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Super Strahan Giants DE may star on Sapp's stomping grounds
Updated: Monday January 22, 2001 2:35 AM
Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me | The 10 Things I Think I Think Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag. MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- Wednesday night, I'm sitting at the Michael Strahan estate on a hillside with a majestic view of Manhattan in my town, after dinner, relaxing, watching some football tape on the VCR. "You want to see the tape I told you about, 'The NFL Lineman Challenge?'" Strahan says once the dinner dishes are cleared. "Love to,'' I say. I am here to write about my cross-town neighbor, Strahan, for this week's Sports Illustrated, and the road trip is all of three miles. Strahan loves Montclair, all but the taxes. "If they'd cut the taxes way down," he tells me, "I could get the whole team to move here. It's great." But I digress.
I am here to discover what makes Strahan tick. One of the things that does is motivation, motivation from some silly places. He employs a newspaper-clipping service in Kansas that sends him, every so often, every clipping from the metropolitan area that mentions his name in the course of a week. He sees what everyone writes about him. No one can hide. He gets juiced up when he sees, or hears, a player or coach talking about single-blocking him. "That shows no respect for me, whether they say it or not," Strahan says, "and I use that to my advantage." He even smarts from the day before the NFC Championship Game, when I sat in his living room and told him I was picking the Vikings to win. Don't think that didn't give him a little oomph in steamrolling Korey Stringer. It did. It all does. Including the January 1999 video he's about the show me. Strahan puts the tape of the made-for-ESPN pre-Super Bowl XXXIII special in the machine, and off we go. It's a Superstars-type format, with the big fellas -- Nate Newton, Robert Porcher, Darrell Russell, Trace Armstrong, Jonathan Ogden, Derrick Deese, Strahan and defending champion Warren Sapp -- competing in feats of strength (What is this? Festivus?) on an invented course in Miami. There is an obstacle-course run, a shuttle run, a sled-pull, and an incline-bench press. "I'd seen Sapp a couple of weeks before the event, and I'd never done it before. I'm wondering what kind of shape I had to be in for it. He says it's no big deal. So I go there figuring it's a contest, but it wouldn't be that intense. But you get there, and your juices get flowing." Now he pauses the tape. Co-host Mike Golic is interviewing Sapp. "Listen to what Sapp says," Strahan says. Golic: "Warren, you're the defending champ. Who do you see as your biggest competition for the title out here today?'' Sapp: "Probably Robert Porcher and Darrell Russell. Robert and me and Darrell are probably the quickest guys out here.'' Strahan is laughing now. "He set me up, and now I can't wait to get going.'' Strahan is the lightest entrant, at 268 pounds. So he must make hay in the quickness events, because he might not be strong enough to win the incline bench press. He wins the shuttle run, which had been Sapp's strong suit the previous year. But it's Strahan, Sapp and Russell, in that order. Poor Nate Newton. He looks like a wounded deer trying to escape the hunter's rifle. After three events, Russell, Strahan and Sapp are neck-and-neck-and-neck for the lead, and now it's the incline-bench press. Free weights, of course, starting at 250 pounds. May the best power-lifter win. Everyone is straining at 350. Except Strahan, who does every rep effortlessly. Porcher and Sapp can't get past 375. Strahan, the runt of the litter, presses 385 to win, and he does it without a grimace. And he is thinking: Take that, Warren Sapp. Before the last event, the obstacle course, it's still too close to call. "I'm going to put pressure on him [Strahan] here to see if he cracks,'' Sapp says, smiling, to Golic. Strahan hears. Funny. Everything is said with a grin on the entire telecast, but the smiles cover intensity that at least Sapp and Strahan are trying to cloak.
Strahan must finish first or second to win the title. Sapp goes out and runs the course in 21.2 seconds. Strahan, the last man to run, has the second-place finish clinched when he's running toward the finish line, and he gives Sapp a cocky wave. He's second, in 22.8 seconds. That gives Strahan the title with 86 points to 82 for Sapp and 68 for Russell. "Sapp leaves right then," Strahan says, "and I don't see him the rest of the day. I see him at the Pro Bowl, though, and you know what he says to me? He says, 'You better have your ass in shape next year.'" I am so sick of the R word -- respect -- and I dread hearing it 900 times this week. Or more. The Ravens will cry about not getting respect, as will the Giants, and everyone will say nobody expected them to be here. But understand the athlete's psyche. Respect, and the lack thereof, floats their boats. Strahan still feels the Sapp slight. He mentioned it three times over the two days I spent time with him last week, and we spent most of an hour watching the tape that he says helps drive him. There is no question in my mind that sometime Sunday, in the hour or two before Super Bowl XXXV, Strahan will realize he is standing on Warren Sapp's turf, in his town, and Sapp is watching from some luxury box. Strahan will get some mental juice out of trying to show Sapp that he, Strahan, is playing for king of the world in Sapp's backyard. My guess is he will smile right about then.
Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only MeDrummer Doug Flutie and his band went on the Howard Stern Show on Thursday to challenge Stern's band "The Losers" in a battle of the bands. Before Flutie's band played, Stern said: "Your brothers said to me if you guys lose, they're going to replace you with Rob Johnson. " Both bands played a song, and three judges -- surprise! -- picked the Stern band to win. "Set-up!'' Flutie yelled. What else is new, Doug?
The 10 Things I Think I Think1. I think I am legitimately torn about the outcome of this game. I have been a Baltimore guy, mostly, because of the Ravens' knack for forcing turnovers; 3.1 per game is a pretty big number. But then I talked with Mike Martz on Friday, and he's a pretty convincing Giants guy. He didn't use to be, but he thinks New York has a better offense and defense -- collectively, of course, because he, like everyone else, thinks the Ravens' defense is transcendent -- than Baltimore, and he's getting converted to the Kerry Collins Fan Club, just like me. Give me until late in the week before I give you a solid prediction. Not that it matters. In this postseason, I'm 0-4 in wild-card games, 3-1 in divisional, and 1-1 in the title round. You don't want to hitch your wagon to a 40 percent picker, friends. 2. I think Houston picked the right guy in Dom Capers. Having said that, I've heard from ex-Panthers over the years that Capers was a bit scripted, not quite emotional, when he needed to be, and that helped lead to his downfall in Carolina. There are times you've got to let it fly as a coach, and Capers tended to be a bit bookish, players say. The Texans heard this, too. I talked to GM Charley Casserly over the weekend, and he told me he'd heard these stories, and he was confident Capers could be an in-your-face guy if need be. But Casserly's a smart guy. "Time will tell," he told me. "I'm betting Dom Capers is the right man at the right time. He's an excellent football coach. He needs a strong organization and strong support, and we need to let him coach and to give him time and patience. With an expansion team, as a coach, you need a vision, and you need mental toughness to gut it out when you lose, because you will lose. The more we went through it, we realized how important it was to have someone with start-up experience." Casserly said a small, but not major, factor was the interest Buffalo had in Capers. Now the Bills will likely choose between Marvin Lewis and John Fox, the Super Bowl defensive coordinators.3. I think every video store in Baltimore will not have Diner on the shelves this week. Terrific movie. I never realized until Sunday's excellent New York Times profile on Giants GM Ernie Accorsi that Accorsi actually helped write the questions that made up the quiz that guy in the movie gave to his wife before the wedding. 4. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week: a. I don't think Don Mattingly belongs in the Hall of Fame, but if Kirby Puckett gets in, I am clueless as to how Mattingly loses in the balloting to him, 423-145. Look at their numbers. Identical. b. Wear the Padre cap in Cooperstown, Dave Winfield. c. I walk my dogs past Micheal Barrow's house every day. d. Montclair High Bowling Note of the Week: A mixed-bag week. Freshman daughter Mary Beth, as the MMQB faithful know, ascended to the varsity last week and rolled the high series, earning a third-graf mention in Thursday's Montclair Times. Ah, but bowling can be cruel. Back down to JV as coach Tony Cedola (Mary Beth calls him "Coach Ce-bowl-a") continued to look for the right combination for his 1-8 varsity against Newark's Barringer High School at Bowler City in Hackensack. And Mary Beth struggled, with a 122 and 123 in the JV's first two games. I liked what I saw in her, though. When Barringer's Leonor Familia rolled a spare midway through the first game, Mary Beth got up and high-fived her. But Coach Cebola thought he saw something in her (maybe it was what he didn't see in his varsity keglers) and before game three plucked her off JV and into the leadoff spot on varsity. She switched to the two lanes to her left, and a varsity bowler went down to take her spot for the final JV game. Now, you look to see how your kid gets accepted in such surroundings. Mary Beth's 15. A kid. The three other varsity bowlers were senior-junior-senior; one, Vanessa Selbst, has been accepted to MIT. I look, and there's Mary Beth in the middle of them, and they're laughing and talking. They're treating her like a peer, like she belongs, and encouraging her. As I told her later, I was amazed at this because when I was in high school, the sophomores ignored the freshmen, the juniors spit on the freshmen and the seniors -- well, they didn't know the freshmen were alive. She bowled one of her worst games of the year, and