Even as fans entered the stadium, Favre’s status was unknown. Then he was introduced as the starting quarterback, and ran onto the field to a deafening roar. With his hands held above his head and his right fist pumping, Favre charged toward his teammates, drugs flowing through his veins and no limp to be seen. The tape around his ankle was thick and cast-like. He could play, but not scramble.
In a shock to the man himself, Favre torched the Bears for a career-high five touchdown passes and 336 yards—including a 16-yard strike to Bennett in the fourth quarter that sealed the 35–28 triumph. Favre used nine different receivers, a drastic change from the days of Sharpe-Sharpe-Sharpe. Afterward, Bears linebacker Vinson Smith, who sacked Favre twice, insisted the quarterback and the team were lying about the injury. “There was nothing wrong with the guy from the start,” he said. “A bunch of baloney they made up.”
Not true. Favre was, in fact, hurt. He just happened to be hopped up on medication. When the game ended, he popped his ever-increasing dosage of Vicodin and headed home to Deanna and Brittany, both of whom he ignored. On multiple occasions, Deanna expressed her concerns to people she hoped might help, only to be met with general indifference. The goal in Green Bay was to win football games. Brett Favre won football games.
Gayle Mariucci, the wife of quarterbacks coach Steve Mariucci, asked her husband to intercede. It did not go well. “[Brett] blasted me for talking to Gayle,” Deanna recalled. “‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he told me. ‘I’m not on drugs.’” Sara White, Reggie’s wife, told Deanna that her husband tried speaking with Brett, but to no avail. Devoutly religious, Deanna asked friends to pray for Brett. It didn’t work. She reached out to Bus Cook, Favre’s agent, but felt brushed aside. When Bonita and Irvin flew in to Green Bay, she picked them up from the airport and mentioned her concerns. “They thought,” she recalled, “I was only feeling insecure.”
If Favre was addicted to Vicodin and alcohol, those surrounding him were addicted to the buzz. He was walking electricity—high on football, high on living, high on the chemicals filling his body. The media didn’t only protect him because they were beholden to Green Bay. They did so because he was neon copy. Favre’s weekly press conferences were the stuff of legend—part Huck Finn, part Winston Churchill, part Magic Johnson. “I started as a reporter when I was 19 covering the Indiana Hoosiers, and Bobby Knight would walk into a press conference and make journalists lazy,” said Lori Nickel, the longtime Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer. “Favre was the same exact way. It’d be 45 minutes of personal stories, football stories, bar fights. He’d tell you anything. You could pull up a chair and he’d ask you about yourself, and be genuinely interested. He was a reporter’s dream.” In most other cities, the stars were either walled off and inaccessible or walking clichés. Jerry Rice was a San Francisco prima donna. Troy Aikman was dull and guarded in Dallas. The Patriots’ Drew Bledsoe was friendly but bland. Falcons quarterback Jeff George perfected moody arrogance. Dolphin legend Dan Marino allegedly once said something interesting. But Favre’s warmth and aw-shucks Southern charm won people over. He remembered every play from every game, and was more than happy to break down the specifics. He never blew a reporter off, or cursed out an overly aggressive inquirer. There were hunting and family stories galore. The Superman tattoo on his left biceps? The product of a drunken night in Phoenix. The haircut he was sporting? Sympathy for a blind barber. The inappropriate weirdness of an NFL linesman asking him for autographs before a recent game? “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that,” he said, laughing. “He had, like, eight cards.”
“Brett was always interesting to speak with,” said Rachel Nichols, the veteran print and TV reporter. “He didn’t necessarily say the predictable thing. He refused to just give one-word answers.” When he was told that Andre Rison, the Cleveland wide receiver who played with Favre in Atlanta, dismissively referred to him as a “hillbilly,” Favre laughed and nodded. “No, Andre’s right,” he said. “I am.”
In the week leading up to a December 3 matchup with the Cincinnati Bengals, Favre was at it again. “There are some great quarterbacks in the league,” he told USA Today, “but I don’t think none of them are asked to do what I am. Troy Aikman’s great, but they don’t ask him to win. Steve Young? Great quarterback, but [the 49ers] won without him. Here, they ask me to win the game. They live and die with what I do.” Holmgren read the words and summoned Favre for a chat. Opponents read newspapers, too. Why give them ammo? The quarterback shrugged his shoulders, then went out and annihilated the Bengals with three touchdown passes and 339 yards in a 24–10 win. “Right now, Brett Favre is probably the hottest quarterback in the league,” David Shula, the Cincinnati coach, said afterward. “And they are one of the hottest offenses.”
