Coulda Been a Cowboy: Michael Strahan Recalls Broken Draft Day Promise
Former New York Giants defensive lineman Michael Strahan ended his career as one of the most notable players in Giants history, winning a Super Bowl with the franchise and setting many records.
Strahan was drafted 40th overall in the 1993 NFL Draft after a successful college career at Texas Southern University. During his time in college, Strahan registered 41.5 career sacks. He was voted the Southwestern Athletic Conference Player of the Year and First-Team All-SWAC twice. In 2013, he was voted into the Black College Football Hall of Fame.
Strahan's collegiate career preceded an even more successful professional career with the Giants. While with the Giants, Strahan would register over 850 tackles and over 135 sacks, including an NFL single-season record of 22 sacks in 2001.
However, Strahan's NFL career nearly took a much different turn, as the Hall of Fame defensive end revealed that Jimmy Johnson, at the time the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, promised Strahan the Cowboys would select him on draft day.
"Jimmy [Johnson] promised he was going to draft me to the Cowboys and flew me to Dallas," Strahan said on Tom Brady's "Let's Go!" podcast.
Strahan recalls later speaking with Johnson about the broken promise in which the Cowboys traded the 29th pick (and the 112th choice) to the Green Bay Packers in exchange for Green Bay's second, fourth, and eighth rounders and an additional second pick previously obtained from San Francisco.
By the time the Cowboys were back on the clock, the Giants, who that year didn't have a first-round pick since they had exercised a first-round supplemental pick on quarterback Dave Brown the summer prior, plucked Strahan out of the draft class with the 40th overall pick, six spots before the Cowboys were back on the clock with the first of the Packer picks.
"I say to Jimmy, 'You lied. You promised me,'"Strahan said with a laugh.
In explaining to Strahan why the Cowboys decided to wait to get a chance at drafting the former Texas Southern defender, Johnson figured the defensive end would drop to the second round and still be there.
"He said, 'Well, you know I thought you were going to drop, and I can get you a lot lower--plus I didn't know you were going to be any good,'" Strahan recalled.
Strahan admitted that his life might have been "completely different" had Dallas drafted him, but everything worked out for him in the end.
"(New York) had been the best place for me, and it's a tough city to play in because of the pressure of everyday media, the scrutiny ... but, man, I was just so young and came from Germany. I didn't know. This is what I've got to do," he said.
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