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

by Michael Strahan

  I resent that I don’t have a ring in my life. How could I have played for this long and only gotten the taste of a Super Bowl once? Those weeklong parties will be around forever but here I sit, shivering at the thought of never getting to party on the field at the game of games.

  So I’m fighting these thoughts that are attacking my mind. Whether or not I’ll ever step out onto that field again is now up to a man I’ve barely met. His medical opinion will make my decision.

  If he says, “Michael, we’ve got to cut you,” then it’ll be “Move over, Tiki, I’m about to crash your retirement party.” If not, Giants fans will have another year for me to either let them down or jack them up.

  A little-known fact about players. Many of us don’t hang it up because our bodies give out. It’s the meetings, the practice schedule, and the minutiae of the weekly grind. As you get older, that becomes much more difficult to get through.

  Retirement talk is not always because of the physical aspect of the sport. Is it physically demanding? Absolutely. But that’s not the primary reason successful vets hang it up. Fans think our lives are nothing but glamour. I won’t lie and discount how wonderful the glamorous side is. But at the same time our work lives are filled with meetings upon meetings upon meetings. Drills upon drills upon drills. Hell, we have meetings to talk about certain drills and then drill what we saw in the meeting, only to hold another meeting after the drills are over to see exactly what we did in those drills. It’s a vicious cycle. I’m stuck in one big “Who’s on First” routine.

  I’ve talked to a lot of guys who have hung it up, and many of them said to me that they knew they were done after they had no fire left to sit through the grind anymore. The older you get, the less excited you become about going to work every day. If it was about hanging out with the guys, having a practice once a day and then taking the field together on Sundays, I’d play as long as my bones, ligaments and tendons would allow.

  What is our work week like? Let’s take a trek together. Most fans see only Sunday. I want you to experience my Monday through Saturday. The weekly schedule is the same every week, twenty weeks of the year. Only the opponents and the injuries change. Meetings are the biggest mental negative of playing inside the NFL.

  For example, if we have an hour meeting and forty minutes of the meeting is devoted to the defensive backs, I still have to sit through their instruction. Why in the world do I need to sit every day of practice and go through things that have nothing to do with my personal assignment?

  My work week starts on Monday morning. Mandatory breakfast between 8:00 and 9:30 A.M. Guys who missed a game due to injury must come in at 8:30 for treatment. Anyone hurt during the game has to be in by 9:00. For the healthy, from that time until lunch at 11:00 we all have to complete a running program and get in a lift.

  Our bodies are still hurting from the previous day’s game. Fewer than eighteen hours earlier, we were banging and slamming into each other. Now we’re lifting weights and putting stress on our limbs.

  After the workouts, the monotony begins with a thirty-five-minute special teams meeting that starts at 11:30. Everyone has to be there because Coach Coughlin wants us to see how everyone contributes to the team. All the vets who aren’t on specials sit all the way in the back. Sitting in a special teams meeting is tough enough, but it’s even more difficult for the vets who haven’t played on special teams in years.

  As meetings get started, we look for things to lighten the boredom. Targets for a laugh. A laugh equals a break in the monotony. We’ll usually look for a guy on film getting lit up on a play, or we’ll yell for the coach to run it back and just when the collision is approaching, we’ll make engine-revving noises followed by “colorful” commentary.

  At 12:05 we’ll meet as a team with Tom for the first time since Sunday’s game. Coach gives a quick overview and then immediately starts in on the turnovers, the stats, the big plays and things that helped us win or lose. Even when we win, he’ll point out what could have beaten us. If we win, he gives out game balls. If we lose, we get grief.

  It was in one of those meetings several years ago that Jim Fassel informed us he was quitting after the year was up. We came in that morning, and he shut the door and immediately informed us that he had decided to quit and had informed ownership that he’d still coach the remaining games. That was a strange meeting. He was a goner and a lame duck for the last couple of weeks. Then we met to get ready for the next opponent. It was kind of like a wife coming home saying, “Hi, honey, how was work? How was your day? Oh, by the way, I’m leaving you for the lawn boy. What would you like for dinner tonight?”

  At that point a coach can’t say anything derogatory. Once he’s announced he’s a lame duck, he’s lost any semblance of mojo he may have built up. That’s where the coach’s Hot Seat can really hurt a team.

  When we hear a coach is gone, especially if we don’t like him, we tune him out. Sometimes we’ll just blatantly disregard his marching orders. But if we like the man, and we liked Fassel, it gives you a little motivation to bust your butt for a man whose job you lost.

  At 12:20, Coach wraps it up. We pull out a wall to separate the meeting room into two areas, one run by the defensive coordinator and one run by the offensive staff. By Monday morning, the coaches have already watched the game, broken down what happened on each play, sorted out who screwed up where. The good plays we don’t spend an awful lot of time on. The bad plays we’ll watch over and over and over again. Even when we win, our work week starts with negativity.

  Said negativity doesn’t stop there. From 12:20 to 1:40, our defensive coordinator uses an overhead projector to put up (for everyone to see) what mental errors were made the day before. Each call from the game will have a jersey number next to it, noting what each player’s mistake was. If you have two or three of those, it doesn’t go over too well. If a guy keeps making mistakes over and over again, that’s when the meeting room fights that I talked about in the “Footbrawlin” chapter may take center stage.

