Gunslinger

by Jeff Pearlman

  Four minutes after the Walls connection, Favre eluded the pass rush, rolled right, caught Buchanon twisting in the wrong direction, and hit receiver Javon Walker with a 23-yard touchdown rocket. “It was the worst game I ever played,” said Buchanon. “The worst. I didn’t do anything well, it was on national TV, I got lit up multiple times. Much respect to Brett, because he earned it. But I was brutal.”

  The greatest—and most divine—moment occurred midway through the second quarter, with Green Bay leading 17–7 and driving yet again. On first and 10 from the Raiders 43, Favre faked a handoff to Najeh Davenport, drifted right, and felt linebacker Napoleon Harris bearing down. He stepped and threw one of his trademark what-the-hell-did-you-do-that-for? bombs into the end zone, where Walker was blanketed by Buchanon and free safety Anthony Dorsett. Somehow, the wide receiver leapt skyward, extended his arms, and—in front of the two defensive backs—cradled the football for a score. It was the sort of throw a receiver catches 1 of 100 times. Again, Big Irv was somewhere. He had to be, right? Said Al Michaels, calling the game for ABC: “You bring this script to a studio and they throw it out. I mean, this is like fantasy.” In sports, much is often done to overhype a moment. Excessive adjectives, descriptions that aren’t quite right. But no extra oomph was needed here. Nobody could believe what they were witnessing. Favre completed 22 of 30 passes for 399 yards, four touchdowns, and no interceptions. That Green Bay won, 41–7, was an afterthought. The night belonged to Brett Favre and his father. Up and down the Packers sideline, teammates were in tears. “It was amazing, astonishing, otherworldly,” said Michaels. “I can tell you, my father had died and it’s what they call the sinking spell feeling. You looked at Brett on the sideline, and he was having sinking spells. But somehow, some way, he would wrap it up and get back on the field.”

  As the fourth quarter began, the Monday Night Football television crew concerned itself with arranging an on-field postgame interview with Favre. They were told beforehand that the quarterback would not speak. The words meant nothing. This was a special game, and it needed to be conveyed properly. Lisa Guerrero was in her first year as Monday Night Football’s sideline reporter. With the clock running down, she stood on the Green Bay sideline, angling for an opening. “He came near me to get some water,” she said. “I was standing right there and I said, ‘Brett, please, after the game, can I get one minute?’”

  Favre looked at Guerrero, whom he knew from past interviews. “OK,” he said.

  “Promise?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  Guerrero informed one of the team’s media relations representatives, who was simultaneously furious and powerless. As soon as the final gun sounded, Guerrero dashed toward Favre’s side. She cleared her throat, looked into the camera and spoke the words that had first entered her mind moments earlier. “It’s one thing to play with a broken thumb,” she said, “but another thing altogether to play with a broken heart . . .”

  21

  Heir Apparent

  * * *

  IN THE LEAD-UP to the 2004 NFL draft, the decision makers within the Green Bay Packers front office collectively agreed that it was time to think about selecting a quarterback.

  Despite the magic of Favre’s night against the Raiders, yet another season concluded with disappointment. This time, late in the fourth quarter of a second-round playoff game at Philadelphia, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb completed a fourth-and-26 pass to wide receiver Freddie Mitchell, keeping his team alive when hope seemed dead. Then, after the contest went into overtime, Favre lofted an indescribably bad pass that was intercepted by Eagles safety Brian Dawkins. Philadelphia won, 20–17, and Green Bay was once again devastated. “That game was a funeral,” said Na’il Diggs, the Packers linebacker. “Our funeral as a team.”

  In the weeks that followed, a battered Favre, now 34 and with 208 consecutive starts in the record book, broached the subject of his possible retirement. The topic had first been mentioned back in 2001, when he signed a lifetime contract that ran through 2010 and, it was believed, would result in him playing out his days as a Packer. Then in November 2002, he was pressed by Fox Sports’ Terry Bradshaw for specifics on any retirement plans. “You are going to finish this season out and you are going to play next year,” Bradshaw said—as much question as statement.

  “As far as I know,” Favre said, “I’m playing next year.”

