He slung a few passes in training , watched by several thousand highly charged
fans, and admitted: “I really don’t know what I’m getting into.” Brett
Favre, an American football icon whose earnings exceeded $11m last year,
remains a country boy at heart, riding his tractor around his 465-acre farm
in Mississippi in the off-season, trimming the oak trees in between hunting
and fishing, arriving home just in time to ask his wife, Deanna, “Hey,
what’s for dinner?” and reading books with his nine-year-old daughter,
Breleigh Ann, into the evening.
His controversial trade from Green Bay to Broadway, a saga that yielded only
to Michael Phelps’s Olympic odyssey in its coverage by big-city newspapers
and TV networks in the United States throughout the summer, has recast
38-year-old Favre as the charismatic saviour of the New York Jets. The
longest championship drought of the nine main sports franchises in the New
York metro area - 40 years - has relegated the Jets beyond just bad to
irrelevant, and that sticks in the craw of the fans of a team whose star
quarterback was once Joe Namath. “ Broadway Joe shone because he appealed to
New Yorkers, with whom he resonated as a counter-culture figure out
promoting the virtues of random, anonymous sex, facial hair, and a stiff
Scotch,” wrote Will Leitch in New York Magazine last month . “Namath could
say things like, ‘I like my Johnnie Walker Red and my women blonde’. He was
a New York superstar. Nobody since has come close.”
Until now. Favre will embark upon his 18th season in the National Football
League (NFL) when the Jets play Miami Dolphins today at Dolphin stadium. In
addition to record totals for wins as a starting quarterback (160) and
touchdown passes (442), the unprecedented three-time Most Valuable Player
has amassed the most career passing yards (61,655), most career pass
completions (5,377), most consecutive playoff games with a touchdown pass
(17) and, just to prove that he is human, most interceptions thrown (288).
In a game driven by statistics, perhaps the most telling is the number of
consecutive starts he has made at quarterback (253; 275 including playoffs),
more than five seasons ahead of the next player on the list, Peyton Manning.
“He hurt his ankle pretty bad against the Minnesota Vikings in 1995 and nobody
knew if he would play the next game against Chicago,” Doug Phillips recalled
in a story for Sports Illustrated. “He was on crutches all week, doubtful
right up to kick-off. When he ran out of the tunnel at Lambeau Field, that
was the loudest explosion I have ever heard, and he threw five touchdowns.”
For Packers fans, Favre came to symbolise the spirit of an industrial city
where meat-packing plants and paper mills dominate the horizon. “People here
treat us like family and they care for us like family,” Deanna said last
year. That was before her husband had led his team to the National Football
Conference (NFC) championship game - one game away from the Super Bowl – in
which they lost in overtime, and before he had made an emotional retirement
announcement in March at Lambeau Field, his spiritual home for 16 years. “I
wish I had some big, dramatic, exotic reason, but I don’t,” he told his
friend Peter King, of Sports Illustrated. “I know I can still play but I’m
tired. Mentally, I’m just drained.”
So began the sometimes painful process that brought Favre out of retirement
and to the Big Apple, where his challenge will be to transform the fortunes
of a team that had a miserable 4-12 win-loss record last season. His hope
initially was to return to the Packers, but the organisation for which he
has been a talismanic figure named 24-year-old Aaron Rodgers as their
starting quarterback and stuck by the decision. Favre, who won a Super Bowl
with the Packers in 1996 before they were beaten by John Elway’s Denver
Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII, suggested that “a lot of things happened this
off-season, a lot of shocking things . . . I’ve always wanted to be a Packer
and I always will be a Packer”.
Reconciled to a trade, he set his mind on staying in the NFC North and joining
the Vikings. “That was the wrong motive, a little bit of my vindictive or
competitive nature,” he said. The Vikings happen to be playing their season
opener tomorrow in Green Bay. Finally he accepted the offer to move to New
York. “Most people think the odds are against me and that’s fine,” he said.
“If it doesn’t work out, so be it. I’m not here to become a god. I’m not
here to get trashed either. I’m here to help this team win. I still think I
can offer something to the game of football.”
For many reasons, Favre has become a larger-than-life American hero. A serious
drink problem threatened his marriage “but I quit drinking 10 years ago”. He
also overcame an addiction to the pain-killing drug Vicodin, and the day
after his father, Irvin, died suddenly of a heart attack in 2003, he
produced the performance of his life against the Oakland Raiders, passing
for 399 yards, throwing four touchdown passes and captivating a national TV
audience. “Brett’s done it all, but the moment that stands out for me was a
game against Tampa Bay,” recalled Mike McCarthy, a former quarterbacks coach
at the Packers. “There’s about a minute left and we call this play where, if
the rush comes, Brett’s supposed to checkdown to the back [a short, safe
pass to a running back as a last option when the wide receivers are
covered]. Tampa come with everything they’ve got, but Brett just stands in
there and throws a strike to Antonio Freeman for the winning touchdown, just
as half the defence hits him in the jaw. On the sideline Brett’s woozy, he’s
on oxygen and I say, ‘What happened to the checkdown?’ He says, ‘Dammit, I
forgot. But, hey, I made the throw’. That’s Brett Favre in a nutshell. He’ll
take the beating but he’ll always make the throw.” Sky Sports will screen
more than 125 live NFL games this season, including February’s Super Bowl
Out of retirement: the stars who couldn’t stay away
LAWRENCE DALLAGLIO
Announced in August 2004 that he would be quitting international rugby union,
but at the end of 2005 made himself available again for the Six Nations.
Although recalled, he was never a central figure in the England team, coming
off the bench in the 2007 World Cup final. He retired from Test rugby after
that, with the publication of his controversial autobiography
MARTINA HINGIS
A foot injury in 2003 forced the Swiss tennis star to retire. But in 2006 she
was back, saying: ‘Now the joy is back in my life, the hard work of
training.’ It didn't look like there had been too much hard work as she
failed to make an impact and was then forced into retirement for good last
year after failing a drugs test
MARTYN WILLIAMS
After Wales's shock exit from the group stage of the 2007 World Cup, the
flanker announced that it was ‘the right time to step aside’ last October.
Three months later he had been coaxed back into playing for Wales by coach
Warren Gatland and was one of the most influential players in the 2008 Grand
Slam. He may well figure in next year’s Lions tour to South Africa
SHARRON DAVIES
Swam at the 1976 Olympics, aged just 13, and won silver four years later, but
quit the pool at the age of 18 to pursue modelling and TV work. Davies then
came back in 1989 and won two medals at the 1990 Commonwealth Games before
retiring for good in 1994
