He admires what he considered to be McNabb's high-road fortitude in 2008. McNabb had been derided by the press and fans. He even got benched seven games ago. He accepted it all without excessive protests and returned to the form that sent him to five Pro Bowls.
"I think he's handled it about as well as you could handle it. A lot of guys would have complained about, 'How dare you bench me?' " Strahan said. "They'd have tried to get the coach fired. Donovan said, 'I'll accept it like a man.' "
Strahan acknowledged that there was a change in McNabb, postbenching, that goes beyond his subsequent 97.7 passer rating - or, maybe, explains it.
"We talked about that last week. He's resurrected himself because he's having fun," Strahan said. "He doesn't care what people think about him anymore. You see him on the sideline now - he's dancing. He's laughing. Before, he was always on the edge."
Of course, McNabb isn't the only person Strahan speaks with. On Tuesday, he said, he interviewed the Giants' three-headed running attack. He routinely speaks with former teammate Jessie Armstead, now a first-year coach for the Giants.
He came away believing that the Giants, sputtering into the playoffs as the top seed, are comfortably insecure, in part because of the Plaxico Burress fiasco.
It isn't the absence of Burress that made the Giants vulnerable in December. Burress had been a disruptive entity and sporadic contributor this season, Strahan said, even before Burress shot himself in the thigh in late November and was done for the season.
