Michael Strahan, the Giants’ career leader in both games played and sacks and the NFL record-holder for sacks in a season, was today named as one of the 13 first-year eligible modern-era candidates nominated for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2013.
Strahan is one of 16 nominees with Giants connections from a list of 127. The other first-year nominee who played for the Giants is Morten Andersen, who was the team’s kicker in 2001.
Strahan played for the Giants from 1993-2007. He played in 216 regular-season games, nine more than any other player in franchise history (Howard Cross, 2007). Strahan’s 141.5 sacks are a Giants record and nine more than Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor (though Taylor’s 9.5 sacks as a rookie in 1981 don’t count in his total, since sacks didn’t become an official statistics until the following season).
In 2001, Strahan set the single-season record with 22.5 sacks. He was a captain of the Giants’ 2007 Super Bowl XLII championship team. Strahan retired after that season and is currently a studio analyst for FOX and recently became a co-host with Kelly Ripa of “Live! with Kelly and Michael.”
The additional Hall of Fame nominees with ties to the Giants are quarterback Phil Simms; running backs Ottis Anderson, Tiki Barber, Brian Mitchell (also nominated as a return specialist) and Herschel Walker; tackle Lomas Brown; center Joe Fields; cornerback Everson Walls; punter Sean Landeta; coaches Bill Parcells, Dan Reeves, Bill Arnsparger and Marty Schottenheimer; and former general manager George Young.