  How would you feel if you were busting your ass out there and every week the same guy screws you up? We get a tad edgy. Embarrassment is a powerful tool. The first couple of times, we’ll make fun of a guy’s play. When that doesn’t work, it can get ugly. We’ll take justice into our own hands and dress down a guy we feel isn’t pulling his weight. While some guys aren’t the brightest off the field, put them in a football environment and they’re brilliant. On the other hand, we have some guys who are brilliant off the field but are the dumbest jocks in the world when you force them to think football.

  Our first film-watching session of the week, which we do right after our first meeting, is when things get really hairy for the not-so-bright ones. The coaches break down your play in front of all your peers. They point out how much of a screwup you are, how you let them down. There’s a saying in the NFL, “The eye in the sky doesn’t lie.” If it happened out on the field, it’ll be picked up on camera for all to see. That’s when you hear:

  “Don’t get too comfortable in this town.”

  “You’d better rent, don’t buy.”

  “I’ll get someone else in here who can do it if you can’t.”

  By 12:40 we’ll break out of meetings with ten minutes to get out on the field to do something we call “on-the-field corrections.” It’s basically a walkthrough, a practice without pads. We line up into the same formations we just played and rerun the plays we messed up in the game. We have to show the coaches that we can correct our mistakes.

  I never understood this, since coaches preach how important it is that we move on from our losses, to leave them in the past. What’s the value in coming out onto the field and reminding us exactly how we lost the game? Still, they’ll go over each and every mental error we made the previous afternoon.

  If we lost the game, that correction period becomes really rough on the guys who the coaches jumped all over because of screwups. This is where the coaches collectively unleash their frustra
tions from Sunday. It’s more than just cursing at a grown man. It’s ripping the heart out of a player. It makes the rest of us uncomfortable.

  This lasts nearly a half hour. Once we come back in, we’re given access to the media or more treatment for those of us banged up.

  Monday. Short day, 8:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.

  Tuesday we have off. If you win on Sunday, some coaches might cancel Mondays. That’s why you’ll hear players chant, “Monday, Monday!” for the reward of a Monday off to go along with your Tuesday. Unfortunately our coach isn’t a huge fan of Victory Monday.

  Next we shift into what is by far the absolute worst day of my week. Wednesday. Terrible, awful, dreadful day. There’s nothing happy about my Hump Day.

  The day after the game you don’t mind coming in, because your body needs to move a bit. Even if we lose, the body’s joints crave a little greasing. Plus, on Monday you sometimes want to watch the film, especially if you played well. But Wednesday is awful. It’s start-your-body-up day. You get to work at 6:30 in the morning for treatment. On this day, you don’t want anybody touching you. Even stretching in the morning is difficult.

  I’ll hurt so much on Wednesdays, I’ll come to work thinking there’s no possible way I’ll be able to practice. I’m so sore, there’s no conceivable way I can move. How can I make collisions, feeling like this? Plus, the game is four days away, a million miles away on the football horizon. Three more days of this crap before I get to play?

  If you aren’t in by 6:30 for treatment, you’re fined. Remember that special teams meeting on Monday? We get another one at 7:45 while the quarterbacks have their own meeting at the same time.

  The first meeting on Wednesday lasts until 8:25 A.M., when we meet once again as a team with Tom and the coaches. This is when Tom starts going over our next opponent. He’ll give us an overview of next Sunday’s team and stress what they do well and what they struggle with. He’ll get pretty detailed with the statistics involving turnover ratio, when they win, when they lose, starting field position, average drive after kickoff, average drive of their opponents. Then he’ll go through their entire roster, accompanied by a quick highlight tape featuring their starters and other players of note.

  This is also when we get our playbook for the week. After handing in the old ones on Sundays, the rookies will then hand them back out with adjustments for the coming week’s game. Every single week our personnel department and coaching staff have to come up with a new 240-plus-page manuscript. Imagine working your butt off to write a novel only to have your fan base chuck it in the trash each week after a printing. The number of staff hours put into this book designed to be read for six days is preposterous.

  The stress on the family lives of coaches in our league borders on dangerous. Why? Because of these damn books. Coaches spend every waking hour breaking down film, formulating a game plan, rewatching tape and formulating more plans. That’s why many sleep in the office.

  Writing a 246-page playbook a week is just the tip of the iceberg. They also prepare practice and meeting schedules and break down film of our upcoming opponent’s past games. Some coaches will go and watch every single game our opponent played over the last year and a half. It can get that sick.

  To an outsider, the playbook looks as difficult to comprehend as a book full of Chinese writing. The day I retire, I swear I’ll never, ever, look at another playbook as long as I live. It’s as if we’re all caught in a sick, twisted, torturous Book of the Week Club where we’re forced to memorize a different and yet strangely familiar novel each week of every year. And some teams coordinators might go another hundred pages or so over the basic 246. It’s a grueling journal full of information based on one team we may not face again for a couple of years.