Green Bay wrapped the season at 11-5, the franchise’s finest record in 29 years and its second outright division title since 1972. Favre’s numbers (his 38 touchdowns and 4,413 passing yards both led the league) made him the frontrunner in an MVP race with San Francisco’s Rice (122 catches, 1848 yards, 16 touchdowns) and Dallas halfback Emmitt Smith (1,773 rushing yards, 25 touchdowns)—a battle he won.
Although Jerry Glanville was no longer Atlanta’s coach and most of his old teammates were long gone, Favre took genuine delight in opening the playoffs with a decisive 37–20 New Year’s Eve thumping of the Falcons. Six days later Favre again played brilliantly, and the Packers cleared an obstacle that had long sat in their way, beating the 49ers 27–17 in San Francisco to finally reach the NFC championship game. That contest would involve yet another trip to Dallas, where the Cowboys (recent winners of two Super Bowls) awaited. Because the days between games can be uneventful, the media often looks for stories to fill blank pages. Here there was an easy one: Aikman vs. Favre.
Statistically, it wasn’t much of a matchup. Aikman’s numbers were fairly pedestrian (16 touchdowns, seven interceptions, 3,304 yards). He also happened to be quiet and somewhat demure, and as a seventh-year veteran his story had been told ad nauseam. Favre, on the other hand, was a beacon of big words and strong throws. He was new and fresh. Kevin Mannix of the Boston Herald detailed Favre’s rise from nobody to Aikman’s heir apparent. Jean-Jacques Taylor of the Dallas Morning News infuriated local fans by referring to Favre as “the NFL’s best quarterback.” Cowboys–Packers wasn’t merely a rematch of the 1967 Ice Bowl classic, it was a changing of the guard. Out with the old Aikman, in with the new Favre.
The Packers lost 38–27 in an entertaining yet ultimately fruitless battle. Favre played well, but the Cowboys were better. Smith, third-place finisher in MVP voting, tore up the Green Bay defense for 150 yards on 35 carries. The Packers briefly led, but they weren’t good enough. Favre’s three touchdown passes were a mirage that failed to fully disguise the fact that he threw two interceptions, was sacked four times, and hurried nine other throws. Afterward, he rightly called the loss a “step ladder—each year we go up another ring. This was one more step.” The Green Bay players were saddened, but not despondent. On the flight home, White, Butler, Favre, and safety Mike Prior found themselves together at the rear of the plane, discussing what went wrong. “Next year,” White said, “we’re winning the Super Bowl.”
Favre’s mood changed, from despondent to hopeful. “Hell, yes,” he said. “Hell, yes.”
15
High and Dry
* * *
LIFE IS DIFFICULT when people are fully aware of your struggles.
Life is impossible when you’re struggling and the world sees you as the luckiest man around.
This was Brett Favre at the end of the 1995 football season. Envied, but drowning.
On the outside, existence couldn’t be sweeter. He was the toast of the NFL—the league’s Most Valuable Player, the NFC’s starting quarterback in the Pro Bowl; boyfriend to a gorgeous young woman and father to an adorable little girl. Wrote Tom Silverstein in the Sporting News: “Brett Favre was one of the most sought-after people at Super Bowl XXX,
yet his team didn’t even make the big show. Favre has been as busy as a bee attending dinners and interview sessions . . . he is currently negotiating sponsorship deals for automobile, telephone, T-shirt, and shampoo products.”
Envied.
Drowning.
The Pro Bowl was held on February 4, 1996, at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu. Brett attended with Deanna (Brittany stayed home with Deanna’s mother), and the couple had a much-needed week of relaxation and five-star meals and walks on the beach. Removed from the hoopla, they were still two kids from Mississippi.
