Strahan on Odell: I can understand

Hall of Famer Michael Strahan can identify with Odell Beckham Jr.’s recent plight, still believes in Eli Manning, sees a Giants team still “searching for an identity” and lacking a bit of confidence, and says there’s one good reason he’d never do an interview with Lil Wayne.

“Because I’m not cool enough to hang with Lil Wayne,” Strahan joked Wednesday.

Strahan, the Giant great hosting FOX’s Thursday Night Football package this season from both the streets and studios of Manhattan, discussed his old team and his love of his new role in a Wednesday conference call ahead of Thursday’s Giants-Eagles showdown at MetLife Stadium.

“If I knew it was gonna be this good,” Strahan joked of his explosive media career, “I probably would have retired before I did.”

STRAHAN ON BECKHAM’S RECENT INTERVIEW

“Well the team’s handling it as well as they can handle it. What he said, he said it, it’s out there, and so it’s nothing you can take back, it’s nothing he can take back. And I almost feel like in some ways I’ve been in Odell’s situation where you say something and you probably have the best intentions in the way that you said it, but at the end of the day it doesn’t come across in the way in which you wish that people would take it . . . .

“But when you do those things and it comes out, you do have to realize that if it’s not taken the way in which you intended, then you have to answer to it, you have to be a man about it, because it can’t affect your teammates.”

STRAHAN ON HOW HE LED

“... the only way you can become a leader in my opinion is when you have success. So you can’t tell guys this and that if you’re not having success on the field. But more so even when you tell guys, when you’re having success, it’s the way in which you say it, it’s the example you set every day in practice, it’s the excellence, the way you live going about your business, that people follow. It’s not necessarily the words. It’s you, as a person as a whole.”

STRAHAN ON IF ELI MANNING LOOKS SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT

“No. I think everybody wants to jump on the get-rid-of-Eli bandwagon. I’m not one that’s gonna do that.”