The Favre Sides (Nov. 18, 1996)
· Yahoo Sports
The Favre Sides (Nov. 18, 1996) originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Visit mchezo.co.za for more information.
God, how Brett Favre hates to be boring. Things dull in the locker room? How about a little heat-generating ointment in somebody's underwear? Party a drag? How about a drop-dead imitation of sportscaster Keith “Whoa Nellie” Jackson? Golf game not lively enough? How about a 3-wood between trees, over water, aimed at a target Tiger Woods couldn't reach? Brash Brett is high energy bottled up in a swashbuckler's frame, thriving on the rush generated by his ability to produce the unexpected. He is a living remote control, channel surfing through life, searching constantly for snippets of action, his attention span tested by even a 30-second television commercial.
But over the past few seasons, despite his natural resistance, another Favre has gradually developed. Boring Brett. He is a bit more practical, slightly more level-headed, a tad more mature than Brash Brett. Boring Brett is the one who has grown to like demanding Packers coach Mike Holmgren and even discovered life isn't necessarily a non-stop frat party, particularly after spending part of the summer shaking an addiction to painkillers. Brash Brett doesn't exactly embrace Boring Brett; something about how being dull contradicts his much-preferred image of a maverick bent on doing just about everything in a slightly different way than society might approve.
'Tell me not to stick my hand in the cookie jar and I may not do it right then, but sooner or later, I'll be in that jar,” Brash Brett says. But like it or not, Boring Brett has taken up permanent residence in the recesses of Favre's mind.
Every time Favre drops back to pass, Brash Brett and Boring Brett wrestle for control of the remote that runs that brain. Brash Brett, the gunslinger, looks over the defense and sees a potential touchdown in an area where no sane quarterback would risk throwing.
“Fans'll love that one,” he thinks, imagining himself rolling away from pressure, launching the ball, watching it streaking through two straining defenders and landing in the arms of a leaping receiver deep in the end zone. If the reaction isn't—”How did he do that?”—Brash Brett is disappointed.
Boring Brett, the common-sense guy, methodically searches for the most logical target, even if it means a ho-hum 2-yard gain to a back who has quietly moved into the flat.
“Coach'll love that one,” he thinks. And if fans have to stifle yawns, so what?
As much as he hates to admit it, even Brash Brett concedes if he becomes boring enough, the Packers will win a Super Bowl. No question, he has the physical talent to get them there; Boring Brett just needs to funnel it properly and not let Brash Brett attempt too many outlandish plays. In the midst of his second straight milestone season, Favre, at 27, is developing into the league's dominant quarterback, amassing Marino-like numbers and injecting the West Coast offense with dimensions Joe Montana likely never envisioned. The title he wants so badly could come as quickly as this January. After all, the Packers are the league's best, with a great quarterback and one of the league's top-ranked defenses. However, injuries to their top receivers have severely reduced their margin of superiority, which was clearly evident in their 27-20 loss Sunday at Kansas City.
But to win the games that matter, such as this Monday night in Dallas, where Green Bay is 0-6 under Holmgren, Boring Brett has to show up every time from the very first possession. What happens instead is that sometimes in these pressure contests, Brash Brett, who often gets so excited in the locker room he nearly hyperventilates, runs the remote at the start and he frequently plays awful. Or he'll try to do something stupidly heroic late in the game. And that leaves the Packers vulnerable.
Not that Boring Brett will ever be completely in charge. If Favre isn't bold on the field, he'll become just another quarterback. But he also can't let himself go crazy anymore. Problem is, the dueling factions never seem at peace with each other. Not even when an unshaven Favre is relaxing after practice, dressed in his usual off-field attire of T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, an outfit he wears whether it is mild outside or when the Green Bay wind chill turns breathing into a challenge. (Holmgren had to institute a new dress code on trips to force him into something more presentable.) On this day, during a lengthy conversation, both factions make frequent appearances.
Boring Brett: “In my second and third years, I broke out films of Montana and Young and Aikman to see how they got things done and I would wait to see something spectacular and I would see instead... throw it away. Then they would hit a 20-yard comeback and then maybe run a little bit on a scramble and slide. I thought, 'Hey, this is no fun to watch. I came to see them have fun.' But those three guys won Super Bowls, and I haven't. You got to be boring sometimes. Sure, people pay money to see you scramble and get pulled down and complete it anyway for 20 yards, and that is what I like to do. But you also can pull it down and run out of bounds or throw it away; that is what else you have to do to win. I said to myself, 'Damn, boring ain't that bad.'“ Sounds reasonable, but...
Brash Brett: “What I want to do next is throw a touchdown pass lefthanded. I can throw it maybe 5 yards. I can see it happening. I'd be rolling out and someone would be on my right arm, and I'll switch and do it left-handed.”