  Now, with the loss of his father and the Philadelphia crusher still fresh, Favre again discussed the end, though in vague terms that resolved little. “The talk gets old and repetitive,” wrote Dave Lubach in the Sheboygan Press. “I personally don’t care to hear anything about it until he comes to the decision.”

  Hence, the commitment to draft a potential replacement.

  Having won 10 games, the Packers—selecting 25th overall—knew they were in no position to land either of the year’s two best college quarterbacks, Eli Manning of Ole Miss and Philip Rivers of North Carolina State. They also presumed Ben Roethlisberger of Miami (Ohio) would be long gone.* There was, however, one signal caller who both caught their fancy and seemed to be within reach. His name was Jonathan Paul “J.P.” Losman. Back in 1999, after being named a Parade All-American at Venice High School in Los Angeles, Losman enrolled early at UCLA, so he could set himself up to win the starting quarterback job as a true freshman. When that didn’t pan out (a shock only to the cocky newcomer), Losman transferred to Tulane University in New Orleans. He started two seasons for the Green Wave and emerged as a star. Like Favre, he had swagger, a strong arm, and boundless enthusiasm. That’s why, in the weeks leading up to the draft, the Packers asked Favre if he would host Losman at his Mississippi home for some bonding time. “It was two or three days of awesomeness,” said Losman. “It was a whirlwind of meeting people, hanging out, doing a little throwing. On that trip he gave me the best advice anyone had ever given me. He said, ‘You can’t be the best if you’re hurt. So the number one thing is to take care of your body and don’t allow anyone to take your reps at practice.’” Though he never mentioned it to the Packers, Favre found Losman insufferable. “Brett told me when J.P. got there he didn’t even shake his hand,” said Craig Nall. “He just picked up a football and fired it into a net.”

  By the time the April 24 NFL draft rolled around, the Green Bay plan was set. Losman said the Packers assured him, should he be available, he would be their selection. “It was just a matter of waiting,” he said. “I was thrilled.” The draft, though, is as predictable as a Tijuana cockfight. After using the 13th selection to take wide receiver Lee Evans, Buffalo traded into the 22nd slot, three ahead of the Packers, and nabbed Losman. “I still don’t get it,” said Sam Wyche, the Bills’ quarterbacks coach. “I filed a full scouting report on J.P., and he had thin fingers, thin calves, and when he didn’t see the primary receiver, he tucked the ball and ran. I said we shouldn’t touch him.” The Packers didn’t agree. A collective groan could be heard in the Green Bay draft room. Losman, too, was crestfallen. Instead of learning from the great Brett Favre, he’d be learning from a weathered Drew Bledsoe and the journeyman Shane Matthews. “I think about how my career could have been,” said Losman, who lasted seven undistinguished years. “Learning from Brett, seeing how he handled things.”

  Without Losman, the Packers settled on another year of Doug Pederson and Craig Nall as the backups, as well as another year of good yet ultimately unfulfilling football. Green Bay again went 10-6 in 2004, and again lost in the playoffs (this time in an ugly 31–17 setback to the Vikings in the wild card game). The season was ultimately forgettable, but also quite annoying. For the first time since he entered the league, Favre seemed to be taking near-daily questions about his retirement. Or, as a Winston-Salem Journal headline read, FAVRE IS ALWAYS ASKED WHEN HE’LL HANG IT UP. Perhaps, had he simply said, “I’m not retiring” the inquisition would have ceased. But Favre didn’t. Instead, he postured, mumbled, projected, rambled. “Favre’s refusal to retire retirement talk is not a
good sign,” columnist Mike Woods wrote in the Appleton Post-Crescent. There was something about the speculation that Favre appeared to enjoy. Which was strange, in that Favre wasn’t one to chase headlines. He never ran from the media, but he also never seemed to openly crave the spotlight. Now, he was craving it.

