Inside the Helmet
Inside the Helmet
Life as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior
Michael Strahan
with Jay Glazer
GOTHAM BOOKS
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
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Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © 2007 by Michael Strahan and Pro Football Broadcast, Inc.
All photos courtesy of William Hauser
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ISBN: 978-1-1012-1695-8
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For my parents, Gene and Louise Strahan,
and for my children, Tanita, Michael Jr.,
Isabella and Sophia
Contents
CHAPTER ONE: Preparing for Battle
CHAPTER TWO: Practical Jokes: The Brilliance of Our Immaturity
CHAPTER THREE: Footbrawling
CHAPTER FOUR: The Coach and Player Relationship
CHAPTER FIVE: The Head Coach and I Hug It Out
CHAPTER SIX: Behind the Locker Room Doors
CHAPTER SEVEN: Donovan, Please Answer Your Damn Phone!
CHAPTER EIGHT: Communicating on the Field
CHAPTER NINE: Snap Goes My Foot. Welcome to Club Medical.
CHAPTER TEN: The Lousy Life of a Rookie
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Violence Under the Pile and Other Things That Won’t Get You Arrested
CHAPTER TWELVE: Chess on the Gridiron
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Art of Sunday Trash-talking
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Meetings, Monotony, Playbooks and How to Sleep Through It All
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: No More Fearing Head Coaches
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Needles, Painkillers, Anti-inflammatories and Other Ways to Hide the Pain
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A Cautionary Tale: Women, Money and Scams
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Living a Private Life in the Public Eye
CHAPTER NINETEEN: Steroids and Other Cheaters’ Delights
CHAPTER TWENTY: Super Bowl Shuffle
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Super and Not So Super Saturday and Sunday
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
Inside the Helmet
CHAPTER ONE
Preparing for Battle
I stand on our sideline, sing a couple of bars of the national anthem, say a prayer to G-d and then scan the Indianapolis Colts sideline for my target—Colts All-World quarterback Peyton Manning. I absolutely and utterly despise playing quarterbacks like Peyton. Hate it. I stand there and stare at the man, the face of the NFL. I’m there for one reason that night. To try to knock the snot out of the face of the NFL.
I showed up to Giants Stadium two and a half hours earlier with thoughts of ruining that man’s night. My eyes dart from Manning to the man I’d be facing throughout this battle, Colts right tackle Ryan Diem. The anthem continues and I stand there and eyeball Diem, the man responsible for keeping me from killing Peyton that night, looking to see if he’d sneak a peak at me. If he does, he’s done.
I’m staring a hole through Diem to gauge his body language. I’m looking to see if he’s nervous, looking to see if he’s moving back and forth like he’s too loose and confident. I’m looking to pick a visual fight. Come on, look over here. He doesn’t. Most of them don’t, but when they do, I flash them the gap. Shoot ’em a big ol’ smile letting them know I’m about to have the time of my life embarrassing the hell out of them. Don’t mistake the smile that I flash as softness because when it comes to my business, I don’t take any shit.
The anthem ends and I walk over, grab an ammonia cap (smelling salts) and inhale it all in. That’s right, ammonia. I’ll inhale the hell out of one or two of these (most of us do) to clear my head and then I’ll take my place in the middle of the field.
Between the anthem, the Sunday night crowd and Peyton getting ready to meet me at midfield, I can’t take it.
I walk out for the coin toss but I pay little attention to the toss itself. I act like I care, but to be truthful, I don’t care about the toss. If I said I cared, that would be a lie. I like to walk out there for the toss because it puts me that much closer to YOUR sideline and brings me closer to the guy I get to torment for the next 180 minutes.
I’m not coming out there to be your friend. I may tell those guys, “Hey, man, have a good game,” but I’m trying to find my guy over there and stare him down again. Right here, at the coin toss, is where my personal matchup begins each week—at this point I can’t wait for the kick.
How do I explain the feeling of those minutes between the coin toss and the moment the ball was kicked off for what was dubbed the Manning Bowl? What better game than our season opener in 2006 to describe what it’s like to be out there at the start of game day.
Silence turns to bedlam, pedal to the metal, zero to 120 in one second flat. Not zero to 60—zero to 120, maybe 150. Man, we’re revving through the red zone. When the ball is kicked and the flashbulbs start popping…INSANITY!
If you want to know what it’s like the moment before we are about to strap it up, ask a soldier what he feels the moment before he knows gunfire is about to erupt. How do you contain yourself?
