Gunslinger

by Jeff Pearlman

  There was also the matter of the now-released Pennington, who could not have been more beloved by teammates and coaches. “He was the best,” said Brad Smith, a wide receiver. “Chad was the kind of guy who had the guys to his house, who was all about hard work, togetherness.” Some of New York’s players first heard of the Favre trade as they arrived at Cleveland Browns Stadium. They were also learning of Pennington’s expatriation—their longtime quarterback was nowhere to be found. He had checked out of the Cleveland Marriott and flown back to New York. “I loved Chad,” said Chansi Stuckey, a wide receiver. “He was a great guy. But this was Brett Favre. It’s like, Carmelo Anthony is amazing. But if you have a chance to get Michael Jordan, you take it . . .”

  Favre arrived at the stadium roughly 45 minutes before kickoff. He introduced himself to as many Jets as he could, and took a moment to meet Nick Mangold, the standout center. “My hands are gonna be tickling your balls,” he said, and Mangold let out a hearty chuckle. Fullback Tony Richardson, 36 and in his 14th NFL season, extended his hand. “I’m so happy you’re here, Brett,” he said. “Because now I’m no longer the oldest guy.”

  A hastily arranged press conference was held in the bowels of the facility. There were 150 reporters, and Favre sat between Tannenbaum and Johnson. “It was manic,” said Peter King. “It was very intense and people were pushing, jockeying for position, trying to get near him.” Favre held up his new kelly-green No. 4 Jets jersey and grinned for the cameras. He was wearing a gray T-shirt and white baseball cap with a green NY stitched in. His face was covered by weeks’ old stubble, and he looked both tired and mildly confused. First, Johnson spoke. Then Tannenbaum conveyed his appreciation for Pennington and his excitement about Favre. Finally, the new quarterback of the New York Jets took his turn. “To a certain degree, I really don’t know what I’m getting into,” he said. “And I’m talking about from a team standpoint. What can I do in a short amount of time to get this team where we wanna go and get myself ready. It doesn’t matter what city it’s in. I’m here for one reason—not to do commercials and Broadway and all those things. I’m here to help the Jets win. And that’s why they got me. So . . . no offense to you guys . . . ladies, but the sooner I can get to that, the better.”

  Before the session concluded, Favre admitted that he would have preferred to be a Bear or a Viking. “Maybe that was a little bit of vindictive nature, or whatever, competitive nature, whatever,” he said. “I think in the end, that was probably the wrong motive.”

  After 20 or so minutes, Favre walked onto the field. He had a headset strapped over his cap, a play sheet in his right hand. He played catch for a few moments with Cortez Robinson, the equipment assistant, and spent much of the game alongside Clemens and Bubba Franks, the tight end who had played with him for eight seasons in Green Bay. “It’s a new system for him,” said Clemens, “so I’d give him the play and Bubba served as a translator.”

  The Jets beat the Browns, 24–20, and the ideal schedule would have Favre flying back to New York with his teammates.* That was changed, however, when the office of Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor, requested the new quarterback come to City Hall for an official welcome. Favre was told of the plan by Higgins and seemed agreeable. So he, Johnson, Tannenbaum, and Higgins took the owner’s private flight back to New York City. The Jets booked two rooms at a midtown hotel, and Favre and Tannenbaum arrived at approximately 3:00 a.m. Neither one had packed extra clothing, so four hours later there was a knock on the door. It was a man holding a large box filled with garments. “We’ve now spent, like, 28 straight hours together, I hadn’t slept in two days, and we’re rummaging through shirts and boxers,” said Tannenbaum. “I paused for a second and thought, I’m sharing boxers with Brett Favre. What is going on here?” Favre settled on a powder-blue short-sleeve golf shirt, khakis, and his old sneakers. Tannenbaum stuck with what he had been wearing for the past few days (slacks, dress shirt), but went with a new pair of underwear.

  “In hindsight it was too much on Brett,” he said. “When the mayor wants to meet it’s hard to say no. But we should have waited.”

