If you think about all the heartbreak I’ve had just during my fourteen years in New York, it’s amazing that only once did I actually want to strangle a teammate for something he did in a game. Without this bond, there’d be a lot more incidents than just what happened on November 27, 2005.
That was the afternoon our kicker Jay Feely had three chances to win a game in Seattle. Week Twelve of the 2005 season. We were racking up the stats against the team with the best record in their conference, on their home field, no less. We had 480 yards of offense, Tiki gained 151 yards rushing, while Shockey and Plaxico Burress had more than 100 yards receiving apiece.
Playing in Seattle is tough enough because of the crowd noise. It’s probably the loudest stadium in the league. We were up by six in the third quarter, then fell behind by eight with about four minutes left. With two minutes to go, we tied the game when Amani Toomer caught an 18-yard touchdown pass and Shockey caught a pass for the two-point conversion.
Here we go, 21–21, for dominance in the conference. Feely missed a 40-yard attempt on the final play of regulation. Okay, we get another chance. First possession of overtime, he misses another one, this one from 54 yards out. Understandable. Next possession, that son-of-a-you-know-what misses a 45-yarder. Seattle got the ball back and their kicker nailed the game winner.
Those kicks could have changed the course of history as Seattle moved to 9-2 and ended up with home field advantage in the playoffs on their way to the Super Bowl.
After that game, I went into the locker room and I took my chair, picked it up and threw it around the locker room, screaming my head off. I smashed the chair and then I picked up my helmet and smashed it on the ground as well.
I was so angry, sick and tired of being a bridesmaid, never the bride. Years of sacrificing my body, finally on the right track and we lose like this? There is no worse feeling in the NFL than the feeling of being snakebitten.
I had just had enough. Tim Lewis came over to calm me down. I told him, “F that! I’m done! I’m retiring after this year! Done! When are we going to win these close games? I’m sick of it!” Was I furious! Every time I looked at Feely, I had to contain myself. You’re a freakin’ kicker, all we needed was one out of three!
I was so angry that I honestly considered hanging up my cleats. But what’s so wonderful about our locker room is, by the next day, I felt bad for having had such strong resentment toward my brother. Playing in the NFL has a way of stopping you from throwing stones while living in a glass house. Fans get to sit at home and rip us for a job done poorly. But we don’t have that luxury. As a result, we’ve got to be mentally strong enough to stop the insanity!
Or as the great head coach Dan Reeves used to say, when you have one finger pointing like a gun at someone, you have three others pointing right back at you.
I now know firsthand how easy it is for the fans and media to rip into a guy for screwing up, just like I started that whole brouhaha with Plaxico this year. Sitting on the sidelines injured, I reacted just like you guys—the fans—would have, and realized just how easy it is to react that way.
Did I regret those quotes? Yes, but not as much as that damn peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
When I retire, the thing I’ll miss more than anything else are the ribbings inside the locker room. Other players who retire always say to me the one thing they miss the most is the camaraderie. We can never, ever reproduce how close we get inside that room out in the real world. It’s not the individual guys I’ll miss but that overall feeling of walking into a locker room and knowing that no matter what happened in the real world that day, I’m protected behind these walls. Nothing and nobody can hurt me inside here.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Donovan, Please Answer Your Damn Phone!
Saturday, September 16,
eve of our game against Eagles
Come on, Donovan, answer your phone. Come on, buddy!
No answer, damn!
Redial.
I don’t have time for this. Come on, come on, come on, come on…answer your phone. Man, I just don’t have time for this right now!
The preparation for a game reaches a crescendo the night before with last-minute details. The monotony of the grind finally shows signs of dying and the light at the end of the tunnel people talk about so much finally comes into view.
Saturday night is when we clear our minds, trusting in all the work we did during the week, trying to believe that the work will not be in vain, believing that within twenty-four hours, all the sweat, pain and monotony of the week will prove to be worth it.
Unfortunately Saturday night also marks the start of the worst distractions we as players deal with on a regular basis, which is exactly why I find myself hitting redial again.
