A COUPLE ESPN INSIDER ARTICLES for your viewing
Favre still sorting through 2006 plansBy Chris Mortensen
ESPN.com
Archive
Brett Favre was looking like, well, Brett Favre the last time I saw him almost three months ago. He had his usual facial stubble, his hair cropped close to his scalp and his clothing was Mississippi casual. He always has seemed about as comfortable in his own skin as anyone I've encountered in sports. He was very comfortable on this particular Sunday night in late January.
The Green Bay Packers quarterback had arrived at the office of his agent, James "Bus" Cook, for an interview he agreed to for a Super Bowl feature ESPN was producing on Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren, Favre's former mentor in Green Bay.
But Brett and I both knew there would be some questions asked about his future. Actually, I didn't even wait until we sat down to do the interview.
"So, if you quit," I asked, "what are you going to do for the rest of your life? Be Brett Favre?"
Favre gave me that familiar devious pursed-lips grin and said, "How 'bout being Dandy Don?"
It was an intriguing response and even revealed a little creative genius. "Dandy" Don Meredith was the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who brought a folksy, comedic presence to ABC's original Monday Night Football booth.
If anybody is capable of reincarnating Dandy Don's transition away from the football field, it's Favre. Certainly, Brett also has some Terry Bradshaw in him, no coincidence when you consider the two Southern-bred quarterbacks are good pals. They are tied to NFL lore not just by infectious quick-witted personalities but by their God-given ability to throw the football with just about more RPMs than anybody this side of John Elway.
Still armed
Favre still has the arm but clearly he was wrestling with whether he still had the desire to play football. He knew that the 2005 season had taken the fun out of the game for him, leaving his football soul almost as drained as his human soul, which had been wounded by the well-documented tragedies in his family life.
Brett Favre threw a career high 29 interceptions last season.Favre threw 29 interceptions last season when the Packers went 4-12. Yes, his arm was still live. But he was playing with a roster that was so decimated by free agency and injuries that it left former Packers general manager Ron Wolf, the man who brought Favre to Green Bay, wondering in disgust how Favre was playing with guys who couldn't make NFL Europe rosters.
Off camera, Favre confessed that there were many Sundays and Mondays in '05 on which the Packers were scheduled to play in late, prime-time games when he sat around, repeatedly looking at his watch and wishing the game would arrive more quickly so that he could be finished with it.
In that January interview, Favre also said something that shocked the football nation when he said he honestly could not say whether he still wanted the football with two minutes left on the clock and the game on the line. For almost all who heard those words, it was over for Favre. It was quarterback blasphemy.
What Brett really meant is that he wasn't sure he wanted the ball in crunch time with no weapons and some shaky blockers to pull it off. In truth, it was a veiled statement of what all quarterbacks and all fans should never forget: Football is the ultimate team game. Without a competitive team, crunch time meant Favre would be crunched instead of crunching his opponents. You can only take so many blows before you either get knocked out or find yourself privately hoping somebody stops the fight.
Favre even alluded back in January that the Packers could make his decision easy by just releasing him. Was it his secret wish? Maybe, but in recent weeks as everyone grew impatient waiting for his decision he has teased the media with his cutting wit by asking again, "What are they going to do, release me?"
Favre has been waiting for the Packers to give him some hope. He even told general manager Ted Thompson that he'd come back instantly if the team would sign controversial wide receiver Terrell Owens. He wanted to see the Packers -- a huge revenue team despite their small-market status -- spend some of that $30 million of salary cap space on some quality blockers and, if not Owens, somebody else who could catch the ball in crunch time.
Thompson, one year into his job as the Packers GM, didn't want to swerve from his philosophy that the foundation of building a team is done through the draft first and then complemented by a key free agent signing or two and maybe a trade like his mentor, Wolf, had pulled off during Favre's heyday. Favre himself noted the free-agent signing of the late, great Reggie White as the catalyst to the team's Super Bowl runs.
White was seen as the big missing piece of a puzzle that was almost complete. Thompson's relative inaction on the free-agent market could be his silent statement that Green Bay's current puzzle is far from finished. In other words, the Packers aren't one big free-agent signing away from the Super Bowl.
Thompson also is starting a new era of sorts with the firing of Mike Sherman and hiring of Mike McCarthy, who was Favre's quarterback coach in 1999. McCarthy would keep the Packers' West Coast offense but would instill some of his blue-collar mentality honed from his western Pennsylvania roots.