  Together they took a town car to City Hall and entered the Blue Room, where they were met by Johnson, Bloomberg, and a monsoon of reporters of all stripes. “Just like home,” Favre cracked. What followed was an ode to awkwardness. Though a popular mayor, Bloomberg was both small (five feet eight) and a noted sports ignoramus.* Standing behind a podium, with Favre sitting to his left, Bloomberg read from a sheet of paper filled with prepared notes. “You are joining a team that won the Super Bowl with a quarterback named Broadway Joe,” Bloomberg said. “Now Broadway Brett has a nice ring to it, and . . . here’s something to make the name official.” He stepped back, turned around, bent at the waist, and handed Favre a green-and-white BROADWAY street sign, not unlike those peddled at Times Square storefronts for $5.99. “This is your very own street sign,” he said, then approached Favre. They initially posed with the quarterback in his chair, but Favre rose after the mayor softly snapped, “You better stand up and do this.” Of the 8,000 awkward and uncomfortable moments of Brett Favre’s life, this had to rank first. He was wearing clothes that were not his, standing in a city he barely knew, next to a mayor he had never heard of, accepting a street sign that would surely wind up in either a trash bin or a Jets intern’s man cave.

  Before Favre left, the mayor also presented him with a $4 MetroCard (“If you had picked a higher number,” he joked, “you would’ve gotten more money on it.”), a bunch of cheesecakes, a copy of his book, and an empty key ring.

  An empty key ring?

  “You win the Super Bowl,” Bloomberg said, “and I promise you will get a key.”

  Not that there was any pressure.

  24

  J-E-T-S

  * * *

  THE PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL franchise that would ultimately be known as the New York Jets came into existence in 1959, when the Titans of New York (as they were initially named) were chartered into the new American Football League.

  The debut season soon followed, and the team went 7-7 behind the mediocre quarterbacking of Al Dorow, whose 26 touchdowns were offset by 26 interceptions. Dorow was an interesting case—a journeyman who bounced from Washington to Philadelphia, then spent two years in the Canadian Football League before joining New York. After tossing 19 touchdowns and a league-high 30 interceptions in 1961, he never again played for the organization. Few seemed to notice.

  Four years later, a cocky kid from the University of Alabama named Joe Namath arrived in the Big Apple, and before long he was not only the talk of the city, but the most celebrated football player in America. Namath spent 12 years quarterbacking the Jets, and in 1969 he gained eternal fame for guaranteeing a victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III, then delivering. That triumph, the AFL’s first over the NFL, forever changed professional football.

  As far as quarterbacks go, that was pretty much it for the Jets.

  Oh, there have been some other OK players. Richard Todd took the team to the 1982 AFC title game, then threw five interceptions in a muddy loss at Miami. Ken O’Brien started for seven seasons in the 1980s and early 1990s, and even made a pair of Pro Bowls. Boomer Esiason and Vinny Testaverde had their moments, Ray Lucas and Chad Pennington had theirs. Overall, though, the Jets’ quarterbacking history begins and ends with Namath.

  Perhaps that’s why, when the Favre trade was consummated, the team’s loyalists responded as if they each individually won the $100 million lottery. Joe Namath had been a transcendent star who carried a team and a league. But Brett Favre was the embodiment of toughness. Now he was a Jet.

  “It was madness,” said Rich Cimini, the beat writer for the New York Daily News. “Total madness.”

  Favre made his Jets debut on the afternoon of Saturday, August 9, when he arrived at Hofstra University, home to the team’s training camp, a few hours before the scheduled 1:20 practice. On a good day, 2,000 spectators attended prac
tices. On this day, there were 10,500. On a good day, 30 credentialed media members might show. On this day, there were more than 100. The NFL’s website broke a sales record by peddling 3,200 Brett Favre Jet jerseys in a 24-hour span.

  He walked onto the field wearing a familiar red No. 4, and received a thunderous standing ovation. Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” blared from the PA system. One day earlier, the rival Miami Dolphins signed Pennington to take over as the starting quarterback, and Jets officials worried whether there would be some fan backlash. There was none.

