That’s not how Tim Krumrie saw things.
“The computer said I was too short, too slow, and too light,” he said. “The only thing I could do was play football.”
What franchises failed to see was that inside, Krumrie was a violence-charged motor incapable of being stopped. Growing up on a farm in Mondovi, Wisconsin, he spent nearly all his nonworking hours either blasting people on the football field or slamming them into a wrestling mat. He competed in both sports in college, and was reliably terrifying. “I have seen some very, very tough and aggressive men,” said Kim Wood, the longtime Bengals strength trainer, “and Tim Krumrie is at the top of that list.”
After playing sparingly as a rookie, Krumrie emerged as the staple of the Cincinnati defensive line, starting every game at nose tackle from 1984 through 1989 while twice being voted to the Pro Bowl. How fierce was he? In the first quarter of Cincinnati’s 20–16 loss to San Francisco in Super Bowl XXIII, Krumrie suffered a severely broken leg when pressure caused the bone above his ankle to snap. He was diagnosed with both a broken tibia and fibula, but refused to leave for the hospital until the game ended.
By the third week of the 1992 season, Krumrie was 32 and a step slower than most of the linemen he faced. The Bengals were now coached by a newcomer, David Shula, and the rebuilding effort was underway. Krumrie was playing for survival.
The Bengals arrived in Green Bay on September 18, two days before the Sunday kickoff. At 2-0, they were a surprise of the league. These were the revamped Bengals. The ferocious Bengals. “We felt like we were on to something,” said Eric Thomas, a Cincinnati cornerback. “New coach, new attitude.” Green Bay, on the other hand, was a mess—0-2, coming off the Tampa Bay disaster, and playing behind a suddenly unhappy quarterback. Holmgren was not pleased with Majkowski’s publicly aired complaints of his benching against the Bucs, and especially didn’t like it when, in a meeting with NBC broadcaster Ahmad Rashad leading up to the Cincinnati clash, he complained that he would like to throw deep, but lacked “the horses” to do so.
Early in the first quarter, Majkowski looked predictably erratic. On a second and 7 he missed a wide-open receiver by throwing a pass that hit right guard Ron Hallstrom in the back of the head. “I think he’s tentative,” Rashad rightly observed. “I think he’s really not yet comfortable in this offense.” One play later, on a third and 7 from the Green Bay 38, Majkowski took a seven-step drop and the pocket quickly collapsed. He was slammed in the upper torso by defensive end Alonzo Mitz and ripped to the ground by Krumrie, who shoved Hallstrom aside, dove for Majkowski’s left leg, and rolled atop the ankle. Majkowski’s body collapsed as if someone had pushed over a bag of leaves, and he writhed in pain on the grass, facedown, hands clawing at the sides of his gold helmet. “I wish that play had ended differently,” said Krumrie. “I never took pride in hurting someone. That’s not the goal of football.” Nevertheless, a gaggle of Packers linemen charged Krumrie, blaming him for the eradication of their leader. “Majkowski is in great pain, Ahmad,” said Jim Lampley, handling the play-by-play. “As the scuffle goes on behind him.”
Majkowski spent several minutes on the field before he was carried off by a couple of trainers. Holmgren approached Favre. “You’re in,” he said. The NBC camera panned from No. 7 exiting to a young, cleanly shaved kid on the sideline, wearing a green baseball cap and tossing a football.
Rashad: “Majkowski now being carried off the field. I think that might be it for him today. And in comes . . .” (Two seconds of awkward silence)
Lampley: “Brett Favre.”
Rashad: “Brett Favre will be the next quarterback.”
Because Majkowski was injured on third down, Favre did not have to immediately take over. Green Bay punted and—with the defense on the field—he conferred with Steve Mariucci, went over the Bengals’ tendencies, familiarized himself with the secondary personnel. Cincinnati quarterback Boomer Esiason, however, threw a quick interception, and Favre entered the game with the ball at the Cincinnati 45-yard line. Lampley introduced him to a regional viewing audience thusly: “And here is second-year quarterback Brett Favre, out of Southern Mississippi by way of the Atlanta Falcons. He cost the Packers a first-round draft choice, they are hopeful he can succeed in the NFL.”
On the Packers’ sideline, safety LeRoy Butler was standing next to a teammate. “He said to me, ‘Is Favre ready for this?’” recalled Butler, who was a star on the Florida State team that fell to Southern Miss. “I said, ‘I’ll tell you what—he showed me in college he’s ready.’”
