Mark Gastineau confronts Brett Favre over the sack he gave Michael Strahan in 2001.

YEESH. That was about as comfortable as Thanksgiving dinner 2016 with your liberal aunt sitting across from your red-hat uncle. You could tell we were off to a bad start when Brett went for the handshake and Gastineau didn’t even extend his arm. Gastineau was, as the kids say, standing on business. And it got tense QUICK.

Now a few things on this in no particular order:

• Mark Gastineau held the single-season sack record for MANY years. He piled up 22 sacks for the Jets in 1984. In 2001, Giants defensive end Michael Strahan was in hot pursuit of that record. It came down to the final game of the season with the Packers in New York. Late in the game, with the Packers on their way to a win, ol’ Brett took a dive and essentially handed Strahan the record:

• Apparently that did not sit well with Gastineau then, and it sat at a rolling boil for more than 20 years. Right or wrong, I can appreciate holding a grudge for that long.
• I’m going to tread VERY lightly with any shots at Gastineau, it’s been well documented that he’s battling several brain diseases that he attributes to his time playing in the NFL.
• I have no idea when this was filmed, everything on social media is made to look current, but this might be from years ago.
• Favre did address this on his Twitter page yesterday, it’s a long thread but worth the read if you find this topic interesting:

Anyway, credit to the true hero of this specific video: The guy with his face blurred out who defused the situation before we had two old ex-NFL players rolling around on the floor like a scene from Grumpy Old Men.

I guess I can sort of see Gastineau’s point, he’s not a HOFer (yet?) and his claim to fame was that record. Maybe he could have made more at card shows and autograph signings had he been able to keep that record a bit longer. TJ Watt eventually tied Strahan’s record in 2021, so if Brett hadn’t rolled over it would have been broken at that point. Side note: Did you know the Packers could have drafted TJ Watt? Rarely discussed!

PS: If I’m remember it correctly, was that Packer/Giants game not the rescheduled game because of 9/11? If memory serves, the Packers were supposed to play the Giants in New York that weekend, but the league suspended play for a week and moved all of those games to the final week of the season. Feels like a lifetime ago.