Their flight home was that night, and there was enough time for a final dip in the Royal Hawaiian hotel pool. Favre had a couple of beers, and the alcohol made him feel sluggish. He excused himself and retreated to the room to examine his drug supply. “I had about 15 pills left,” he recalled. “There were some Lortabs. Vicodins. Percodans. Tylenol 3.” Favre grabbed all 15, poured a cup of water, and swallowed. “By the time the plane took off,” he recalled, “I was already flying.”
The five-hour flight to Los Angeles was a nightmare. Favre badgered the woman sitting next to him, talked incessantly, paced the aisle, talked some more, paced, talked. Eventually, he rushed to the bathroom to vomit. From Los Angeles, the Favres caught a connector to Dallas. To this day, Brett Favre still doesn’t recall the three-hour flight.
Six days later, the couple traveled to New York for Brett to be honored as Best NFL Player at the ESPY Awards at Radio City Music Hall. For Deanna, just 27 and still relatively sheltered, the lights and sounds and sights of Manhattan were a huge deal. So were the stars attending the ceremony—big names ranging from Adam Sandler and Denzel Washington to Tony Danza and Ann-Margret. Deanna wore a new dress, new shoes, had her hair done that morning.
Dennis Hopper, the Hoosiers actor, presented Favre with his award to kick off the evening, and while his speech was gracious, the quarterback’s mind was on the bottle of pills trapped in the pocket of his suit pants. He sat through some of the ceremony, but at approximately 10:00 p.m. excused himself to use the bathroom. Ten minutes passed. Thirty minutes passed. Deanna seethed as Brett sat on a toilet in a backstage stall, forcing the requisite 13 Vicodins down his throat, then trying to vomit without making noise. “All of a sudden the buzz hit in,” he recalled. “I was back. I was walking around, talking everyone’s ears off.”
Brett returned to the table and slurred an apology.
“Why are you acting like this?” Deanna asked. “What have you been taking?”
“I took a couple of Vicodins,” he said.
“A couple,” she replied. “No way.”
“Well,” he said, “five or six.”
“How many?” she said. “Tell me the truth.”
“Thirteen.”
The boy she once trusted was a lying pill popper, as well as an alcoholic womanizer. He loved his Vicodins, and his beers, and good times with the guys, more than his girlfriend and his daughter. That night, in Manhattan, it was finally real, and Deanna Tynes was done. At the conclusion of Brittany’s school year, she and her daughter would return to Mississippi to start a new life. It was over.
Two weeks later, according to Deanna, God took a stand. On February 27, 1996, Brett was admitted to Bellin Hospital to have a bone spur removed from his left ankle. The operation went smoothly, and Deanna brought Brittany to room 208 for a visit. A nurse entered to check Favre’s IV, and he rolled his eyes toward his wife—a nod to his hatred of needles. Then he rolled his eyes again. But differently. His legs began to tremble, followed by his arms. His teeth gnashed together, then his body went hard and straight. He was having a seizure. “Get his tongue!” Deanna screamed. “Don’t let him swallow his tongue!” The nurse charged forward, and Deanna removed Brittany from the room, but not before the little girl asked, “Is he going to die, Mommy?”
He didn’t die. One of the first faces he saw after regaining consciousness was that of John Gray, the Packers associate team physician. “You’ve just suffered a seizure, Brett,” he said. “People can die from those.” Tests were run, and the results showed that Brett Favre—reigning NFL MVP, only 26 years old—had a toxic liver.
The apparent culprit: Vicodin.
“All sorts of crazy things were racing through my mind,” Favre recalled. “Was I going to have these the rest of my life? Did I screw up my body with the Vicodin? I’d be lying if I said the seizure didn’t scare me. It scared the hell out of me. Right then I decided I better tell the doctors exactly what I had been doing.”
He traveled to Chicago to meet with four league-appointed doctors, and over the course of an hour was asked a series of questions. “We know you’re addicted to painkillers,” a doctor told him, “and we think you have a drinking problem, too.”
Favre understood the Vicodin part. But alcohol? He could have a beer with dinner, he could have a 12 pack with the guys. Drinking made him feel happy and loose. Plus, it wasn’t illegal. So what difference did it make? The doctors suggested that Favre go away for treatment. There was this place the NFL recommended, the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. It was excellent and . . .
“Thanks,” Favre said, “but no thanks.”
