“Brett was not a teacher,” said Hasselbeck. “I love him. He’s great. And I should have been paying them money for the honor of sitting in the meeting room and hearing them talk quarterbacking. But back then it was, ‘Hey, he’s going to win us a Super Bowl, and you’ll get a ring, too. In the meantime, shut up and listen and learn what you can.’”
Because no one knew Favre was crippled, no one cut the Packers (or Rhodes) a break when they struggled. On November 1, in a Monday-night clash against Holmgren and the visiting Seahawks, Favre tied an NFL record for quarterbacks by starting his 116th straight game—a marvelous achievement dampened by a pitiful 27–7 setback that dropped Green Bay to 4-3. The Packers lost to Chicago the following week, then suffered a 27–13 beatdown at the hands of Dallas on November 14. The loss was particularly galling, in that the Cowboys were without their three injured superstars—Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin. Jason Garrett started at quarterback, and his controlled showing (13-of-23, 199 yards, two touchdowns) was far more pleasing to the eye than Favre’s wildness and unpredictability (he completed 26 of 50 passes for one touchdown and two picks). From Favre’s second season on, Packers fans came to see the playoffs as an inevitability. The team qualified for six straight years. Now, however, Green Bay was 4-5 and sinking quickly. Sports Illustrated even featured the team on the cover of its September 27 issue with an accompanying headline, BOTTOMS UP. Wolf, the man who considered Rhodes the solution to the franchise’s fortunes, was bewildered by his coach. Where was the emotion? The passion? Mostly, where was the discipline? Many of the team’s practice rituals reminded Wolf of the dreaded Lindy Infante era. Jerry Parins, the team’s longtime chief of security, was hearing more and more weird things about Rhodes’s behavior, so he did some investigating. “Ray was going out to the casino, and he’d stay there until 3, 4 in the morning,” Parins said. “Then people would call me and say, ‘Your head coach is in the casino.’ Everything that year turned relaxed, and the players knew what they could get away with. I love Ray, but he lost control.”
Two days after the Cowboys setback, Brandi Favre was arrested for shoplifting clothing from a Dillard’s department store at the Edgewater Mall in Biloxi. It was Brett’s sister’s second high-profile arrest in three years, and while the two siblings weren’t overwhelmingly close, the headlines (BRETT FAVRE’S SISTER CHARGED WITH SHOPLIFTING) were bountiful and humiliating. “Whenever something happened to anyone in the family, it always went back to Brett,” said Bonita Favre, his mother. “It was never fair. And why should people have their lives exposed just because they might be related to a famous athlete?” Despite the distraction (Favre refused to comment to the press on his sister), Favre led the Packers to three straight wins (over the Lions, 49ers, and Bears), and on December 12 they faced the Panthers at Lambeau. With a win, the 7-5 Packers would close in on a playoff spot and continue to fight Tampa Bay and Minnesota for the NFC Central title. Lowly Carolina was not merely 5-7, but a warm-weather team. The temperature in Lambeau was expected to hit 35 degrees by the one o’clock kickoff. This was thought to be a pretty clear triumph.
The teams battled back and forth, with Green Bay’s porous defense allowing Steve Beuerlein to complete 29 of 42 passes for 373 yards and three touchdowns. “Some of their guys were so wide open, you could almost underhand them the ball.” said Butler, the safety. “It’s beyond me how we could play this bad at home.” Though far from perfect, Favre was solid, hitting on 26 of 38 attempts for 302 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception. His arm was as strong as ever, his accuracy sharp. “That’s the amazing thing,” said Hasselbeck. “Even with a thumb that most guys don’t play with, he was special.”
With four minutes remaining in the final quarter, Green Bay fullback William Henderson plunged into the end zone from a yard away, putting the Packers in the lead, 31–27. The Panthers immediately marched back down the field, and with 45 seconds to play, Beuerlein hit tight end Wesley Walls with a pass that brought the team to the Packers 5. It was now fourth down, and the clock was ticking . . . ticking . . . ticking. Green Bay held three time-outs, and as the time continued to dwindle Favre screamed for Rhodes to use one. “What are we doing?” he yelled. “What are we doing?” On the game’s final play, the plodding Beuerlein somehow charged through the middle and into the end zone. A silent crowd of 59,869 sat in disbelief as the Panthers celebrated a 33–31 victory. Green Bay had dropped an unfathomable three of four home games, and afterward a morose Rhodes admitted his mistake. “I’m miffed at myself about it,” he said. “I don’t know how much time I could have left our offense, but I was hoping to at least leave them something, and I didn’t get that part done.”