“We had won our first two games and they were putting in their backup quarterback,” said Alfred Williams, a Bengals linebacker. “We thought we had the game won.”
Favre walked nervously into the huddle to call a play. He was neither hung over nor drunk. Simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the moment. He witnessed Majkowski’s gruesome injury. The Majik Man would not be coming back. “[Brett] barely knew the plays,” recalled Jon Gruden, the offensive quality-control assistant. “He could hardly say the ones he did know. I wasn’t sure if he knew what he was doing.”
Favre’s first pass was a short completion to wide receiver Sterling Sharpe, and the crowd cheered wildly. Maybe, just maybe, the Packers would be OK. But for the majority of the remaining three quarters, the new quarterback performed terribly. He fumbled four times, blew myriad blitz reads, called some of the strangest formations Holmgren had ever seen. Once, while standing along the sideline, he turned to James Campen, a teammate, and said, “It’s good I’m getting hit like I am, because it brings you to your senses.”
“I was all over the place,” he later recalled, “like a chicken with his head cut off.” After three quarters, the Bengals led 17–3 and Lambeau Field was silent. “Dead,” said Butler. “Rightly so. We stunk.” Slowly, the Packers mounted a charge—rookie Terrell Buckley returned a punt 58 yards for a touchdown, and Favre capped off the first sustained drive of his NFL career with a 5-yard strike to Sharpe for another score. The Bengals, however, answered with Jim Breech’s 41-yard field goal, and with 1:07 remaining in the game, Green Bay trailed 23–17. “It didn’t look so good,” said Sharpe. “Rookie quarterback, losing, bad field position.”
After the kickoff Favre and Co. took over on their own 8-yard line. No time-outs remained. “Here, Brett Favre, you want a challenge?” said Lampley. “Try this one.” On first down, he dropped back into the end zone and hit fullback Harry Sydney, who gained 3 yards and used just six seconds before running out of bounds to stop the clock. Favre strolled up to the line for second and 7, took a deep drop, stepped, stepped, and launched a fireball to Sharpe, who grabbed it at the Packers 45, tumbled forward, landed on the 50, and rolled 4 more yards to the Bengals 46. Sharpe fell atop the ball, and as Favre sprinted up the field, the star wide receiver—a two-time Pro Bowler—walked hunched over in agony, pawing his stomach with his left hand. His ribs were broken. “You can feel the fluid in your stomach moving—it hurts that much,” Sharpe recalled. “I can’t breathe, can barely talk . . .”
On the next play Favre connected with Vince Workman out of the backfield for 11 yards, and with 19 seconds left, Favre spiked the ball to halt the clock. Sharpe, now barely able to walk, shouted, “Mike! Mike! I have to come out!” He waved wildly for a backup to enter, but Holmgren hesitated. Sharpe mustered a genuine scream. “Mike! I can’t breathe! I can’t move! I can’t do anything!”
The coach reluctantly inserted Kitrick Taylor, a fifth-year journeyman from Washington State who made the team out of camp based upon speed and special teams skills. Green Bay was Taylor’s fourth pro stop, but he had never caught an NFL touchdown. As he entered the game, Taylor was quickly stopped by Sharpe. “You gotta get it done,” he said.
“OK,” replied the soft-spoken Taylor.
The 11 Green Bay players gathered in the huddle. The play call was “All go,” where the wide receivers sprint toward the end zone. The Packers had a trio of wideouts on the field, along with tight end Jack
ie Harris and Workman at fullback. With the snap, Favre dropped back five steps, pumped once, looked to his right, and let loose a frozen rope to Taylor, who bolted past Rod Jones, the Bengals’ top defensive back, Somehow, the pass slipped between Jones and safety Fernandus Vinson, who arrived a half second late, and Taylor caught the ball in perfect stride at the 1-yard line and burst into the end zone. “It’s ‘Holy mother of hell! What just happened here?’” said John Jurkovic, a Green Bay defensive lineman. The crowd exploded as Taylor raised both arms to the sky, the ball tightly secured in the neon-yellow glove that wrapped his right hand. Favre ripped off his helmet, held it aloft in his right fist, both arms—like Taylor—thrust upward. He then fell to a catcher’s crouch, overcome by euphoria and disbelief. The standing ovation lasted for a solid minute, as Lampley screamed above the noise, “Number 85 is Kitrick Taylor, out of Washington State!”*
Green Bay won, 24–23, and afterward Favre—until this point relatively unknown to the local media—offered his special brand of country charm. “I couldn’t bear to look,” he said of the throw. “I just closed my eyes and waited for the crowd to let me know. I was shaking, put it that way. I felt like I took a laxative. Thank God I held it until afterward.”