Come on, Donovan, answer your damn phone!
Yes, that Donovan. Donovan McNabb, the same guy I will attempt to crush the next day. It’s less than eighteen hours before I have to smash Jon Runyan in the face, shove Brian Westbrook aside and try to pick Donovan up and crash my body down on his. Yet it’s imperative I get hold of him.
I call his phone again. No answer. Come on, brother. I got meetings I have to go to. I’ve got a little more film I want to study. I don’t have the patience for this right now.
I try to figure out if he’s in a meeting, maybe a production meeting with the TV broadcast crew or an interview. I know he’s at the team hotel, but I need to find the guy who’s going to try to make my life miserable the next day.
I try fifteen minutes later, hoping, come on, come on, come on, when finally, “Hey, what’s up, Strahan!”
I’m not looking to cut any game deal with him. I’m not looking for any tips on their game plan. I’m certainly not looking to give him any insight into how we plan to try to slow him down. No, this is more serious business.
“Hey, man, my friend [Leeann Tweeden, who I worked with on The Best Damn Sports Show Period] you got those tickets for, where are they? Their tickets aren’t downstairs at your hotel. Could you make sure they’re taken care of?”
“Really? Yeah, no problem, I’ll get it taken care of right now. Tell them I’ll come down now.”
“Thanks, man. Sorry to bug you about this. See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.” It’s as if I’ll be catching up with him when we get to our cubicles or meet in the corporate cafeteria. I’ll see you tomorrow when I try to tear your fuckin’ arm off your body. But thanks for getting my friends their tickets.
The night before our first division game of the 2006 season, who would have ever guessed that Mr. Eagles, in his first home game after his divorce from Terrell Owens, and Michael Strahan, fresh from his divorce from Mrs. Strahan, would be worrying about a couple of tickets?
Believe it or not, it happens all the time. Tickets become the biggest nuisance an NFL player has to deal with week in and week out, aside from the game. It’s an annoyance that knows no boundaries. The minute we promise someone tickets, they often hound us because it’s a whole big to-do for people to make plans—especially if they have kids—to travel to a game. I understand they want to make sure they don’t clear their schedule, get a ride, pay for parking, and all of a sudden, they’re stranded and left to listen outside to the 78,000 who actually got in.
Pestering Donovan wasn’t the worst of it for me, either. This particular game wasn’t a good week for me in regard to tickets. Plus, I certainly didn’t want to worry about off-field distractions once I woke up on game day.
When I wake up the morning of a game, I begin to get a little ornery. As the morning progresses, my irritation continues to grow.
It’s not a normal emotional function to convince yourself each and every week to rev your body up enough to hurt another human being. Actually, a handful of human beings. I know that on any given Sunday, I could break another man’s neck and end his career. I also know that during that three-hour span my livelihood, my own career could come to a very painful, screeching halt.
Do you think we just wa
lk out there and smash our bodies around without any mental preparation toward “clicking over”? First you’ve got to find that other side of you, the animal side, that buries fear deep into the recesses of your mind. Firefighters have to do the same thing before rushing in while others rush out. The fear must be extinguished before the fire can be.
In order to find that “other guy” that I talked about earlier, we begin our inner psych-up job hours before the fans ever see us. I begin my transformation hours before I leave for the stadium. I talk to people. Put on a good face, a good act. But in reality, I get angrier and angrier and angrier as the hours pass. So, you think you get road rage? I try putting myself into a frame of mind as if a thousand people just flipped me the bird, cut me off on the way to work and stole my parking spot, all while laughing in my face. Things I may find amusing the day before annoy the living daylights out of me on a Sunday morning. Even little jingles I hear on a commercial bug me. Everything bugs me. But I want everything to bug me. I don’t need to be a happy camper.
Sunday is one big contradiction for me. It’s the end of a week of game plans, films, practice, painkiller injections, anti-inflammatory meds all meeting together for three hours of controlled bedlam and violence.