The emotion of the opening kick begins to build before the coin toss, well before the kickoff team takes the field. The tension, the excitement, the nerves…it all builds to a crescendo.
About ten minutes before the kick, it’s silence in our locker room with each man living in his own private world, searching for a welcome distractio
n. Or fantasizing—playing the game in his mind already—willing how the course of events over the next three hours will go.
Some pace nervously back and forth while others shake out their limbs, barely able to contain their excitement as their music blares from their iPods. Some sit on their stools with eyes closed, trying not to get overexcited, while others go through the final touches of their routine. We all have some routine we go through prior to kickoff each Sunday. Me, I have to take the same exact route in every morning, walk the same path and go to the bathroom at the same exact time.
When I get to the stadium, one of my first routines is an odd one. I actually make a ritual of reading the program while sitting on the can whether I have to use it or not, and I study the head shots of every single member of the opposing team. As I sit in that stall, I burn a hole through their roster, especially my personal opponent. I try to stare into his eyes as if I can glean some sort of late-breaking information. I know it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but it’s what I’ve done for the last decade. Who am I to mess with ritual? Rituals lead to confidence, confidence plus the anticipation of violence combined with the thrill of competition, which begins to gurgle to a boil as we get closer to walking out of that locker room.
I have a pretty good analogy of what my battle feels like. It may sound funny, but the Russell Crowe movie Gladiator is dead-on. The battle never changes, only the combatants. Rules and venues change. Whether it’s an ancient gladiator or No. 92 for the Big Blue, we go through the same damn feelings and similar rituals.
Those ancient warriors sat behind bars and made final adjustments to what little gear they had while we sit behind a steel door and concrete walls, putting tape on various parts of our bodies, hoping the tape holds us in place for the 180 minutes that will feel like eighty car accidents.
I use three different types of tape. Prewrap, hard tape and soft tape to secure my ankles, wrists and every single one of my fingers. I tape a certain way depending on where my aches and pains are, so my body parts will only move a certain way. I use about eight rolls of tape per game.
Prior to our Sundays of violence, after we make sure our tape is set, we make sure our uniforms are just the way we want them. EXACTLY as we want them, even though they’ll get tugged, torn, ripped and manhandled in about twenty minutes. It’s got to be just right, exact, because it provides us with the security and comfort to run out onto that field.
At this point I seek out our quarterback, young Eli. Can he possibly have any more pressure on him than this night? I say something very simple to him in our locker room.
“Young buck, go out and have some fun.”
That’s it, nothing more. I don’t say anything to him on the sideline beforehand. So much has been made of Eli versus Peyton, I don’t want to add to it. Actually, considering how the game was built up before the season, like a Super Bowl, how could I have added to it? Plus, I’m about to have my own Peyton problems, so who the hell am I to talk?
With about two minutes to go before the game, our team splits in half, with the offensive coordinator talking to the offense while our defensive coordinator, Tim Lewis, addresses our side of the ball.
Tim’s favorite thing is, “Okay, guys, you’ve got a great opportunity to go out here and prove yourself, that you’re the best defense in the league.” He says that all the time. But this time he continues with something along the lines of, “We all know the game plan and if we execute, we should win this thing. Let’s play together. Let’s stay together. Let’s communicate. Let’s be eleven as one.”
Then Tom Coughlin comes in the middle. We recite the Lord’s Prayer first, and after the prayer, Tom gives his speech. It used to be the other way around, but sometimes when Tom gets jazzed up, he’ll give us this rah-rah speech complete with curse words, bouncing up and down on his toes. Then right after, we’ll recite the Lord’s Prayer. In terms of blasphemy, that probably isn’t the best idea. Now we make sure the prayer goes first.
When Coach gives his speech that night, I have a difficult time listening and grasping it because I’m pacing back and forth too much. Man, it’s hard knowing you’re about to get into a fight, like letting someone punch you in the face while you sit back and wait for it.
In his speech, Tom implores us right to the end. Protect the football! No turnovers. Every single day, in every meeting, he talks about turnovers. There is not a single day he doesn’t talk about turnovers.
“Play with composure. No dumb mistakes and penalties. Play with discipline. Play with Giant pride! Do you hear me? Play Giants football!”
Another reason it all flies past me is because, as Tom started talking, I look over at one of the stools and sitting there is a game program. That game program really pisses me off. The cover is of Peyton and Eli Manning. Why in the hell would our own organization put Peyton Manning on the cover of our opening night program? Whose bright idea was that?