As far as he was concerned, the whole Vicodin ordeal was over. He made appointments with a pair of neurologists, both of whom explained the seizure could not have been caused by the drug abuse. “They said the odds of me having another seizure were almost nonexistent,” he recalled. “That reassured me.”
The NFL was unmoved. The league told Favre he either report for treatment and sign the league’s 10-part treatment plan or be fined four weeks’ pay—roughly $900,000. Ultimately, he acquiesced to the league’s demands, but begrudgingly. The call home to his parents was a low point. “After he told us I sat back on the porch and cried,” said Bonita Favre.
Favre met with Mike Holmgren, who was shocked to learn of his quarterback’s troubles, and Wolf, somewhat less shocked. The men wanted to know which teammates had hooked Favre up with the Vicodin—information he refused to divulge. “It doesn’t even work that way,” said John Jurkovic, the Packers lineman and one of the many players who slipped Favre extra pills. “If the guy needed a couple, fuck it—I gave it to him. But that didn’t make me unique. Vicodin was everywhere. If you needed it, you could get it. We shared. All teams shared. It wasn’t some underground network. We played a game with a lot of pain.” Under NFL policy, Favre did not have to speak to the media about his rehabilitation. He could have left for the month and nobody would have known. That struck Holmgren as unwise. Favre was a superstar. Somebody would find out.
The press conference was held on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 14, inside the media hall at Lambeau Field. As the reporters filed in, Favre went over the prepared statement written for him by the Green Bay media relations team. It was direct and to the point (“My main objective is to get better for myself and my family . . .”) and largely nonsense. Favre said he looked forward to getting treatment, and that he thought “that the best thing to do was seek help.” He also mentioned the seizure, implying that it was caused by the Vicodin. Which he didn’t believe to be true.
Holmgren added to the ridiculousness, noting (erroneously) that Favre “voluntarily referred himself to the league’s doctors.” He called his quarterback courageous for facing drug addiction head-on, failing to note that he didn’t think he needed to face drug addiction at all. Favre spoke clearly, and Deanna—identified as his fiancée—stood by his side. They were both positioned behind a podium, and no one could see their legs shaking. “It came across like Brett stepped up and turned himself in,” said Lance Lopes, the team’s general counsel. “That’s how it was reported, and it’s still incredible nobody got it right.”
Members of the Packers watched Favre’s press conference with a combination of disgust and anger. They felt as if the team had sold Brett Favre out in the name of cheap publicity points—“It was, ‘Look, we’re handling this right! Look how wonderful we are!’” said Darius Holland, a Green Ba
y defensive tackle. “It made it very clear to all of us that we should never show weakness, especially in the areas of alcohol and drugs. From that point on, if I ever went to a doctor for help I told him, directly, ‘If this makes the papers, I’m suing you.’”
Brett Favre arrived in Topeka the morning after the press conference. He flew via a private plane and was accompanied by Bus Cook, Deanna, Brittany, and a babysitter. He ordered some pizzas for the hour-long flight, but nobody was hungry. His attitude, understandably, was awful. This would be six weeks of hell, and Favre wanted no part of it. The Menninger Clinic’s mission statement explained that it was dedicated to treating individuals with “mood, personality, anxiety, and addictive disorders”—none of which Favre thought he had. He was embarrassed. “People look at me and say, ‘I’d love to be that guy,’” he told Sports Illustrated hours before departing for Kansas. “I’m entering a treatment center. Would they love that?”
A clinic representative picked him up at the airport and drove him to Menninger. He was shown to his tiny room, which included a small bed, a couch, a desk, and a telephone jack.
He thought the worst.
He experienced the best.
Rehab wasn’t half bad. The food was healthy and tasty. There was a gym filled with workout equipment. “Every morning I would get up at 7, do 50 pushups and 100 sit-ups, go for a three-mile run, and hit the gym,” he recalled. “When I first got there I could barely touch a 10-foot basketball rim. When I left, I was dunking a basketball. My vertical had increased by six inches.” It helped that among his fellow attendees were six or seven other NFL players. One, a former Dallas Cowboys defensive back named Clayton Holmes, said he ran some routes for Brett during downtime. “The experience probably brought the football players together,” Holmes said. “Brett was very humble, very down to earth.”
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