The Cincinnati locker room was a morgue. It would be the first of five straight losses for the Bengals, and Krumrie, in particular, was crestfallen. He knew what it was to win and lose in the NFL, and how one crushing defeat could spawn a season of horrors.
“What I obviously didn’t know then is that my tackle of Don Majkowski kick-started the legend of Brett Favre,” he said with a chuckle. “I suppose I should take full responsibility for what Brett became. It’s only fair, right?”
Every week during the season, the Packers’ public relations department put out a news release recapping the previous Sunday’s events, as well as updating player injuries and offering small news tidbits.
After his magnificent breakout showing, Brett Favre very much looked forward to reading about his accomplishments. Then he took a gander, and noticed the spelling of his name: “Bart Favre.”
This was not the staff’s way of paying homage to Bart Starr, Green Bay’s Hall of Fame quarterback. It was an embarrassing screwup, one USA Today took delight in highlighting in Gary Mihoces’s Thursday notes column. Even with the big win and the miraculous throw to Taylor, Brett Favre was still Bart Favre, and “Brett Farve,” and “Bret Favor.” His name was mangled and bungled, butchered and bastardized. It was also, briefly, the talk of the league, what with Majkowski’s injury diagnosis (strained ligaments in his left ankle) assuring Favre a first NFL start against undefeated Pittsburgh. When asked by members of the media, Holmgren and Wolf said they were unsure what would happen when Majkowski regained health. But they knew the truth. Bart, eh, Brett Favre was, in this case, probably Lou Gehrig, and Don Majkowski was Wally Pipp. Green Bay was a franchise in rebuilding mode. Why not start now? “I remember after the [Bengals] game, I was saying, ‘This is our quarterback right here,’” said Johnny Holland, a veteran linebacker. “Brett was different than anything we’d seen. You pretty much could see that was it for Majik. It was over.”
Pittsburgh came to Lambeau Field for the afternoon game, and beforehand Holmgren invited Paul Hornung, the legendary Green Bay halfback, to address the team. As he listened to the 56-year-old Hall of Famer speak of long runs and glorious days, Favre found himself choked up. Twelve years earlier, as a sixth grader in Hancock County, Mississippi, he wrote a book report about Hornung. “Never in my life did I think I’d hear him give a speech to a team I’d be playing on,” he said. “Especially a Green Bay Packer team. Man, I had to pinch myself.”
The Steelers were 3-0 and favored by 3½ points. Favre, pleasantly naive, didn’t care. For the first time since college, he spent the days leading up to the contest practicing with the first team, and his confidence was, in Sharpe’s words, “really, really high.” The general NFL game plan against Pittsburgh’s high-level defense was simple: control the ball, and don’t throw in the direction of Rod Woodson, the NFL’s best cornerback. But in a surprisingly easy 17–3 win, Favre twice used his beloved pump-then-throw maneuver to burn Woodson for touchdown passes. One was a 76-yard beauty to Sharpe, the other an 8-yarder to Robert Brooks—the receiver’s first professional score. “One of the things that makes [Woodson] great is his aggressiveness,” Holmgren later said. “We thought maybe you can get him to bite.”
After the throw to Sharpe, Favre sprinted down the field and jumped atop his star wide receiver, slamming him to the ground. Holmgren threatened to fine his quarterback $5,000 should he ever deck a teammate again. “That was the end of tackling my own guys,” Favre recalled.
When the game concluded, a humiliated Woodson stood before his teammates and apologized. He had now joined Cincinnati’s Jones and Vinson as early victims of Green Bay’s rookie quarterback.
They wouldn’t be the last.
Favre Fever was the feel-good disease of Green Bay, Wisconsin, just as three years earlier the Majik Man had taken over the city. That’s the way these things go in sports. You’re high, you’re higher, you’re soaring above the clouds. Then (plop!) you’re back on the ground, covered in dirt and wondering what the heck just happened.
Enter: the Atlanta Falcons.