In the days that followed, Favre and his teammates spoke of a broken organization, and Wolf steeled himself to make yet another coaching change. It was an awkward and uncomfortable thing—firing the first African American coach after a sliver of a chance, with a marred quarterback and an aged roster—but Wolf felt he had little choice. “It didn’t work,” he said. “Sometimes you just accept that you made a bad choice and correct it.”
Favre’s statistics (22 touchdowns, 23 interceptions, 4,091 yards) were some of the worst of his career as a starter, and questions arose as to whether he was about to slip into inevitable decline. He was 30, hurt, and despondent. His quarterback rating was 74.7, ranking him 25th in the NFL.
Life wasn’t a movie, after all.
19
Chewed Up
* * *
ON APRIL 9, 2000, in the aftermath of the Waukesha Catholic Memorial High School senior prom, Jamie Gessert held a party at her house at 1809 East Bristlecone Drive in Hartland, Wisconsin.
On the surface, this was no different than the hundreds of other post-prom bashes that take place across the United States. A bunch of kids, laughter, some food, some alcohol, drinking games, hooking up.
The Gesserts lived in an affluent Milwaukee neighborhood, filled with large brick houses and $70,000 vehicles and adorned with elaborate walkways and swimming pools. Jamie’s father, Robert Gessert, was the successful 43-year-old owner of a Milwaukee medical marketing firm, and earlier in the evening he and his wife allegedly went out to dinner with their neighbors—a woman named Lynda and her husband, Packers tight end Mark Chmura.
The party had been largely unattended by adults. Then, at approximately 3:30 in the morning, Chmura arrived. He later explained he thought it would be “nice” to surprise the high schoolers (many of whom played football) with a pop-in. He was surrounded by the teens, who clamored for autographs and pictures, and tried impressing the attendees by prank-calling his Packers teammates. According to a complaint later filed, Chmura lathered in the adulation, then called out, “You call this a party? Where’s the alcohol?” The high schoolers, according to the complaint, exposed glasses of liquid they had been purposefully hiding. Chmura allegedly kicked off a game called, “the drinking Ping-Pong,” whereby the loser chugs after a missed point. The complaint stated that he appeared to be “really drunk.”
At 4:30 a.m., Robert Gessert announced, according to the complaint, that it was “hot-tub time,” and when several of the young women said they lacked swimsuits, he replied by saying, “No problem”—underwear would be perfectly fine. A handful of the females entered the tub, one of whom had worked as a babysitter for the Chmuras’ two children. When, according to the complaint, a teen started to vomit, the hot tub cleared out.
According to the babysitter, who was 17, this is when Chmura lured her into a bathroom, locked the door, removed her jeans and underwear, and forced her into sexual intercourse.
The following day, after the teen and her mother contacted local police, both Chmura and Gessert were arrested at their homes and held in Waukesha County Jail for 12 hours before posting $5,000 bail. Chmura issued a statement insisting he was “not guilty,” and looked forward to the day “when the public hears the rest of the story.”
Less than two months later, he was released by the Packers.<
br />
When the news of Chmura’s alleged rape broke, the dialogue among many who knew Favre well went thusly . . .
Thought: Was Brett there?
Reply: No.
Thought: Brett could have been there.
Reply: Yup.
Much like Favre, Chmura’s image didn’t fully match reality. In the unabashedly conservative Brown County (which included Green Bay, De Pere, as well as 22 towns and villages), he had been held in high esteem ever since, after the Super Bowl XXXI title, he refused to accompany the Packers on the requisite White House visit because he objected to President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. Chmura was a vocal supporter of Republican Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential run, was staunchly pro-life, and once told The Compass, the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, “Today’s society puts athletes on a pedestal whether we want it or not. I would not want my kids to grow up to be like Dennis Rodman or Charles Barkley.”
