Holy Trinity product Anthony Cotrone at Giants camp, taking first steps back toward NFL

Anthony Cotrone may be "just a body" at this rookie minicamp, a term football people use for the grunts who fill out rosters. He's a fullback here as a tryout with little hope of catching on. But everybody has a story, even the "just a body" everybodies.

For Cotrone, his began at Holy Trinity High School where he played as a quarterback before attending the University of Maine. He came out of that program in time for the 2008 draft and although he was unsigned he made it onto the training camp roster of the Jaguars as a free agent.

Then, on the final play of his first day of training camp practice … boom. Blowout. ACL.

“It was an inter-squad scrimmage,” Cotrone recalled. “On the last play I was running down. Just a non-contact injury. That’s it.”

He needed surgery to repair the ACL injury and sat out all of last year rehabbing from the surgery (although he did help coach the Holy Trinity team last fall). Last Sunday, the day after the draft, the Giants gave his agent a call to see if he’d be available to come into camp. Now, for the first time since that injury, he’s back on an NFL field, in an NFL locker room.

Maybe not for long. At least not here. It’s unlikely the Giants will offer him a contract when this camp wraps up. The team doesn’t really need fullbacks and Cotrone has spent most of this camp getting minimal reps and working on scout teams.

But that’s okay with him.

“I’m just going to work hard and see where it takes me,” he said. “You have to believe that if you put your mind to something you can do it.”

And if things don’t work out with the Giants, Cotrone said he won’t get discouraged. And he certainly won’t give up.

“It’s a long journey,” Cotrone said. “This is just something that came up and it’s far from over from where I see it. My ultimate goal is to get back on a 53-man roster and do what I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid.”

PHOTOS: Giants rookie minicamp