Favre has remained relentless, though, in communicating his desires to Thompson and McCarthy over the past two months: Get me some help and I'll play, the quarterback said. The desire was finally there again.
"If I knew for sure we can compete for a playoff spot, I'd come back," said Favre, even back in January.
The thought of playing for a non-competitive team poisoned his imagination.
"The last thing I want is to come back and wake up after the third game of the ['06] season and wonder, 'Why did I do this?'" said Favre.
As the Packers and Favre have delayed a $3 million roster bonus three times so the quarterback could be at peace with his decision, McCarthy's telephone conversations had a common theme. He asked Favre to trust that the coach and the GM knew what they were doing, that the team would be better via a few free agent pickups -- like signing defensive tackle Ryan Pickett -- the draft and the return to health of key players such as running backs Ahman Green and Najeh Davenport, as well as wide receiver Javon Walker, despite Walker's declaration that he wants out of Green Bay.
McCarthy had his lengthiest conversation with Favre last week. The coach reiterated another theme -- that he believed Favre had the most fun playing the game when football was simple. McCarthy said the Packers would be simple. They would run the ball, play solid defense and Favre wouldn't be asked to do more than what was humanly possible.
Decision time?
Obviously, a decision is coming and Favre has been honest about his procrastination. He laughed about a conversation he and his wife Deanna had as they were driving home from church a few weeks after the season.
"Deanna wanted us to do it the old-fashioned way where we get a piece of paper and write down all the positives in one column and all the negatives in another," said Brett with that sheepish smile. "I told her, 'I'll still be writing down stuff in July.'"
There was something about that story that struck me, and Favre even admitted that the metamorphosis from man child to manhood had caught him a little off-guard. Back when he was arguably the NFL's poster wild boy off the field, he would have laughed mockingly if you had told him that one day he would attend church regularly, enjoy adult conversations with his wife, worry about his two daughters (Brittany, 17, and Braleigh, 7), and that he would absolutely abhor drinking a beer.
"Gosh," Favre admitted, "I don't even know why I drank."
Yet under the same sober breath, Favre jokes that during long, somewhat boring Super Bowl weeks on the road, "I might've gone crazy if I didn't drink. I mean, how much time can you spend in your room?"
Deanna Favre helped her husband reconcile that drinking, Vicodin, whatever, was a path to self-destruction and surely not the lifestyle he needed to make him happy. He matured greatly in the past six or seven years and that maturity would make him a better husband and a better father. The Packers weren't the only team that needed him. Team Favre was a higher priority as they struggled with the deaths of his father and a brother-in-law and then this past year when Deanna began her fight with breast cancer.
"I never thought life would get so complicated," said Favre, sounding almost guilty about being so naïve.
Surely, he was referring to being sensitive to Deanna's battle and her deepest personal fears that most cancer patients endure the rest of their lives; or that during the football season, the Favres had become a split family so Brittany could enjoy her high school years in Mississippi while Brett was in Green Bay doing the quarterback thing.
"A part of me really wants to be here [in Mississippi] to experience and enjoy Brittany's senior year," said Favre. "What am I going to miss that I'll regret later? That stuff counts, counts a lot."
Of course, he just smiles when it's suggested that a 17-year-old probably doesn't want Dad around too much so she can enjoy her senior year.
"Yeah," Brett laughs, "she wants me to play football."
Favre also said he wasn't going to play the game for money, even though he would make $10 million this year. This is a guy who supports a lot of family members and who gives generously without a lot of fanfare, a man who still reaches out to those whose lives were shattered by Hurricane Katrina.
He now has a fairly good grasp of a purpose-driven life and his legacy is secured as a future Hall of Fame quarterback. His influence always will be there when he chooses to exercise it. But he also knows that at age 35, God willing, he isn't even halfway home on this earth. Football is still a big part of who he is and he has his health, evidenced by quarterback-record 244 consecutive starts.
"I do know that once you call it quits, it's over," said Favre. "You don't sit out a year and then come back. There are times that I do wake up and ask myself, `What will I do with the rest of my life?'"
Actually, Favre's thought of a Dandy Don Meredith redux is pretty fascinating. I've heard of goofier ideas.
First things first, Brett.
Do you dare sing, "Turn out the lights, the party's over?"
ESPN's Chris Mortensen is a regular contributor to Insider