Meanwhile, Chmura, Favre, and Frank Winters were three of the state’s most prominent night lifers—drinking, dancing, partying their way from Green Bay to Milwaukee to Madison. They exercised questionable judgment, relying on the passions of Packers loyalists not to talk about seeing them out and doing . . . everything. Anything. Could Favre have been the one at the prom party, engaging inappropriately with a slew of teenagers? Saying things he shouldn’t have said? Doing what many referred to as “dumb shit”? It wasn’t hard to imagine. Like Favre, Chmura was known to embrace the action and, according to the New York Daily News, “made it no secret that he liked young, pretty women.”
“Mark was the most selective of the three, but when they went out it was to screw,” said a friend of the three men. “There wasn’t any ambiguity about it.”
That’s why, as Deanna Favre fought to have her husband distance himself from his alcoholic, playboy ways, she urged him to shed friends like Chmura. Which he did—beginning with the arrest. In the days and weeks after Chmura’s name had been dragged through the dirt and ridiculed by the nation’s newspaper columnists and talk show hosts, a long line of former teammates and coaches called to offer encouragement and support. It was the lowest span of his life. Chmura was out of work, out of career options, the target of headline writers’ cruel jokes. For 10 months, through rumors, jury selection, sparring among lawyers in the newspapers, and, ultimately, a trial that resulted with all charges of third-degree sexual assault and child enticement being dropped, Chmura waited for the call from Brett Favre that never came.
“He’s a selfish guy,” Chmura said years later. “He’s a very selfish guy. And what people don’t know, I’m not going to say this to throw the guy under the bus, but this is a guy from my arrest to my acquittal never called me one time.”
“I’m trying to give him space,” Favre explained when asked. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through. Several of the guys have called. When the time’s right, I will try to call him.”
He did not.
It was an awful way to begin a fresh season, one that brought the hope of yet another new head coach (Mike Sherman, who had been the team’s tight ends coach from 1997–98, then spent 1999 as the Seattle offensive coordinator under Mike Holmgren), yet felt suffocated by a pronounced darkness. On July 30, on the same day it was announced that Brett Favre’s Steakhouse would be closing its doors in Milwaukee because of dwindling business (Favre was a co-owner), a man entered the eatery, threatened employees with a knife, and ran off with several hundred dollars. A couple of weeks after that, Favre reported to camp. Usually, even if he were not in the mood to report, he put on a good face, a boyish smile, and regaled the media with stories of Mississippi summers. Not this time. “Football is a job [now], and it wasn’t always like that,” he said. “I knew it was a business, but it’s a lot of work now. I still enjoy it, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else, but it’s not like it used to be.”
Aside from Chmura’s downfall and the demise of his restaurant and the still relatively new (and not particularly easy to maintain) sobriety, Favre had reason for moodiness. Though he was happy to see Rhodes leave, the hiring of Sherman was hardly a birthday present. Green Bay’s new coach made clear from early on that his quarterback needed to change. Along with Tom Rossley, the new offensive coordinator, Sherman dedicated himself to adjusting Favre’s approach. It had now been two straight seasons of high interception totals, and the videos told the story of a man throwing blindfolded off the wrong foot with a gambler’s sense of risk. Specifically, the coaches wanted Favre to alter his decision-making process, to read plays more deliberately and freelance less.
This was, to a quarterback who prided himself upon thinking things up on the fly, sour milk.
“If the quarterback doesn’t believe in what you’re doing, it’s a struggle,” said Trent Miles, an offensive quality-control assistant in 2000. “You have to be on the same page, speak the same language. Otherwise, it’s hard.”
The truth is, opposing defenses felt as if they were beginning to figure Brett Favre out. It started in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XXXII, when John Teerlinck, the Broncos’ defensive line coach, presented his players with a PhD-level course on destroying Brett Favre. A onetime San Diego Chargers defensive lineman, Teerlinck had been coaching in the NFL since 1989. His two obsessions were trash talk and quarterback annihilation. Along the sidelines, Teerlinck—a mountainous man with short brown hair and a vocabulary dominated by “shits” and “fucks”—took pride in barking, screaming, cursing at the opposing team’s signal callers. In the lead-up to a game against the Los Angeles Rams in 1992, Teerlinck (at the time Minnesota’s defensive line coach) walked up to Jim Everett, the opposing quarterback, and hollered, “You better tell Mike Pagel [the Rams backup] to be ready, because you’re not gonna finish this game! We’re gonna knock your ass out!”
