E-GIANTS
Dave Klein was the Giants' beat writer for The Star-Ledger from 1961 to 1995.
He is the author of 26 books and he is one of only three sportswriters to have covered all the Super Bowls. Dave has allowed TEAM GIANTS to reprint some of his articles.

ONCE IN A WHILE, YOU SEE,
GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE – LIKE STRAHAN

By Dave Klein
Once in a while, admittedly not often, good things happen to good people.

Michael Strahan is one of those, and tomorrow night he'll be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Few men if any deserve that honor more.

He played for 15 seasons with the Giants, who drafted him with their second round pick in 1993. He was the 40th player overall. Why didn't they have a first round selection? In case you forgot, they spent it on a quarterback named Dave Brown in the supplemental draft.

Strahan came from Texas Southern University, a kid who never played the full four years of football. But he showed great pass-rushing promise and the Giants took a chance. What a chance!

The head coach was Dan Reeves, the general manager was George Young and the Giants needed a defensive end. So they took him, and he showed enough promise that rookie season to slowly move into a position of prominence.

Then, one morning in November of 1994, while I was checking out of a Dallas hotel following a Giants' defeat to the Cowboys, my cell phone rang. It was Strahan, with whom I had established (it was easy) a working friendship.

There was panic in his voice.

"What's wrong?" I asked creatively.

"They're moving my position," he said. "I'm going to left end. I've always been on the right side. I got to figure this is one step closer to the exit."

The answer was that the Giants saw enough pass-rushing potential to want him to go up against the "lesser" of the offenses' tackles, the right tackle, since the left tackle is traditionally the better pass-blocker and the protector of the quarterback's blind side.

He could not be reassured for a few weeks, even when it was pointed out that he was still starting.

The left end at the time was a veteran named Keith Hamilton, who stayed with the Giants until 2003 but wasn't the explosive pass-rusher that the coaches saw in Strahan.

Michael played through the 2007 season, and who among you can ever forget his exhortations on the sidelines when Super Bowl 42 was winding down. "One more drive, one more and we're champions," he screamed, striding from one end of the bench to the other after quarterback Eli Manning put up the winning touchdown pass.

Odd, that pairing. When the Giants traded for Manning on Draft Day in 2004, Strahan, already a veteran too accustomed to losing, was vociferous in his objection. "We got a baby quarterback," he said. "That's years. Years. It's a waste of time."

He also had a problem with head coach Tom Coughlin, named in 2004, who was a strong disciplinarian and brought with him several puzzling team rules. "If a meeting is called for 9 a.m. and you show up at that time," he told the players, "then you're late. For a meeting that starts at 9, you be there at 8:45."

He also practiced the players hard, and Strahan went as far as to lodge a complaint with the NFL Players Association. He also came into the press room in the basement of the stadium one day to complain about Reeves' successor, Jim Fassel.

But it was all smoothed over, and that was three years after Michael established the NFL's single-season record for sacks. It happened on Jan. 6, 2002 (the 2001 season was delayed because of the horrific murders at the World Trade Centers) and the final game was at Giants Stadium against the Green Bay Packers.

Strahan had 21.5 sacks and needed one more to shatter the record held by one-time New York Jets' "bad boy" defensive end Mark Gastineau. Near the end of the game, Packers' quarterback Brett Favre fell to the ground and Strahan fell on top of him.

It was a sack. THE SACK. Yet many of the sportswriters chastised Favre for "giving it away" to Strahan.

Well, they weren't friends and the Green Bay tackle, Mark Tauscher, insisted it was nothing like that. "We called a bad play and executed it even worse," he said. "Brett didn't get the blocking he expected so he ran to his right. He slipped. Strahan caught him and it was a legitimate sack."

It gave him 22.5 for the season, which still stands as a record. He also leads the Giants' all-time sack list with 141.5.

And now he's going into the Hall of Fame. I have attended many of the Giants' enshrinements, including Wellington Mara, Jack Mara, Rosey Brown, Harry Carson, Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Andy Robustelli, Lawrence Taylor, Y.A. Tittle, Emlen Tunnel and Fran Tarkenton.

Many of them were friends, or at least friendly acquaintances. But Michael Strahan is different. It is not necessary to mention his post-career success on the "Kelly and Michael Show" nor any of his other appearances or his charitable achievements.

Michael Strahan is a good guy, and as the 40th selection in that 2003 draft he was worth his weight in gold.

Frankly, I can't wait.

It should be noted that he chose a former sportswriter and now FOX Sports television personality named Jay Glazer to be his presenter. Glazer worked for this writer when we ran The GIANTS Newsweekly in the 1980s and 1990s, so there is yet another link to this special day.

Good for you, Michael. This restores a guy's faith in good guys.

Check out Dave's website at E-GIANTS where you can subscribe to his newsletters which run much more frequently than what is available here.
- Team Giants

NOW - Send a request to davesklein@aol.com for a free week's worth of news!

Website by Mike