Cundiff Should Kick a 32-yarder into Strahan’s Goalposts

How many plays in Michael Strahan’s career did he have a direct influence on the final score of a game?

"Ask me how many points I scored in this victory!!!" - Strahan

In looking over his career stats, courtesy of our friends at Pro-Football-Reference.com (not really our friends, I don’t know the guys who run this but it seems like the chappy way to introduce their hard work into the blog here), Strahan has scored a total of 20 points in his whole career.  Three touchdowns and one safety.  Now these were not just regular TD’s scored by Strahan. Two of them gave the Giants the lead. One was against my beloved Seahawks.  I already forgot about it though, considering it was Christmas Eve-Eve and face it – 2001 really was a long time ago.

One of these scores even won a game for New York, in OT.

So after a few minutes of looking at Cundiff’s stats, I was rather impressed at his body of work in terms of directly influcing the outcome of a game in comparison to Strahan.

Cundiff has scored 596 total points with 132 field goals successfully kicked, and 200 extra points converted.  Through 2010, 38 of these field goals gave his team the lead, and 8 of them tied the game up.

So when I read on Deadspin that after his extremely unfortunate shank to tie the game up against New England this past weekend, Strahan called for his job.  ”I’d say, ‘If you’re back here next year, we got a problem,’ “ Strahan said.

76% of the time Cundiff steps up to the plate, he scores for his team.  If I could find the statistical analysis of played downs by Strahan and how many points he scored, or to make it fair, every time he sacked a QB or dropped a runner for a loss (NOT plays that DIRECTLY influence the score of the game), something tells me that Mr. Subway isn’t hitting at a 76% success rate.  Hell, I would even throw just any tackle into that mix, and he isn’t anywhere near 76%.

So Strahan – you were a really good defensive lineman. Some would argue that you were one of best.  But man, you must have been a crappy teammate.   I hope others had a problem with you in the locker room by letting you know that the 76% sack rate on plays from scrimmage wasn’t being met, and you were a failure.

Congrats on the game Billy, apparently it was just you that lost the game.  Not Lee Evans, or anyone else.  Just you bud.