The moment I leave my hotel on Sunday morning and put my headphones on, I try to transform into a different human being. I try with everything I have deep down inside of me to escape from being the nice guy who hooks up his friends with tickets. I try to isolate myself from the world on the way to the game.
The last thing I want to deal with is tickets. But despite the anger and the ornery caricature I’ve created for myself Sunday mornings, the very first thing we do as players when we get to the stadium is deal with tickets.
At home games, I’ve got my routine pretty much set. First thing I do when I get to the stadium is hit the ticket table set up in our locker room and fill out envelopes for all those I’m giving tickets to, leaving them for a Giants employee to bring to “Will Call.”
When we’re on the road, my routine varies. As a result, sometimes I’ll screw up my tickets. Unfortunately, this particular game against the Eagles was one of those times.
I spent the morning psyching myself up to destroy the man who had left tickets for Leeann. When you play in Philly, before you ever get to hit another player, you’ve got to psych yourself up for a fight.
Whoever named that place the City of Brotherly Love has obviously never played there. Eagles fans wrote the book on creative and immature insults. As a distraction from the insults, I try to focus on the team introductions. I don’t want to listen to their crap or commit the cardinal sin of getting into it with the fans. Instead, I turn to the men who will attempt to make me look bad today. As each player is introduced, I go over mental notes about him in my mind. Little profanity-laced scouting reports crowd my brain as my heart races, as the adrenaline and anger rise and fall with the name of each player I’ll go up against that day.
Here comes Runyan, which means today will be fun. I love playing that man. I love that he knows that I know exactly what he’s going to do and that there’s nothing he can do about it. I love the fact that just about every game he’ll piss me off and get me screaming at him about something. We have a great chess match every single game.
Here comes Brian Westbrook. That little man is annoying. One of the smartest players at any position, on any team in the NFL. He’s a pain and he never makes a mistake, which means he can stick a fork in you from anywhere, anytime. You really respect the players who get better and better each year, players who allow their teams to expand their roles. That’s Brian Westbrook. Whatever you saw him do on film the previous year, throw it out the window. He’ll have some new wrinkles now.
There’s William “Tra” Thomas, Shane Andrews, L. J. Smi—
Oh, no! Damn! I forgot to leave my other buddy tickets! Son of a…man, I did, I forgot! Damn it!
My friend Dougie Lawson drove all the way up from Baltimore. I was supposed to leave two tickets for him. I flat out forgot. How in the hell could I forget to leave his tickets? I got distracted from those introductions because all I could think about was poor Dougie standing outside the stadium with the world’s saddest look splashed across his face. While my eyes should be fixed on Runyan, Runyan and nothing but Runyan, my mind drifts to poor Dougie in the parking lot.
I can’t tell you how many times, in the middle of a game, a player panics, “Oh, damn, I forgot to leave tickets for (insert any number of jilted names here).” It honestly distracts us from our game because instead of thinking about your assignment, you begin to think about letting down a friend or a family member. I’ve screwed up so many times, I have excuses down to a science. I’m sorry, I’m sorry but you know I have a few things on my mind on Sundays. Like crushing McNabb or Manning or Favre.
While I can’t say I’m sorry enough, believe me, it hurts me almost as much as it hurts you. Well, that’s not really true, either. I do feel bad about it, bad enough for it to creep into my mind prior to and during battle. Bad enough for me to say something out loud, sometimes in the huddle when I’ve realized my forgetfulness.
Sometimes I’ll be looking down the line, searching for a tip from an offensive lineman, digging my hand in the dirt and focusing on which way the offensive tackle seems to be leaning, and milliseconds before I explode out of my stance…DAMN! I forgot to leave my boy his tickets! Damn, damn, HIKE…uh-oh!
Sometimes I wish we never got tickets, then it would never become an issue. Even when I’m hurt it’s an issue. The next time we played the Eagles, Runyan’s wife, Loretta, called me for tickets for a friend. I helped them out, but what I didn’t know was, the tickets sucked. Nosebleeders. The reason you call a player on another team is to get good seats. I was so embarrassed.
