Inside the Helmet: Hard Knocks, Pulling Together, and Triumph as a Sunday Afternoon Warrior

by Michael Strahan

  He’s a beast but there is resentment around the league for how fired up he gets out there on the field and the notoriety he gets. When he’s on the field, guys love to dig at him, so he’s learned to take the offensive. He doesn’t take crap from anybody. He curses at guys, “You can’t cover me, you sorry bitch!”

  A few years ago in a rematch against the Eagles, he said something that shows exactly why I love the guy. In the first game that year, Philly’s All-World safety Brian Dawkins knocked the crap out of our wide receiver Ike Hilliard. He caused all sorts of horrific bodily damage and put Ike out for the year.

  In the rematch, Shockey was pitted against B-Dawk down in the red zone, got to the end zone, turned and physically outjumped Dawk for the rock. When the two came crumbling down for the touchdown, Shockey flicked the ball at him and said, “This one’s for Ike!”

  Dawk is one of the classiest headhunters we have in this league and had Shockey done the same thing to some other safeties, it would have triggered a brawl.

  If Shockey can’t find somebody to talk smack to, he’ll just talk to himself, and sometimes I have no idea what the cat is saying. He gets so excited out there that he gets into fights with himself.

  Tiki is funny in how he talks smack because he kills guys with kindness. If somebody lights him up, Tiki will smile and with all sincerity congratulate the guy for a job well done. He’ll bounce his little battery-shaped body up, flip the ball to the ref and say to the defender, “Great hit,” like he’s proud of the guy.

  He kills guys with intelligence and love. How are you going to hate a guy who blesses you after you tear him a new you-know-what?

  I think one of the best things he did came in our game against the Saints, Tiki’s last home game. At one point he took a run toward the Saints sideline and got tackled near their bench. When he jumped up, he turned toward their head coach, Sean Payton, our former offensive coordinator, and actually gave him instructions on how he needed to adjust one of their plays. Tiki saw their blocking scheme wasn’t working with a particular run, and if Sean made one simple change, they’d get a lot of production out of it in the future.

  “Little bugger was right,” Payton told Glazer later that week about Tiki’s adjustment.

  Somewhere in the heat of battle somebody is talking trash to somebody else. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s not understandable. Sometimes it’s just downright cruel. It’s all part of the sounds of our game, the same way hits and cheers are. Except we’re usually the only ones who hear these mini-battles being played out.

  The best are the guys who use it to get themselves going in a contest. Denver’s All-Pro former tight end Shannon Sharpe was like that. He talked smack to anybody and everybody. It was as much a part of his game as running and catching. Simply put, Shannon Sharpe was the greatest trash talker in the history of the NFL.

  The man studied your background and came up with stuff that was so funny, HBO should have given him his own one-hour special. Off the field we have hung out, but on the field, Shannon knew how to stoke my fire. He got me so fired up one game I completely lost my mind on him during the coin toss and it was preseason! I just didn’t feel like listening to his mental mastery that day. He got after two of my fellow defensive linemen, Christian Peter and Keith Hamilton.

  “Please, both of you guys should be in jail,” barked Sharpe. “You’re lucky I don’t call your probation officers and get your asses locked up. I’ll go make a call right now and see you two get led away.”

  Shannon started walking around his huddle with his hands behind his back like he had handcuffs on.

  “You two are criminals,” he yelled as he paced with his hands in invisible cuffs.

  Hammer and Christian were infuriated and it probably didn’t make it any easier on them that the rest of us were laughing our asses off. How could we not? Just shut up, guys, you’re no match for the Mouth That Roared.

  I’d actually talk smack to Shannon for the same reason I talked to Simeon. I wanted to get him to do something that altered his game.

  “You’ve got all those muscles looking all big and strong, use them. Hit me. Don’t bitch-block me [hit me below the knees]. Why do you lift all those damn weights if you won’t use it?”

  I was just trying to get him to not only block me up high but to try to come after me more. If it caused him to get mad and try to hit me before he took off running his route, it could have disrupted the timing of the entire offense.

