By: Justin Jacobs
I wasn’t planning on writing about Brett Favre today, but that’s just kind of the way it has always been with him, always expect the unexpected. For the past 17 years Brett Favre has been the most exciting player to watch in the NFL. His devil-may-care approach to playing and his child-like demeanor were infectious. You just couldn’t watch Brett Favre play football and not have a good time.
In a way, Favre’s retirement brings an end to my childhood. He’s the last player I can remembering watching every Sunday when I was a child. It was tough seeing the likes of Young, Elway, Rice and Sanders retire over the years, but it was reassuring having Favre throwing the ball around like an old school gunslinger. Favre represents the kid in all of us- someone who played football because he loved it, not for the money and all the dressings. The guy just wanted to get out on the field and play.
We also loved Favre as a person. I mean, we could relate to the guy. He wasn’t a perfect athlete, he couldn’t run the forty yard dash in under five seconds, but he knew how to win. Of course it helped that the guy had one of the best arms in the history of the game. He was the guy with the laser rocket arm before Peyton Manning was even out of high school. But Favre isn’t the perfect quarterback, and that’s what makes him so great. He holds the career touchdown AND interception record. For every time he would miraculously elude pressure and get a perfect underarm heave off for a touch down he would miraculously elude pressure just to throw a pick-six to the defense. No matter how many bad throws he made he would keep coming back, attacking defenses relentlessly.
For Favre, it wasn’t about managing games, a term that I’ve grown to hate, it was about going for it. In an era where every throw is scrutinized and charted, Favre just went out there and threw the ball around. Later in his career this probably cost him victories in playoff games, but he’d probably be the last person to say that he regrets that.
There has never been, and I feel pretty safe about saying there will never be, a guy who has played in as many consecutive games at starting QB than Favre. Since Brett started his consecutive games played streak, 409 QB’s have started in the NFL. 409! That’s incredible, it would be like me going to all of my classes at school everyday for year, only if I got the crap kicked out of me everyday.
A lot is being said about the circumstances that surround Favre’s reitrement. Did he retire because the Packers failed yet again to get him Randy Moss (or any big name free agent for that matter), or was he merely just worn out from 17 seasons of the kind of wear and tear that can take decades of your life? I’m sure it had a little to do with both. I don’t blame him if he was considering to keep playing- if Moss would have come to Green Bay. In Favre’s career he never had an elite reciever, he made a lot of recievers look better than they really were (I’m looking at you, Antonio Freeman), but he never had someone who could dominate the game from the wide-out position. Yes, Favre did have a talented team that he is leaving behind, but making it to the top of the mountain in consecutive years during this era of parody in the NFL is almsot impossible. Favre knows this because he’s seen just about everything there is to see when it comes to the NFL. Any Packer fan who wants to give Favre grief for retiring needs to look back to what he has done for the Packers’ franchise. He single handidly resurrected that organization, and carried it on his back for the better part of two decades.
At the end of the day, the highest compliment I can give Favre is to say that he made me want to watch him on Sundays even though I despised the Packers. When I watched Favre I wasn’t just watching number four for Green Bay, I was watching an icon, in that I was watching someone who represented something about all of us. He represented the genuine spirit of the game. He played the game of football with no fear, and he played it damn well. Who knows, maybe Favre will change his mind in the months to come and decide to give it another run. I hope he does, and I think the child in all of us does.
Cheers Brett…. and bravo.
Editors Note: This post is subject to change…. believe!