she stood at a lowly 89 entering the last frame, but the team, up by but 14 pins entering the 10th frame, needed her to come through. Mary Beth rolled an 8 on her first ball. She had the 3 and 9 pins up, a back-to-back spare opportunity. But the way she'd been bowling, nothing was guaranteed. Coach Cebola called her over for a conference. "Don't aim for the back pin,'' he told her. She got ready to roll, paused, took her steps, squared herself to the foul line, and threw the ball down the line. Perfect. The three knocked into the nine, and both fell. She rolled an 8 on her extra ball and finished at 107. We won for only the second time all year, but Mary Beth was downcast. "Things really did not go well today," she told me, putting her coat on. I disagreed. I told her this was one of those days that made me glad to see her playing high school sports in the urban 'burbs. She played a game with black, Hispanic and white kids. She was the first to high-five the other team's player. She fit in seamlessly with the other kids. I told her she'd get the bowling, and to appreciate everything else that happened. e. Speaking of the Montclair Times, look for sports editor Darren Cooper's story on the Giants invading town -- Barrow and Strahan, of course, with Jason Garrett using his off-day last week to look at home here. When I saw Garrett, he accused me of being one of the rich guys pricing him out of the housing market here. f. Coffeenerdness: I must say my wife and I are enjoying the four pounds of Peet's we ordered as a Christmas gift, the Major Dickason's blend and the Italian roast especially. You can't make a roast too dark for me. g. Looking forward to Tampa, with the Waffle House and the drive-thru Starbucks down the street from each other on Westshore. Get there this morning. 5a. I think the crazy journalism line of the week comes from the (Newark) Star-Ledger, the paper that lands on my doorstep every morning, on Wednesday, recounting Camden (N.J.) High School's Dajuan Wagner scoring 100 points in a 157-67 win over Gloucester Tech. The paper reported: "Wagner's points came in the natural flow of the game." One question: ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS? You report later in your story that the opposing coach was outraged that Camden used a full-court press for the entire game, even when the margin got past 50, 60, 70 points. What game's natural flow EVER calls for a full-court press when the lead is 50, 60, 70 points, and what game's natural flow calls for the best player in the country to be in the game trying to run up the score further with a 75-point lead in the fourth quarter? Now, I'm a big Star-Ledger fan. But the natural-flow-of-the-game line ... I mean, let's keep our journalistic caps on, people. b. There's a fairly new sporting concept out there, Camden. Called sportsmanship. 6. I think the best future scenario for Troy Aikman is this: Get cut by Dallas on June 2. Sign with Tampa Bay on June 3. Spend three months learning the offense and the receivers. Start the opener. Teach Shaun King a thing or two. And last as long as you can, until you get the next killer hit. Retire. A former Dallas assistant told me last week: "No question that's the best thing for Troy, even better than going with Norv Turner to San Diego." Now the question is: Will Jerry Jones let it happen? 7. I think I know and like John Randle, but that thing about faking the urination on the field during the Saints' playoff game? Sick stuff. You're better than that, John. 8. I think Matt Millen, who will do the Super Bowl on radio, will be the first media man at the Ravens' postgame party. He'll attempt to get the first interview with Baltimore defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis. Millen had better be quick. The Browns and Bills will be on his tail. 9. I think the Giants are playing it right by having quarterback Kerry Collins speak about his myriad personal problems only once at length to the mass of media in Tampa -- Monday at 6:45 p.m. That will give the media a chance to sink its teeth into this story without bearing Collins with it all week. But the Giants would be naive to think no one will bring up the alcohol, the racism, the quitting after Monday. Collins had better have a stock answer ready for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. 10. I think I'd like to take this opportunity to shamelessly plug the daily Super Bowl column that I'll be writing on CNNSI.com. Check back today through Sunday by 1:30 p.m. on our Super Bowl page to find the good, the bad, the ugly and the latte of Super Bowl week. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL and appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN's NFL Preview. Click here to send a question to his NFL Mailbag.
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