  Eric Mangini, the Jets’ coach, and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer devoted themselves to making Favre’s transition as seamless as possible. Pennington’s game was predicated upon slants and quick hits. He was a soft thrower with a sniper’s accuracy, so New York’s receivers were used to getting the ball quickly and generating yardage via their legs. Favre was the opposite—big arm, deep routes, speed, and power. “On that first day we found 15–20 plays he was really comfortable with, and we started to build the system around those,” Schottenheimer said. “We had certain plays with certain names, and we changed those for Brett to things he already knew.” Favre was a crossword junkie, so Brian Daboll, the quarterbacks coach, created a book of puzzles that involved the team’s plays and left it at the quarterback’s locker.

  For New York’s pass catchers, the major adjustment wasn’t verbal, but physical. Although their quarterback was about to turn 39, with 69,350 college and NFL yards on his right arm, he still threw one of the hardest balls in the league. “It was eye opening,” said Chris Baker, the tight end. “I’ll never forget one of the first balls he threw to me—it curved in the air. I’ve never seen that before or since.”

  In particular, Favre sought out Laveranues Coles, the team’s ninth-year wide receiver and Pennington’s closest friend on the Jets. When he learned of the quarterback change, Coles fell into a deep funk. He and Pennington had been drafted together in 2000, and developed a genuine kinship. Coles was a moody locker room figure, but Pennington seemed to understand him. “Laveranues was a lone ranger,” said Chansi Stuckey, a wide receiver. “He wasn’t easy to know.”

  On their first day together, Favre tried breaking the ice. “I heard you’re not talking to the media,” he said. “I understand you don’t want to say anything good about me. That’s OK.”

  “It’s not that,” Coles said. “It’s not that.”

  “Look,” Favre said. “I’m not here to take Chad’s spot, or to replace him.”

  Only he was here to take Chad’s spot. On repeated occasions, Favre praised Pennington in the media, and expressed empathy for Coles’s plight. “I think he’ll realize, if he doesn’t already, that I’m an easygoing guy, easy to work with,” Favre said. “You drop a ball, so what? I throw bad passes. We’re in this together.”

  It was an uphill battle. Favre looked terrible on his first day, and confessed to thinking, on multiple occasions, that perhaps this was a mistake. “There were times in practice I was wondering if I made the right move,” he told Gary Myers of the Daily News—and the words rubbed many wrongly. “I think everybody on the team was excited to play with a legend,” said kicker Jay Feely, then in his eighth season. “But I don’t think the legend was very excited to play with us.”

  Favre made his first start 10 days after the trade, jogging onto the field at Giants Stadium for a preseason clash with the Redskins. A whopping 76,132 fans stood and cheered, and Favre later noted that he “had some feelings that I haven’t felt in 17 years.” On his first play, he took a three-step drop and rocketed an 11-yard completion to Jerricho Cotchery. The ball looked as if it had been fired from a bazooka, and as Cotchery bounded to his feet the crowd roared. Favre played the first two series, went 5 of 6 for 48 yards and a 4-yard touchdown pass to Dustin Keller, the rookie tight end. Afterward, he seemed happy for the first time since the arrival. “I feel like I’m a Jet, I do,” he said. “Does that sound a little awkward or funny? Maybe a little bit. Believe me, I feel very comfortable here.”

  The Jets were scheduled to kick off at Miami (and Pennington) on September 7, and Favre used the three weeks to adjust. He and Deanna put their 3,000-square-foot Ashwaubenon, Wisconsin, house on the market for $475,000 while renting a home in Morristown, New Jersey, an 11-minute drive from the team’s Florham Park headquarters and facilities. Breleigh, now 9, enrolled in school (her older sister, Brittany, was at college), and Deanna tried grasping the intricacies of the New Jersey Turnpike.

  One thing that became clear to teammates was that Favre wasn’t here to socialize and make friends. Just like Green Bay, the Jets gave Favre both a regular stall in the locker room and a back office (with a team-supplied desktop computer) where he could keep to himself. This was a request made by Bus Cook, Favre’s agent, and granted by an organization willing to do whatever necessary to placate a star. It was not well received. Behind their quarterback’s back, members of the Jets mumbled about unfair treatment, about a diva quarterback, about a revised definition of “team.” “I never actually saw Brett at his locker,” said Hank Poteat, a cornerback. “He’d come into the locker room, but then he’d go back to his area. I don’t know if he was trying to get away from the media or keep his distance. But we never saw him.”

