Mark Gastineau forced a smile as he congratulated Michael Strahan for breaking his single-season sack record on the final day of the 2001 season. Gastineau, though, was incensed at how Strahan broke his record, and he let Brett Favre -- the quarterback Strahan tackled for the record-breaking sack -- know about it more than two decades later.
Strahan got the record after Favre (who was seen talking to Strahan moments earlier) slid right in front of him near the end of the game. As you'll see in the video below, Gastineau confronted Favre at a memorabilia show last year. Favre was friendly at the beginning at the conversation, but Gastineau quickly made it clear that he had a two-decade-old ax to grind.
"I'm gonna get my sack back," Gastineau told Favre. "I'm gonna get my sack back, dude. ... You hurt me. You hurt me. You hear me? You really hurt me. You hurt me, Brett."
22 years after losing the NFL single-season sack record, Mark Gastineau confronted Brett Favre for ‘taking a dive’ on the record-breaking play.
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Gastineau, whose 22.0 sacks in 1984 stood as the record for 17 years, feels that the NFL should have stepped in and disallowed Strahan's record-breaking sack to count.
"The NFL should have stopped that," he said. "(Favre) took that record away from me."
In real time, it was pretty obvious Favre gifted Strahan the record. But no one seemed to be upset by it at the time, including Gastineau, who displayed class immediately following the play.
Gastineau's record was eventually matched by Jared Allen in 2011 and surpassed in 2021 by T.J. Watt, who tied Strahan's record of 22.5 sacks. Ironically, the player who unofficially has the record is Al Baker, who registered 23 sacks in 1978 as a member of the Detroit Lions. Unfortunately for Baker, the NFL did not begin to make individual sacks an official statistic until 1982. (Baker's total was compiled by Pro Football Reference in 2021.)
The footage of Gastineau beefing with Favre is part of ESPN's upcoming documentary on the Jets' iconic "New York Sack Exchange" defensive line, a unit that included Gastineau, 2023 Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Joe Klecko, Marty Lyons and Abdul Salaam.