“Hey, screw you,” Everett replied.
“OK, Jim,” Teerlinck replied. “Just be careful along our sideline.”
In the second quarter, Everett ran out of bounds and into a sea of Vikings. “Hey, Jim, I’m right here!” Teerlinck screamed. “You fucking pussy! I’m right here!” Everett fired the football at Teerlinck’s face, splitting open his chin and receiving a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Teerlinck, blood everywhere, sneered giddily. “I hated Everett,” he said. “He had no guts.”
Teerlinck did not hate Brett Favre. In many regards, he loved him. The coach would sling trash toward the Packers quarterback, and be greeted either with a laugh, a smile, or some version of “You still talking, you fat fuck?” To Teerlinck, Favre was everything a team wanted in a leader. “You couldn’t rattle him,” he said. “He was so damn good. Usually we were figuring out how to rattle players. But it didn’t work. You hit him and he got up. Hit him again, he got up even faster. He was what I like to call a wild horse rider. They’d make a mistake, but to hell with it—the next play they’d bounce right back.”
If Favre was the NFL’s Moby Dick, Teerlinck was Captain Ahab. Before the Super Bowl, Teerlinck spent his days and nights charting every Favre game tape he could uncover. “I had 523 passes of his on one VHS tape,” he said. His binder was stuffed with charts, diagrams, notes, reminders. Some of the things he highlighted:
Favre doesn’t have a quick release: “Teams thought he did, because he threw so fucking hard,” Teerlinck said. “But he didn’t. So don’t think the ball is out of his hand as soon as he cocks his arm. Go after him.”
Be alert on the hard count: “He hard-counted mainly on first down, and he did it really well,” Teerlinck said. “Don’t jump on first down.”
When under pressure, Favre relies on the stiff arm more than any other quarterback in the league: “So when you go for the tackle, aim low,” Teerlinck said. “I’m not saying you hit his knees, but I’m saying he’s strong enough to push you away from his arm. So take out the legs.”
Dick, Balls, Muff: “Every quarterback in the league had language they used for the snap,” he said. “[San Francisco�
��s] Elvis Grbac was ‘Gilligan, Skipper, Thurston,’ [Buffalo’s] Jim Kelly was ‘Oscar, Noah, Preakness.’ Brett was unique. If he screamed, ‘Dick! Dick!’ the snap was on one. ‘Balls!’ was on two, ‘Muff!’ on three. He was a different kind of guy.”
Steer Favre toward Zone No. 3: “We organized the pocket in four zones,” Teerlinck said. “Left, middle, middle, center. If you could keep Brett in the third zone, right center, and get some pressure on him, he forced a lot of balls, made a ton of mistakes. So you don’t just rush him, you rush him and corner him.”
Ignore the Green Bay running game: “Insignificant,” he said. “Not very good, not very imaginative. You stop Brett, you win. So let them run, hope they run.”
Brett Favre will never give up on a play: “It’s a quality, but also a curse,” Teerlinck said. “He made some amazing, improbable throws, but he also forced stuff. So you have to make sure—make 100 percent certain—your defensive backs never stop coverage. Even if it looks like Brett’s down. Even if he is down. Don’t stop covering. Because a lot of times he’d throw it, and if you’re there you have a 50-50 chance of intercepting.”
The short-term result of Teerlinck’s Super Bowl preparation was Denver’s first championship. The long-term result was mass copycatting. The tape of Bronco pass rushers harassing Favre became must-see material, as did the vision of Denver cornerbacks glued to the receivers until the blowing of a whistle. “You can’t master Brett Favre,” said Teerlinck. “But if you do everything right, you might be able to frustrate the hell out of him.”
Sherman saw much of what Teerlinck saw—a quarterback slow to adjust to a league adjusting to a quarterback. “You can’t argue that Brett did lots of stupid stuff,” said Bob Slowik, the Packers’ defensive backs coach. “A hook-shot throw, a behind-the-back throw. Mike wanted to rein that in.” Sherman tried to impress upon Favre the importance of poise, of patience. He never called his quarterback out in front of teammates, but one-on-one urged better judgment. The coach was neither warm nor fuzzy. Directness trumped empathy. “He would really challenge guys to step up,” said Josh Bidwell, the Packers punter. “He had a way of getting to you, in a good way. You wanted to succeed for him.”
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