  I never talk trash without some rhyme to my reason. Jon Runyan knows this as much as anybody. During our Week Two battle in Philly this year, I was as tired in that first half as I’ve been for any half of football in my career. I have no idea what was wrong with me, but I was dragging ass. So I started talking trash. Runyan has this bad habit of grabbing your jersey up by the V of the collar. It’s holding, plain and simple, but the refs overlook it often. When he grabs hold of your neck like that, it’s impossible to get away from him. That day I simply didn’t have the strength to deal with it so I started baiting him, challenging him to block me without it. That was my only hope to get anything going against him.

  “Why are you always holding me like that? You have to hold me to block me. Why are you afraid to block me like a man!?!” I screamed at him, all the while just praying I got that second wind. I was screaming at him, screaming at the refs, screaming at his teammates. I complained to anybody and everybody who would listen, hoping he’d feel like his manhood was being challenged and he’d block me straight up. At least this way I’d have a shot.

  I wanted to let everyone on that field believe I was the same old Michael Strahan. It’s all part of the reason for talking trash. Make them believe it by the tone of your voice.

  I yell at Runyan and his teammates a lot for doing cheap stuff like not letting Runyan block me one-on-one. Every time I get on him, he has this annoying chuckle he lets out and he usually just laughs at me. I try to challenge someone’s manhood so they’ll grow angry and foolishly and mistakenly want to prove me wrong. Once I get you one-on-one, you’re done, my brother.

  It’s all just part of Trash Talk 101.

  I’ll even talk trash to head coaches to get them to let me go solo on their tackle. In one game against the Vikings, they were doubling and tripling me on every single play. Their head coach at the time, Mike Tice, had guys starting on blocks with one player, then releasing and cracking the dickens out of me after I was engaged with the tackle. Sometimes they’d slide two guys on me and keep a running back over there, too, to get a shot in. It was pissing me off beyond belief so I started yelling right at Tice. I tried to embarrass him in front of his players, another cute trash-talking trick.

  “Hey, Tice, why don’t you let him block me on his own!” I yelled about their tackle. “I’ll kick his ass!”

  Tice barked back, “What, do you think I’m fuckin’ crazy!”

  I’ve heard some wild trash-talking in my day. The great Pro Bowl defensive tackle John Randle used to accuse white guys of calling him the n-word. He would, completely out of nowhere, snap on a white guy. “What did you just call me? Did you just call me a ni@#&*! This motherfucker just called me a ni@#&*!”

  Guys would want nothing to do with him. Then if a black teammate jumped in to try to diffuse a racially sensitive moment, he’d call that guy an Uncle Tom. I was just glad I wasn’t on offense and that I wasn’t white. Randle would make it so the white guys were horrified to go near him.

  One time I heard a story in which one Pro Bowl player was supposedly hooking up with another guy’s girlfriend. As the game progressed, the offensive player would come to the line of scrimmage, get in his stance and say something about the defensive player’s girlfriend. Each and every play, he’d advance the story. For example, first play he’d say, “Hey, you talk to such-and-such?” A few plays later he’d talk about how fine she’s looking. A few plays later maybe he’d chime in with a comment on one of her body parts. Later in the game he’d let slip how he saw her rece
ntly. Then came his revelation that he was going to see her again soon. And then…came the breaking point.

  The offensive player walked to the line, got set and barked out the phone number of said young lady—right before the snap of the ball. And apparently it was the correct number. That was the last straw. The defensive player went berserk, absolutely nuts. In total, he was flagged for three personal foul penalties in the game and was eventually ejected. Overall, a perfect 10.0 score, showing perfect form in using trash talk to sideline an opposing team’s best player. Masterful!

  The only thing you don’t really talk about on the field is a guy’s mother. No Yo Mamma kind of jokes permitted. Aside from this, nothing is off-limits.

  Sometimes, however, it backfires on you. I once made the mistake of talking trash to the great Barry Sanders. He is the only player I’ve ever faced who makes the entire way we practice heading into a game completely different from normal.