  You want to know how complicated these pages are? You really want an idea of just how dumb we aren’t? Each one of these pages would probably take the basic B-average college student months upon months to remember. For us? Six days. The very first page of our Saints playbook, for example, in preparation for Drew Brees, Reggie Bush and friends, had eighteen different headings that broke down small portions of their offense. Base defense is covered in four different defensive fronts, including zone blitzes and man blitzes. Then we’ll have nickel package coverages and a totally different heading for blitzes out of those same packages. Then there will be spaces for calls out of dime packages, red zone coverage, short yardage, goal line, two-minute drills, four minutes left and being backed up inside our own five.

  Sound complicated? Wait. The fun is just beginning. The pages get even more specific. It can get so complicated that even people who work around the NFL don’t get it. Perfect example, the coauthor of this book. One day Tiki let Jay Glazer study our offensive playbook—just the formations. No plays, just the names of formations. Three pages with six formations per page. He studied it with Tiki, trying to learn how complicated the coveted playbook is. The next day he went back to Tiki’s and out of the eighteen formations, Jay remembered five. Five! Stupid ass!

  One category on one of the pages in this page-turner deals with formations out of our base defense. This one category names the defensive front we’ll use in the base defense, naming the different stunts we’ll use to get to the quarterback or ball carrier.

  Under one category of eighteen different headings is:

  Over (TUFF): NAIL/FREEZE/TEX/NUT

  Under this we have four different calls. Let’s take the second call: 36. Under that call we have bullet points with our assignments:

  Mike make closed call

  Rob/Lee vs. all pro sets

  White vs. any slot sets

  Any C.O.S. motion changes coverage

  Even the words that seem to make sense aren’t what they seem. Mike is not me. It’s not asking Mike Strahan for the closed call. It’s asking the middle linebacker or “Mike backer” for the call. “Rob” is actually the word we use for “right.” Lee means “left.”

  Why we can’t call it right and left instead of Rob and Lee is beyond me.

  C.O.S. stands for “change of strength.” Thus if the tight end shifts from left to right, that changes the strength of their formation, which changes our coverage.

  The next page details nine additional calls. They have names such as:

  Over Tuff CL Zebra

  Under Tuff Sam Dog 1

  Okie Tilt FZ

  After Glazer struggled through three lousy pages of our novel, Tiki tested him on the formations Over Tuff, Under Tuff, Okie Tilt. These didn’t even include the second part, which is the actual call, stunt or blitz.

  As crazy as this all sounds, let me attempt to simplify it. When the call is made, I have half a second to decipher which part focuses on my assignment. Let’s take the second call of the three:

  Under Tuff Sam Dog 1

  Under is a front in which I know to line up with my inside foot to the tackle’s outside foot. Since it’s an Under Tuff, I have to shift to head up on the tackle after I initially start with my inside foot to the tackle’s outside foot. I start with the Under look outside his right foot to show their offense one look, but then have to shift head up. Sam Dog 1 means the strongside linebacker is blitzing.

  I know what you’re thinking. What the hell is this gap-toothed freak talking about? Is your head spinning so far? Great, because after a mere two pages, we have only 244 pages to go.

  The next page is a scouting report detailing tendencies, preferences, weaknesses and strengths of their running backs and offensive line. It actually details 104 runs by Deuce McAllister, including how many yards-per-carry he gained, how many runs went right, left, up the middle, off tackle or to the outside. There are additional notes about how he likes to hold the ball, which hand he prefers, how the offensive line sets on different plays and what the running back is looking at on certain plays. There are even reports on what the tackles do with their bodies to tip running plays and passing plays.

  The bottom of the page will list their five favorite types o
f runs out of a regular look and then the actual calls out of those runs. For example, their favorite run is called a Lead and they’ll run it out of I Flip, Pro I (Yo), Ace 2x2 Flip or Kings Look 2x2 Flip.

  You hear about coaches getting mad at a player for not studying his playbook. Now you can understand two things—why the coach gets mad and why the player doesn’t like to study it.

  After a run-game overview, we flip to page 4, where Brees’ game is dissected under our personnel department’s microscope. It lists his strengths and tendencies, how many balls he’s had batted down, where he’s scrambled in past games, directions of screens, bootlegs and rollouts. We’ll even scout his snap count, how it changes in different situations in the game. It’ll detail when he likes to pump the ball, where he holds it and if he carries it loose or tight.

  The next eleven pages has formations and plays we plan on calling against this offense. Each page has either two or four offensive formations they may use, and each formation shows a different responsibility on the play.

  Let’s show just one of these pages to further elaborate the level of difficulty and specifics we’re dealing with per page. The play we’re using is:

  Over Tuff Closed Zebra Zone “Y”

  Out of this one play they’ll use four formations:

  1 LT

  1 Slot RT

  Kings RT

  Kings Trips LT

  Let’s take the last one, Kings Trips LT, and break it down. Within the square are boxes or circles for each offensive player, then a letter for each of us on defense. An E means defensive end, S is SAM or strongside linebacker, FS is free safety and so on. But one box also contains an alert in the top right corner of Lou-Lou Closed LT.

  Under these formations are Tim’s overall instructions and they read: