Last year, I expended a great deal of space defending former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and his various on-field/off-field antics. Note that I used the word “former.” Favre was always “hinting” that he was ready to hang it up since at least 2004, but I always took these noises with a grain of salt. This was a guy you couldn’t keep off the field, his boyish enthusiasm never seeming to run dry. I never thought he intended on retiring in 2008; he was just frustrated that the Packers management kept hounding him about making a decision “now” instead of letting him make his decision when he was damned good and ready to, preferably after the spring camps were over.
I sensed that Favre was of two minds about wanting to come back last year, despite the beating he took in the NFC championship game against New Orleans. He recently told a Buffalo radio station that after his enforced "retirement" from Green Bay, he had a chip on his shoulder to prove to the "haters" that he wasn't washed-up, but one suspects that there was some unfinished business to take care of--and it didn’t all have to do with having come so close to the Super Bowl. After the 2009 season, statistically his best, Favre was just shy of several as yet unreached milestones: 500 touchdown passes, 10,000 pass attempts and 70,000 yards passing. If he stayed healthy through the 2010 season, there was also the 300 consecutive games started mark. People might scoff at playing for statistics; Tom Brady may not, but Peyton Manning certainly is stats-conscious. You think Drew Brews wasn’t aware that Manning was going to break his single-season pass completion record of 440 if he didn’t do something quick about it? Manning completed 450 passes last year, but Brees put in a final burst down the stretch, finishing the season just short with 448 completions. Anyone who thinks that players shouldn’t be stats-conscious fails to take into account that statistics are the principle measure of the man; they determine how much money he makes and his longevity. They are also a sense of professional and historical pride; even a lousy player who played in only one game can proudly point to the stat line and say that he was a part of football history. The reality is that calling someone a “team” player is a euphemism for a mediocre player.
This year, Favre doesn’t really have anything to play for; after all, he has won a Super Bowl. Except for 300 career starts (he has 298), there are no significant career milestones for him to achieve. Of course, that doesn’t mean that some people, based on past history, think that he still has the “fire” to play. After the lengthy lockout, one or two commentators floated the idea that a few teams might be considering giving Favre a call. Miami Dolphins coach Tony Sparano did not specifically rule out the possibility of a Favre resurfacing on his team when asked, and ESPN’s Skip Bayless said on “Mike and Mike in the Morning” that he believed Favre had another year left, and that if he was Sparano, he’d make that phone call. Favre’s agent, Buzz Cook, said there was no foundation for such rumors, although Favre had made him look foolish before. A Miami Herald reporter, Jeff Darlington, was sent down to Hattiesburg to find Favre and discover the truth. This is what he found:
“His body moved slowly and gingerly, each step appearing to take as much deliberate effort as the next. Brett Favre didn’t look like a man capable of returning to the NFL on Friday…At one point Friday, Favre took a seat in the shade near a concession stand at Oak Grove High School, slowly moving himself to the ground from a standing position. Once he was back to the standing position, he walked toward a set of bleachers the way a runner might look on the day after his first marathon.” If that description was anything like the aftermath of my first “marathon,” Favre is definitely finished. I remember walking in a 40 kilometer volksmarch—a real volksmarch--in Augsburg, Germany when I was in the Army. Our company commander told us that if any of us completed the march we would have two weeks off from morning PT, which sounded like a good deal to me. The day after I completed the march I discovered why the CO was so generous: My legs felt like they were encased in cement, a condition which lasted for about two weeks. I had no fun at all (I had even less "fun" a few months later when I was involved in a jeep accident that had me laid-up in a hospital for a month; when I returned to the kaserne, I discovered that whoever did the "inventory" of the contents of my wall locker apparently thought that I would not miss the commemorative patch I was given for completing the march).
Favre looked flabby and beaten, according to the reporter. School officials said he hadn’t thrown a pass to high school football players as he had in the past. Finally mustering the strength to escape to his pick-up truck, Favre snapped at the reporter “I haven’t heard anything, and I don’t have any interest.” Of course, that doesn’t mean that if he had heard something from the team, that his “interest” would improve. But even if he was “interested,” Favre is apparently in no shape now to take the kind of beating he has taken for the past two seasons in Minnesota. It seems that we can now finally safely say the Brett Favre Era is over.
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