  To prepare for Barry the Great, we’d take a very quick wide receiver and make him play running back against us in practice. Poor guy was forced to do a drill in which three defenders tried to tackle him all at once.

  We were in the game and on one particular play, Sanders came my way. I shed my block, took my shot and scored. All by myself, I took him down on my initial shot. I was so excited I started barking at him, “That’s right, Barry. All day, all day! What you going to do?”

  He lay there silently like he always did, because the man never said a word out there, then stood up and said to me, “I’ll be back.”

  That was his form of talking smack, and you know what? It scared the shit out of me. I actually wanted to apologize right there on the spot. “Hey, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, sir. Really, sir, can I get a mulligan on the trash-talking? Please, sir, Mr., um, Sanders, sir?”

  There are certain guys you just don’t talk any smack to. Barry Sanders, Larry Allen, Brett Favre, John Elway. It’s not smart to do it with these guys. They’ll make you pay. They’re getting me back, but at the same time fifty-two other guys and coaches all suffer as this man teaches me a lesson via the scoreboard.

  The fans do their part, too. Sometimes they’ll engage in trash-talking with players, and the players actually get wrapped up in it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve got to tell some young knucklehead to stop jawing with the fans and get his head in the game.

  This year in a preseason game against the Jets, I must admit their fans got me pretty good. I don’t know how they coordinated it, but a whole section started pelting me with chants of “orth-o-dontist, da, da, da, da, da! orth-o-dontist, da, da, da, da, da!” Jets fans are just as bad as Eagles fans but this chant was clever. My teammates heard it and started laughing. Some of my coaches were laughing. Hell, even I started laughing. It was great.

  Another really clever guy was Cris Carter, the future Hall of Fame Vikings receiver. He never cursed, yet he used clean trash-talking to alter the way a corner covered him. Ronde Barber tells a great story about when he was younger and was assigned the task of covering him. Carter ran a route on him and then began coaching young Ronde. “Look, you’re going to be good, but on this play you need to get your hips turned more.”

  Ronde barked at him, telling him to shut up. Carter said he was only trying to help. A few plays later, Carter ran the same route and Ronde again played it the same way. Another reception and more advice. “I told you, you need to roll your hips more this way. I’m just trying to help.”

  Ronde barked at him again to shut up but admitted that at this point, he started to think. Was this dude really trying to help me? Did he really like my game? I know he’s a league leader and he’s taken a bunch of guys under his wing. Is he really trying to teach me?

  Next route, Ronde did exactly as Carter had coached him. Only this time, Carter faked it outside, saw Ronde turn his hips, and ran an inside route to burn young Ronde again. Ronde was livid, probably more so with himself. Carter ran by, this time chuckling, and added that he should only do the other technique at certain times. Yeah, now he tells him. He had Ronde completely crossed up and never once did he utter a single curse word. It turned out to be a great lesson for Ronde.

  The most clever guy in today’s game is the Bengals’ Chad Johnson. He boasts what he’ll do to another player, but Chad is funny. Nobody in the league minds his smack, because he backs it up. It’s not only harmless trash talk but creative.

  Players look to see what he’ll say next when he celebrates in the end zone. Terrell Owens comes across vindictive no matter how creative he is. But we look at Chad like our hilarious baby brother rather than an asshole trying to piss us off.

  During our Washington game this year when our huge running back, Brandon Jacobs, was talking all type of smack to Redskins Pro Bowl safety Sean Taylor, challenging him to tackle him up high, Taylor kept going low and taking Jacobs down. Considering our young back is 265 pounds—he weighs more than I do—the more defenders try to come up high, the more people he’ll plow through. Taylor looked at him like he was nuts if he thought he’d get baited in. Brandon was learning the art of trash-talking.

  One time I saw my fellow Pro Bowl defensive end Osi Umenyiora actually tell a guy, “I’m going to fake inside and then use [whatever move he said] to beat you on the outside. I’m just giving you a warning, I’m going to do this to you.”