  In August he promised Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News that he would never—absolutely never—play for another franchise. “I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “If it comes down to that, I’ll just go home.” A few weeks later, he told a handful of reporters, “I have been through a lot. Most people would think that makes it easier. I don’t know that it makes it any easier, and I don’t know if it makes it any tougher.” Shortly thereafter, the Associated Press ran a piece headlined, FAVRE’S KINDERGARTNER WANTS HER DADDY TO QUIT. For some inexplicable reason, Favre asked Breleigh, now five, whether he should continue to be a quarterback, and—for some even greater inexplicable reason—chose to share the dialogue with the media. “I said, ‘If I quit playing, there’s no more football, there’s no more games, no more cheering,’” Favre said. “She said, ‘No, I’m ready for you to do that.’”

  It was the story of the up-and-down season. Would Favre keep playing? Would Favre retire? Favre aggravated an injury to his nonthrowing shoulder in a game against the Colts—would that impact his decision? Favre joined Dan Marino and John Elway as the third member of the 4,000 completion club—would that impact his decision? A poll showed Wisconsinites viewed Favre more favorably than either of the 2004 presidential candidates, incumbent George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Would that impact his decision?

  Finally, something happened that actually carried the weight to affect his future. During a routine August self-examination, Deanna Favre discovered a BB-sized lump between her right armpit and her breast. She paid it little mind, but two months later her gynecologist checked the growth and suggested—just to be safe—she see Dr. Lyle Henry at Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee. She underwent a biopsy, then had to wait a day to learn the result. “Brett called my cell phone every hour, wanting to know if I knew anything,” she recalled. “When he called around three or four in the afternoon I told him they were doing the biopsy, but I was sure it’d be fine, no big deal.”

  The following afternoon, shortly after 12:00, Deanna’s cell phone rang. The date was October 14, and Brett was at the practice facility preparing for the Lions; Breleigh was at school (Brittany, the oldest daughter, chose to stay in Mississippi for the entire year and attend high school there). Deanna picked up, and heard Dr. Henry’s voice. “Dear,” he said stoically, “the biopsy shows that you do, in fact, have breast cancer.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Just eight days earlier her 24-year-old brother, Casey Tynes, was killed in an ATV accident. Now this. Moments later the phone rang again. This time, it was Brett. “Did you hear anything?” he asked.

  Deanna couldn’t speak. “Oh, God,” he said, and mumbled something about coming home ASAP. Then, without prompting, he spoke aloud to God.

  “[It] would have to suffice,” she recalled. “I was too numb to pray.”

  Eleven days later, on October 26, the Favres released the news to the media. Deanna would undergo a lumpectomy and chemotherapy and radiation treatments, but was expected to make a full recovery. The next few months showed Deanna (and the nation) Brett Favre at his best. Not as a football player, but as a human being. Here was a man, who once seemed more committed to alcohol, drugs, and infidelity than to anything else, riding an exercise bike at the team facility while reading cancer brochures; a man reviewing the options, speaking with the doctors, trying to stay emotionally strong for his daughters as his wife went through hell. “He really studied it,” Deanna recalled. “He began to look things up and kept telling me what the experts said about various treatment options.” This was not the way Brett had been raised to be a man. In Big Irv’s household, the women worried about health and wellness and anything touching the emotions. Yet here he was, hands-on and vulnerable. Thanks to three months of chemo and six weeks of radiation, Deanna made a full recovery, and she regularly credited her husband’s support. On December 7, five days before a game against Detroit, Favre showed up for practice and removed his hat. His hair—brown and wavy just a day earlier—was now mowed into a crew cut. He didn’t announce it, or draw attention. But when a reporter noticed and asked, “Why’d you do that?” Favre smiled.

  “I’m gradually cutting it down,” he said, “so I can be like my wife.”

  “Look, it was cool,” said Dylan Tomlinson, who covered the Packers for Gannett Wisconsin Newspapers. “Really nice. But I think journalists make a mistake when they buy everything. My editor at the time asked me to write a piece about Brett Favre, the family man. I said, ‘You’re joking, right? After all he’s done to that woman over the years. Sorry, but I don’t write fiction.’”

  Because J.P. Losman and his skinny fingers and erratic decision-making abilities were resting on an icy bench in western New York, the 2004 campaign concluded with the Packers still feeling the need to find an eventual successor for Favre.