  Said a veteran Jet: “I don’t think Brett wanted to be anyone’s friend, or be around there with us. If he had to talk to the media he’d come in the locker room for those 30 minutes, but then he’d be gone. Not once did he ask anyone to dinner, did he spend real time with people.”

  It presented an ugly contrast to Pennington, who considered the other Jets his brothers. As the opener approached, Coles spoke at length to some teammates about what was lost, not gained. Pennington was a Jet, Favre merely a rent-a-Jet. Pennington played because he loved his guys and wanted to do right for them. Favre was a larger-than-life deity brought here as a mercenary. Yes, he was a legend with a strong arm. But he was a Green Bay Packers legend with a strong arm. Local newspapers reported that Favre was “voted” a team captain—an untrue notion put forth by the organization. “We all knew what that was about,” said Thomas Jones, the star halfback. “It was because, how do you bring Brett Favre in and not make him a captain? But me and Laveranues were the captains of that offense.

  “One thing I’ll say in Brett’s defense: he was almost 40. Why would you expect him to hang with a bunch of 25-year-olds? Should the NFL be about the team? Yes. But it’s not. The people making the most money are made the most comfortable, and Brett was making a ton of money. Most of us understood what it was.”

  The Jets–Dolphins rivalry dated back to the days of Namath and Bob Griese, and it had been many things to many players. Heated. Intense. Rough. Dirty. Never before, though, had it been so awkward. “I think it’s disrespectful, and I’d be doing a disservice to my teammates, if I made this about me and wanting to beat the Jets,” Pennington said during the lead-up. “But I would be remiss to say there are no emotions at all.”

  Too classy to publically vent, Pennington didn’t say what was on his mind. Which was that he felt betrayed. Pennington had given everything to the Jets; fought through injuries for the Jets; provided stability for a franchise that generally lacked it. Then he was kicked to the curb like a bag of trash. “I hurt for Chad,” said Jones. “But it’s a business. Sooner or later, we all learn it the hard way.”

  Kickoff was scheduled for one o’clock, with 65,859 fans packed into Dolphin Stadium for what was surely one of the most heavily hyped contests featuring clubs that combined to win five games a season earlier (Miami had gone 1-15). With the arrival of Pennington, as well as a new head coach in Tony Sparano, the Dolphins featured genuine optimism for the first time in years. The Jets, meanwhile, hoped to be Super Bowl contenders.

  The temperature was 88, but the heat index made it feel like 110. Pennington looked weird in his turquoise-and-orange No. 10 jersey, as did Favre in his green-and-white No. 4. The Jets received the ball after the Dolphins open
ed with an unsuccessful possession, and Favre’s first official pass as a Jet was a 5-yard completion to Coles along the sideline. Later in the quarter, New York faced a first and 10 from their 44-yard line. Favre executed a masterful fake handoff to Jones, which caused cornerback André Goodman to mistakenly charge forward. The quarterback dropped back, waited, waited, waited—and uncorked a majestic rainbow of a bomb that sailed over Goodman and hit a wide-open Cotchery at the Dolphins 10. He ran into the end zone, and Favre couldn’t contain his jubilation. He pointed his finger skyward, charged toward Richardson, and leapt into his arms. The Jets led, 7–0, on a throw Chad Pennington never could have completed. “Our coaches told us all week, ‘Just keep running,’” Cotchery said afterward. “‘We promise he won’t overthrow you.’”

  Favre wasn’t done. In the second quarter, the Jets faced a fourth and 13 from the Miami 22. Mike Nugent, the kicker, was suffering through a thigh injury, so Mangini kept the offense on the field. Facing a five-man rush, Favre took the snap from the shotgun and drifted back. Defensive tackle Randy Starks broke through the line and seemed to have the quarterback in his grasp—until, somehow, Favre switched the football from his left hand to his right, stepped up, planted his feet, and launched a pass toward the end zone just as two Miami defenders slammed him to the ground.