Teams never, NEVER, put an opposing player on the cover of their own program! What was wrong with putting just Eli on the cover? Or what about Coach Coughlin or Tiki or Shockey? It was our first game with LaVar Arrington and Sam Madison, two Pro Bowl vets. Why not them? It was almost like people in our own front office were there to see Peyton, too.
I’m not just being sensitive. Maybe I’m looking for another reason to feel like someone just ran over my dog, parked, then threw it in reverse and ran over poor Lucky again. I’ll deal with the program snafu after the game. I’ll take that fight up with somebody after I come out of this fight. Right now we’re getting ready to raise that gate, throwing us into the lion’s den.
The moment Coughlin finishes his speech, we line up for the gates to open. But even when those doors open up, my teammates wait. They wait for the man who has been through these wars and fought these battles for thirteen, going on fourteen years. It’s the ultimate compliment I’m given by my fellow gladiators. The men watching my back. The men I’ll be fighting with today wait for me to pop a helmet off a single hook up in the air (another of my petty pregame rituals that has to be done just right), catch it, strap it up and lead the charge to battle.
How did a guy who grew up on an army base in Germany, a guy who graduated with exactly two people in his high school class, find himself in America’s most glamorous city with men who wait to go to battle for him, for him to don his helmet? I can’t possibly convey how it feels to be respected like that.
That is how my Sunday afternoons begin every week from September to January. This is where my battle lines are drawn.
For the last fourteen years I’ve spent Sundays like this. Now my goal is to bring you along for the ride. To tell you what it’s really like to play inside the NFL. The pregame preparation before taking the battlefield. What truly goes into gearing up for a Sunday afternoon of smashing my body against a wall of enemy combatants. The in-game violence. How I’ve been able to keep myself atop this violent world for fourteen years. The characters, the adjustments and interaction between players and coaches, between players in our own locker room and players from team to team. The violence that lurks under the piles and then, of course, the recourse to such actions. What happens after the game as we start up the preparation all over again.
Thirteen years have led up to this battle against Peyton Manning and his gang. For thirteen years I’ve put my body through terrible things. For thirteen years I’ve done whatever I needed to do to get myself back to where Peyton was hoping to bring his troops this year as well—Miami and the Super Bowl. Only one of us would make it.
As we rush out of the locker room, the silence we had prior to Coach’s speech is shattered by 76,000 of our closest friends, the people who pulled into the parking lot a couple of hours earlier. I’m telling you, as we walk through that tunnel we begin to transform, one by one. All the work we did all week, the pain we felt that morning, the pain we felt minutes before begins to fade as the crowd’s force makes us twitch. With each step, I forget that damn shoulder. I need to hit someone. I n
eed it like a drug. The closer I get to the end of that tunnel, the more I transform. Bring on Caesar’s gladiators! Bring on the lions, the swords, the spears and anything else because, for now, I am invincible. I am the hunter and not the hunted.
You remember Gladiator Crowe’s character, Maximus, telling the other gladiators sent into battle to die with him, “If we stick together we live, if we don’t we die.” He’s the first one out of that tunnel. That’s exactly what it feels like to me.
This year’s first Sunday nighter is even more electric, the first Sunday night game on NBC, Manning versus, well, the guy on the cover of our program. The sequel to the 1958 NFL Championship Game, Colts and Giants.
Remember those rituals I have? Well, I have one more in the tunnel, too. I go to the left side of the tunnel and bang my head lightly against the wall three times. Then I go find individual guys, guys who are integral to this game, and I give them my final two cents. I used to stand there with Jessie Armstead, when we were the last two guys waiting for intros, and say, “It’ll be up to one of us to set the tempo.”
On this night, as the offense is introduced, I stand in the back of the tunnel—I don’t want to see the field until it’s my turn. I can hardly contain myself. It’s like every single person in that stadium is suddenly a family member. No matter what happened earlier in the week or the season or in your career, they’re cheering you on, no matter what. They don’t want Caesar’s gladiators to win. They’re calling upon ME to draw blood.
There’s a shot of electricity. I now feel like I could run right through that iron goalpost. I’m in the dark back here, but when I come out of the chute, it’s deafening. It’s like darkness, darkness, darkness…BAM, 76,000 strong, their force, their will, their cheers…. It send chills all through my body. At that moment, it is the best place in the world. And the only place in the world I want to be.
Inside the Helmet: Hard Knocks, Pulling Together, and Triumph as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior Page 1