Our ticket manager, John Gorman, is awesome to me. Always has been. Whenever I need tickets, he always gives me great seats. But Runyan, for some reason, I got the nosebleed seats. I actually ran down (make that “limped down”) after the game to make sure I apologized to him for the lousy seats I gave his wife.
It must sound crazy to the average fan that the wife of a guy who has been made out to be my archrival would call me for tickets, and that I’d be so apologetic for not getting better seats, but this isn’t a unique case.
Larry Allen is the most intimidating person I’ve ever come across in my life. In fact, there’s something in the NFL called Allen-itis, an imaginary illness players pretend to come down with when they’re scheduled to face off against this on-field killer. I’m telling you, the man is as close to Mike Tyson in his prime on the football field as anything I’ve ever seen.
I’ve had teammates who’ve watched Larry on film hurt four, five, six guys when suddenly a hamstring or an ankle is miraculously injured in practice. In his prime it got to the point where guys, knowing they were facing Larry and the Cowboys the next week, would have the foresight to suffer a hammy or a calf injury in the fourth quarter of the previous week! When Keith Hamilton, who Larry said was one of the toughest guys he played, had to face off against him, he’d actually tell his backups to be ready to come in.
Larry bench-presses 700 pounds without a spotter. Lodges half a can of dip at a time under his lower lip. He has the meanest face in the game. To add to the fear, he never says a word. Not a word. The most I’ve ever heard from him on the field is when he soup-bones somebody or body-slams one or two guys on the same play. The man doesn’t talk but bellows a laugh after he hurts somebody. He’s the strongest, nastiest, most effective player I have ever played in my life. If there ever was a guy you should be afraid of, it’s Larry Allen.
Yet, before we play his team, he gets my parents tickets and a parking pass to the game. He’s the nicest guy I’ve ever dealt with when it comes to tickets. I don’t even have to ask him about it, he’ll do it on his own. In fact, that’s about the only time I’ve ever really heard him talk.
Big-ass monster is probably thinking to himself, “Let me
invite the dude’s family so they can watch me maul their poor little boy in person.”
Every week, players and coaches from teams playing each other call their counterparts to bum tickets or upgrade existing seats. I do it all the time with Donovan, Roy Williams when we play Dallas, Tony Gonzalez, Marshall Faulk, Mike Irvin, you name it. If there’s a game I need tickets for, I can call another Pro Bowler I’ve met, ask him, and vice versa.
The things we think about on that field that have nothing to do with the game are amazing. Tickets are one thing, but we also delve into fights in the stands, women, cheerleaders.
During a game, we have more in common with the fans than most people know. You know how when you guys stand up to watch a fight in the stands? You know how when the yellow-jacketed security guards go flying over to break up a brouhaha, and the whole section stands at attention to catch a glimpse? I’ll let you into a little secret here: We do the same exact thing. When those yellow jackets start running and the crowd starts roaring, we flat out crane our necks and scramble to get a full-on look at you pugilistic hooligans. We’ll be in the huddle waiting for the call to get signaled in to us when we hear the cheering. The crowd begins to rise and all eyes shift from us to the idiots in the stands throwing haymakers. We don’t even listen to the call, we’re just hoping the offense takes a little more time so we can watch these drunken fools swing away at each other.
During one of the first games I played versus the Redskins, the crowd began to swell. I could tell a fight was brewing. One of my teammates, Thomas Randolph, our former cornerback, turns to watch the fight and I suddenly hear him blurt out, “Strahan, isn’t that your brother fightin’ in the stands?”
How about that! I look up and there’s my brother Victor swinging away at some Redskins fans who, he later explained, were ripping apart his friend who was, shall we say, overweight.
But there I was, getting ready to roll after the Redskins’ Heath Shuler or Trent Green or whoever the hell it was and I’ve got to watch this? Now, who in their right mind can play while his brother is fighting in the stands? Come on, knucklehead!
Inside the Helmet: Hard Knocks, Pulling Together, and Triumph as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior Page 8