  Throughout his 13 seasons in Green Bay, an endless stream of quarterbacks had come and gone. Once, when Mark Brunell rose from the bench in 1994, there was a (relatively slim) possibility of Favre being replaced. Otherwise, every signal caller brought to town was there solely to provide support. Through the years, the men signed to back Favre had been a mixed bag of seasoned veterans (Ken O’Brien, Jim McMahon, David Klingler, Steve Bono, Tim Couch) and unspectacular yet useful youngsters (Ty Detmer, Doug Pederson, Craig Nall). Some, like Detmer and Pederson, turned into lifelong friends. Others, like O’Brien and Couch, arrived and departed with barely a shadow. “When you signed with Green Bay, there was no false illusion you were there to fight Brett for a job,” said Akili Smith, the Bengals’ first-round pick in 1999, who attended camp with the Packers four years later. “He wasn’t just the team and he wasn’t just the city. He was the state. You just wanted to hang on and hold a clipboard.”

  Favre was 35 by the time the season concluded, on January 9, 2005, with the wild card defeat to the Vikings (he played terribly, throwing four interceptions), and the long run, coupled with Deanna’s illness, had beaten him down. After the game, he was asked about retirement and again hemmed and hawed. Maybe. Possibly. I’ll pray on it. I think so. I think no. Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel became the first local scribe to push for Favre to hang it up, noting that the league’s second-oldest starting quarterback had to ask himself, “What motivation would [I] have to play a 14th season with a slipping organization?” Donald Driver, the veteran wide receiver and Favre’s friend, told the Arizona Republic, “I think he’s had enough. I really do.”

  Favre felt the call of retirement. The team wasn’t the same anymore. He was the oldest Packer by two years, and struggled to relate with the modern era of me-me-me football players. Where was Reggie White? Where was Jim McMahon? LeRoy Butler? Frank Winters?* The new kids were largely about highlights, headlines, attention. The locker room had once been a place of laughter and jokes and farts and stink bombs. Over the years, everything quieted. The younger Packers spent their time with headphones in their ears, listening to their own tunes while drowning out the world. No one went out after games. There was Xbox to play.

  As a greener man Favre had bounded from one corner of the room to the other, absorbing the flavors, the lingo. Now, fed up and no longer fully engaged, he chose to change with the coaching staff, in their isolated dressing area to the side. If he drove to the stadium, Favre parked his Ford F-150 in its own private area and walked in through a back entrance. When Mike Sherman came to Green Bay before the 2000 season, he envisioned working with Favre in the way Bill Walsh and Joe Montana did in San Francisco—a two-headed offensive football juggernaut. But Sherman lacked Walsh’s strength, and over the years he allowed Favre increased liberties. If he wanted to miss a practice? OK. Arrive a bit late for a meeting? Fine. Dress away from the teamm
ates? No biggie.

  Perhaps that’s why, when the Packers hired Ted Thompson as the new general manager that January, more than a few Green Bay executives hoped he would start by encouraging Favre to fade into the Mississippi sunset. A linebacker with the Houston Oilers in the late 1970s and early ’80s, Thompson was a seemingly humorless man who had spent five seasons as Seattle’s vice president of operations and, before that, seven years in Green Bay heading the pro personnel department. Bob Harlan, the team president, initially promoted Sherman to coach and general manager when Ron Wolf left before the 2001 season. “I wanted cohesion for the franchise,” he said. Harlan, however, was never comfortable with such a consolidation of power, and grew increasingly concerned as Sherman blew high draft picks on busts and floundered in drawing free agents. “The burden changed him as a person,” Harlan said. “He became very quiet, he ignored everybody. He would get on the airplane on Saturdays, put on earphones, and not talk to anybody. I made a mistake in giving Mike both jobs. It was too much.” So now Thompson was the GM, Sherman back to serving merely as the head coach.

  With the (admittedly large) exception of Thompson’s presence, the lead-up to the 2005 draft was similar to a year earlier. Once again Green Bay wanted a quarterback, but knew the two best available players (Utah’s Alex Smith and California’s Aaron Rodgers) would be distant memories once their slot (24th overall) arrived. Much of the attention turned to Charlie Frye, the Akron quarterback who gained national respect (and more than a few Favre comparisons) by starting nine games with a broken thumb on his throwing hand in 2002. Were he still available at No. 24, the Packers were likely to pounce.