Giants legend Michael Strahan's single-season sack record has always carried something of an asterisk, but new research has shed further doubt on its veracity.
The sports statistics site Sports Reference, which runs the popular Baseball Reference and Pro Football Reference databases among others, announced in a blog post on Monday that the league's vaunted sack record in fact belongs to NFL great Al "Bubba" Baker -- or at least dating back to 1960.
The findings come after "decades" of tabulating unofficial box scores and even watching film of games predating 1982, when the league officially began tracking sacks as an official statistic, according to site user affairs coordinator Mike Lynch. The process of crunching the numbers was not unlike when baseball made RBIs an official stat in 1920, he added.
Incredibly, according to Pro Football Reference's findings, Baker set the league mark for sacks as a rookie with the Detroit Lions in 1978. The second-round pick out of Colorado State apparently recorded 23 sacks that season, which would best Strahan's record mark of 22.5, set in 2001, by a half-sack.
Strahan's record didn't come without its own controversy. The record-clinching sack came on a dubious looking takedown of Packers star Brett Favre, who was still very much in his prime then and not easy to sack.
None of which is to denigrate Strahan's greatness, of course. The four-time All-Pro remains in the top-10 in career sacks in league history, even after adjusting for pre-1982 numbers, according to the site.
For his standout rookie season, Baker was selected to his first and only All-Pro team, and was named Defensive Rookie of the Year. He made three Pro Bowls, and later played with the St. Louis Cardinals, Cleveland Browns and Minnesota Vikings before retiring in 1990.
Now, 30-plus years after Baker retired, perhaps a new generation of fans have become aware of his accomplishments in the game. After his playing days, the 64-year-old Florida native remained in Ohio, and opened a restaurant in Avon, called Bubba's Q World-famous Bar-B-Que & Catering. Several years ago, Baker appeared on ABC's Shark Tank, where his patent for de-boning ribs was selected for investment.
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