umenyiora and the Giants is not going away and the situation, usually tense but manageable, may get more tense and less manageable in the days to come.

Umenyiora did not take kindly to Giants general manager Jerry Reese this past Saturday, saying, “Osi has been offered an extension two years in a row now’’ as if to imply the Giants are interested in a long-term commitment to their disgruntled defensive end and Umeniora’s demands are simply too high.

“Yes, they offered an extension this year,’’ Umenyiora wrote in an email to The Post. “Guaranteeing half of what [Mathias Kiwanuka] was guaranteed. So him telling you guys they offered an extension is technically the truth. And I’m very greedy for turning down half of what Kiwi just got. Lol.’’

In the end, the last pick of the first round of the NFL Draft was “a pretty easy pick for us,’’ according to Giants general manager Jerry Reese.

“Very easy,’’ echoed Marc Ross, the Giants director of college scouting.

Why not? The Giants won Super Bowl XLVI based on a ferocious pass rush and a dynamic passing game, and left behind their usually productive running game. They made a move last night to rectify finishing last in the NFL in rushing, taking Virginia Tech running back David Wilson with the 32nd overall pick.

“He’s a terrific football player,’’ Reese said. “This guy loves to play football. He can do anything you want him to do. He’s a good piece to add to our running back stable.’’

When Jerry Reese said the Giants were open to finally giving Osi Umenyiora the new contract he’s always wanted, the oft-unhappy defensive end definitely heard him.

He just didn’t believe a word.

Instead, the 30-year-old Umenyiora sounds as if he is bracing for another ugly chapter in his lingering contract squabble with the Giants that could loom over the three days of the NFL draft. He admitted he believes there is a “chance” he could be traded after the draft begins on Thursday night at Radio City Music Hall.

He also doesn’t think there’s much of a chance that he will ever get the lucrative contract from the Giants that he’s always believed he deserved.

“I was happy he said that, but is it really going to happen? I don’t think so,” Umenyiora said on Wednesday at an event to promote the NFL Play 60 Youth Football game for Xbox 360 Kinect. “I doubt it because obviously they have a bunch of young players who they have to take care of. “So I feel like I’m one of the very good pass rushers in the NFL. I think my statistics have proved that.

“Are they going to be able to pay me as such? I seriously doubt that.”