Favre’s second career start would come back in Georgia, against the team that let him go and the coach who took pleasure in mocking him. The quarterback pretended the game was nothing special, because this is what athletes are taught to do. Yet few men took greater delight in the Falcons’ 1-3 start, which included three straight losses and growing doubt that Jerry Glanville knew whereof he spoke. The Atlanta sports media had never much cared for Glanville, and now, in Favre’s emergence, they had new ammunition. The draft pick acquired in the trade was used to select (coincidentally) Tony Smith, the Southern Miss running back and a man who had already shown he wasn’t NFL-worthy. “He was soft,” said Glanville, “and he couldn’t play.”
Four days before kickoff, Len Pasquarelli of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a piece that praised Favre’s newfound maturity, writing that “the human laugh track/sound bite has discovered the serious side of football.” Favre went along with the narrative. He was reborn and appreciative; he committed himself to the game and to studying film. “Honest, I’ve changed my lifestyle completely since I came up here,” he said. “It’s OK here. It’s a football town. You could go places in Atlanta and nobody’d even know who the Falcons are. Up here, it’s ‘Packers this’ and ‘Packers that.’” The talk was ludicrous. Favre was still drinking and partying—only in a city where, unlike Atlanta, there wasn’t very much to do. If a teammate was popping open a beer, Brett Favre was nearby. If there was a club to hit, he was hitting it. Deanna and Brittany visited on occasion, but only for quick stays. Mostly, he was sort of bored. And cold. His car had already been towed from a snowbank. He’d replaced flip-flops with boots. He tried getting into bratwurst, but preferred the taste of crawfish. Had Brett Favre changed, or was it merely a new environment?
By the time Sunday arrived, Favre was just happy to stop talking and play. A loud 63,769 fans filled the new Georgia Dome for the game. That figure included 12 members of the Favre family (his parents, grandmother, aunt, and a handful of friends), who would be watching Brett for the first time as a Packers starter. What unfolded was, by most regards, the best showing of his young career—276 passing yards and a touchdown on 33 of 43 completions. But the porous Green Bay defense allowed Chris Miller to fire at will in the Falcons’ 24–10 romp. Afterward, the opposing starting quarterbacks embraced at midfield, Falcon cornerback Tim McKyer spoke of Favre’s passes “ripping the skin off your hands,” and a relieved Glanville told a group of reporters that he was “real proud” of his ex-player.
When conveyed the message, Brett Favre smirked. Having grown up in a rural community, he knew well the scent of bullshit.
The Atlanta setback was followed by a bye week, then losses to C
leveland and Chicago. The Packers managed a triumph over lowly Detroit on November 1 to improve to 3-5 (during which Favre suffered what appeared to be a catastrophic ankle injury, but continued to play), but fell hard at the Giants a week later (Favre tossed three interceptions in the 27–7 loss to New York), leaving folks to wonder whether a now-healthy Majkowski should return to his perch as the starter. It was a fair question, and one even Holmgren toyed with. The coach liked everything about Favre’s physicality, and he compared his toughness to that of a linebacker. But, man, could he drive a guy to drink. Favre seemed to listen. He really did. But then he’d take the field and do . . . stuff. A play would go left; he’d run right. Sterling Sharpe would be the primary receiver; Favre looked for the tight end. He sent halfbacks in motion without being told to send halfbacks in motion, and inadvertently called the wrong signals at least five times per Sunday. Sometimes his passes were more beautiful than a dove gliding through a soft breeze. Other times his balls resembled empty soda cans tossed into a stiff wind. Holmgren’s two favorite quarterbacks were Joe Montana and Steve Young, and while both had their own styles, they generally followed his instructions. Sometimes, Holmgren wondered whether Favre was listening to him talk or merely watching his lips move while thinking, Mmm . . . beer. Once, while the coach was trying to explain something to Favre during a particularly frigid game, the quarterback stared blankly. “Will you listen to me?” Holmgren screamed. To which Favre replied, “Mike, you ought to see your [ice-coated] mustache right now.” Sydney, the veteran fullback brought in from San Francisco as a free agent, was a Holmgren favorite, limited as a player at age 33 but trusted to teach the 49er way. “How you win, how you watch film, how you treat people,” said Sydney. “Everyone has to pick up the approach so there are no weak links. Really, I was there to help change the philosophy.” He found the early Holmgren-Favre dynamic particularly riveting, in the way it would be fun to listen to a Guatemalan and a Russian try to converse in Arabic. “Brett would drive Mike crazy, but then he’d turn around and do something amazing,” Sydney said. “It was a lot of, ‘Brett, what the hell! Oh, wait! Good throw!’”
Gunslinger Page 21