  Sure enough, a couple of plays later he did exactly what he said he would for a sack. Osi’s trash talk put that guy in his pocket for the rest of the game. He absolutely owned the guy. It wouldn’t have been as bad if Osi had gotten a sack without the talk, but now that left tackle knew that Osi could tell him what he’d do and the guy still couldn’t defend it.

  As bad as I can get with players, I save my best trash-talking for the officials. I like to butter them up during television time-outs with such classics as, “Did anybody ever tell you those stripes are really slimming on you?” Or “I love the new uniforms on you guys. Really accentuates the positives.”

  If a guy like Runyan is holding me, I’ll start in on the refs early, ask them if they’re blind with all the holding they’re missing. I ride those guys with the hopes that I can get a call somewhere along the lines. On a big play, I’ll lose my mind. That’s where diplomacy suddenly ends.

  “What the hell, you don’t see that? He took me to the damn ground. You don’t freaking see that?”

  “Next time, Michael, we’ll look for it” is a usual response and one that gets me even angrier.

  “Next time isn’t doing no good, I need it now.” Then I’ll start dropping f-bombs on them. I’m ashamed to say but I do drop QUITE a few f-bombs on the refs.

  We go through the same song and dance every time. They demand that I stop cursing, which prompts me to drop another f-bomb and challenge them with “What are you going to do, throw me out of the game? Do it. Come on, it’ll be better than sitting out here with his BS.”

  I get so bad that I often end up apologizing during TV time-outs because I don’t want them to have a vendetta against me later on. But it also gets the refs a little edgy and sometimes they want to ease my wrath by looking for a call that will calm me down. The hope is that whatever I say gets a desired response later on from the officials.

  The worst I’ve ever exploded on the field came on New Year’s Eve 2005 when Langston Walker of the Raiders stuck his fingers in my eye and pushed. I dropped like someone just shot me in the head. I was furious, but that fury turned to uncontrollable rage when the refs never threw a flag.

  “Are you blind!” I screamed at the top of my lungs at the whole officiating crew. “What the fuck, you don’t see that? Throw the flag, that’ll at least give me some vindication. Right in my fucking eye. He could end my career and you don’t even throw that flag? How do you miss that?”

  I lit into these guys unlike any other time in my career. This dude could have ended my playing career and I can’t so much as get a little hanky love? What gives? The refs didn’t know how to react because I wa
s absolutely enraged. They actually apologized to me a little later for missing it.

  Tom hates when we talk trash but I’m completely in favor of it. I know fans probably sit at home and look at us as if to say, “Just shut up, and play.” Trust me, if we shut up our intensity level would drop and our play would actually suffer. Wouldn’t you rather see us all fired up and flying all over the field than quiet, sullen versions of guys like me and Shockey?

  The funny thing is, in the real world, I really don’t curse a lot. I don’t have a potty mouth in normal everyday life. But on the field, it just happens. I let my mouth do the talkin’ and my lips do the walkin.’

  Just ask Simeon.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Meetings, Monotony, Playbooks and How to Sleep Through It All

  Christmas Day 2006

  Talk about a stocking full of coal. Today is Christmas, and you know what I got? Possible retirement. I am scheduled to fly down to Charlotte tomorrow to meet with a foot specialist, and if he tells me I need surgery to repair my Lisfranc injury aggravated in Sunday’s blowout to the Saints, that’s it, folks, I’m done.

  I’ve got no yuletide cheer. I’m not spending time this Christmas worrying if I’m naughty or nice. Instead, I’ve been given a fifty-fifty shot that I’ll have to refer to myself as an ex-player. I don’t want to be an ex-player, I still want to be a current NFL player fighting for the Lombardi Trophy. While much of America is in church today praying and figuring out ways to become a better person, I’m looking at my life and my career, knowing that any chance to win that elusive ring may be over after one short doctor’s visit.

  I’ll spend my holiday weighing the pros and cons of continuing my career, and quite frankly, if they tell me they need to knife into me again, it’ll be no more. I love the game of football. I love the camaraderie and I realize that we have a high mortality rate in this career. But I just can’t go through an entire off-season being stuck at the stadium rehabilitating an injury so I can thrust myself back into the monotony.