Pro Football 101: Michael Strahan ranks No. 70 on the list of best NFL players ever

By Joe Posnanski
Special to FOX Sports

Editor's Note: Throughout the 2021 NFL season, Joe Posnanski will rank the 101 best players in pro football history, in collaboration with FOX Sports. Posnanski will publish a detailed look at all 101 players on Substack. Today in the countdown, Joe looks at former New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, No. 70 on the list.

Michael Strahan grew up in Germany as part of a military family, so he didn’t play much football growing up. But he loved the game — he and his father, Gene, used to wake up at 3 a.m. every week to catch "Monday Night Football." 

As Michael grew bigger and stronger (he was an obsessive weightlifter, thanks, in part, to his father’s insistence), Gene* had this idea that his son might be able to play college football the way Gene's brother, Art, had in the 1960s.

*Gene was an impressive athlete, too. He was a boxer in the army and once beat future heavyweight champion Ken Norton.

Michael came to the U.S. in 1988 and moved in with Art and his family for a year. Michael told Sports Illustrated’s Peter King a funny story about how on the way in from the airport, he saw a lit-up sign that said, "DRUGS."

"My God," he thought, "it’s worse than my friends in Germany told me. They sell drugs right out in the open in the United States."

Strahan did not wow anybody in his senior year in high school, but he was 6-foot-5, and he played with energy — Gene Strahan had raised all of his kids to not stop until they heard the whistle — and Texas Southern took a chance on Michael. He had 19 sacks his senior year in college, and the New York Giants selected him in the second round in 1993. He was the only player in that round who would end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Let’s go back for a moment to Gene Strahan’s victory over Ken Norton in an army boxing match. "He outweighed me by 20 pounds," Gene would tell writer Ian O’Connor. "And it was all muscle. … I know the joker could hit, so I had to outmaneuver him."

Look at that quote, and you can begin to understand what made Michael Strahan such an exceptional defensive lineman for 15 years with the Giants. He was never the biggest guy out there — some offensive linemen outweighed him by 75 pounds or more — and he was not the fastest guy, either. It’s striking to compare him to some of the great defensive line sackers of the past 30 years — Julius Peppers, Dwight Freeney, Jason Taylor, Jared Allen and so on. These players were breathtakingly athletic, blazing fast and absurdly powerful, and many of their sacks were highlight-reel exciting.

It was different with Strahan. He wore teams down with his constant pressure and unyielding effort and refusal to give up on a play. "My whole game is power and leverage," he used to say. 

That takes time and isn’t the most exciting thing in the world to watch. I doubt there was a player in NFL history who tackled more quarterbacks, only to have the announcer call it a "coverage sack." I like what historian Brad Oremland wrote about Strahan: "The sacks almost looked like accidents — 141 and a half accidents."

Strahan, as a player, is probably most famous for setting the single-season sack record, with 22½ in 2001 … and realistically, that achievement is probably most famous because of the way Brett Favre just gave himself up on the record-breaker.

But the truth is that sacks do not define Strahan’s excellence any more than home runs define Henry Aaron’s greatness. 

Strahan was superb against the run. He led the league in tackles for loss three times. He could drop back in coverage. He could make the big play (he returned two interceptions and one fumble for touchdowns). And he lifted his play for the biggest games.

He had 9½ sacks in 10 postseason games. He was virtually unblockable during the 2000 postseason, as he basically carried the Giants to the Super Bowl. And then he led one of the greatest defensive line performances in championship history when the Giants upset the undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl XLII. The Giants sacked Tom Brady five times that day — Strahan had one of the five — and held one of the most dominant offenses in NFL history to 14 points.

Strahan has become one of the biggest personalities in television since his playing career ended, co-hosting "Good Morning America" and, of course, FOX’s NFL pregame show. 

One interesting thing about athletes who become pop-culture superstars — George Foreman, Howie Long, Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley and others — is that it’s easy to lose sight of how great they were as athletes. 

This is particularly true of someone such as Strahan, whose greatness was something that could only be fully appreciated over time.

Joe Posnanski is a New York Times bestselling author and has been named the best sportswriter in America by five different organizations. His new book, "The Baseball 100," came out Sept. 28.