So it's no surprise that when Favre visualizes potential plays before games, he ain't thinking of swing passes to Edgar Bennett. Instead, he grins while dreaming about all types of wild and crazy possibilities, everything from field-wide scrambles to completions with throws unloaded from impossible positions to that backhanded shovel pass he completed for a touchdown this season. How else, he asks, do you think he can actually pull off such craziness?
“I mean,” says Brash Brett, impatience dominating his voice, “do you think we actually work on those kind of busted plays in practice?”
MORE: The Sporting News' 140 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time
SN COVERS: Check out all the classics from Ty Cobb to Kobe Bryant
SN ARCHIVE: Relive sports history through the pages of The Sporting News
--------
Surely, the minds of Montana and Aikman would work slightly differently in their pregame fantasies. But then, even Boring Brett never pretends he'll be a conventional, textbook quarterback, no matter how much control Brash Brett loses over the remote. For one thing, Favre's mechanics are less than perfect and frequently sloppy. Nor is he very concerned about throwing every time from the correct spot with the correct motion. Hell, if it gets there, to the proper target, that's what is important.
But at least Favre now knows where the proper target is located. Credit Boring Brett with that pivotal breakthrough.
'When (Brett) got here, he was wild on the field, he was wild off the field, he was wild all over,'
says Holmgren.
When Brash Brett first showed up in Green Bay from Atlanta in 1992 after being swapped for a first-round draft choice, he wasn't interested in analyzing anything beyond where he might find some nightly entertainment. A legend in his own mind, he already had forgotten about his rookie disaster with the Falcons in 1991, when he drowned himself in beer after realizing he was entrenched as a third-stringer. No, what he recalled was his college heroics at Southern Mississippi, where he helped upset Alabama, Auburn and Florida State with his ad-lib, on-the-edge, damn-the-percent-ages style.
Tough? No one was tougher; two months after an automobile accident in July 1990 that resulted in the loss of 30 inches of intestine through surgery, he left a hospital room, ignored the 40 pounds he had lost since the operation, and held up long enough to guide the Golden Eagles past the Crimson Tide. When you become bigger than life, why pay attention to some NFL coaches telling you stuff about tendencies and coverages and other such gobbledygook? Hell, give me the ball, let me run around a bit and I'll show you how to win—and don't worry about how I spend my nights. And so what if the reason he wasn't drafted until the second round—only Ron Wolf, the current Packers general manager and then a personnel man with the Jets, seemed to believe Favre was a first-round prospect, but New York didn't have a first-round pick in 1991—was because most teams were convinced the zany aspects of his personality were hardly the foundation of a Super Bowl quarterback?
“After he got here, he was wild on the field, he was wild off the field, he was wild all over,” says Holmgren, who had been spoiled by the studiousness of Montana and Young, former pupils when he was the 49ers' offensive coordinator.
“He was a crazy, wild country boy,” says Greg Blache, the Colts' defensive line coach who was an assistant with the Packers from 1988 to'93.
“Those guys are different,” says Blache, who was born in New Orleans, about 70 miles from Favre's Mississippi gulf hometown of Kiln. “They are brawlers, they don't do anything easy. They want to grab life by the seat of the pants and wing it. It wasn't an easy task, getting him to understand what it meant to play quarterback in this league. He fought it; he didn't go quietly. Poor Mike; he'd get so mad at him. He'd try to keep his composure, but he would go ballistic and turn red in the face. Unless you were there at the start, you have no idea of what it has taken everyone to get where he is now.”'
In one preseason game during the developmental process, the home fans gave Favre a standing ovation after he resisted a daring pass and tossed the ball out of bounds. He laughed along with them. But by the end of the 1993 season—in which Favre threw 19 touchdown passes and 24 interceptions and lost 12 fumbles, only to think things were fine because the Packers made the playoffs for the first time in 11 years (and beat the Lions in the first round on Favre's spectacular 40-yard TI) pass to Sterling Sharpe)—Holmgren had exhausted his patience. Some staffers thought a change to Mark Brunell was warranted; Blache and offensive coordinator Sherman Lewis admit they had serious doubts Favre would ever become a dependable pro quarterback.
Holmgren called Favre into his office. “Nine and seven may look good and may be something they haven't accomplished here in a long time, but it's not good enough for you or for me,” he told him. All his obvious gifts-strong arm, mental toughness, inexplicable knack for avoiding pressure and enviable competitiveness—just wasn't enough, not when Holmgren kept seeing his precisely devised system executed by a Keystone Kops quarterback with no conscience as a governor. A repeat of the negative numbers in 1994 and Holmgren would seriously consider a change. Exactly when after this conversation Boring Brett arrived permanently in Favre's mind, even he doesn't know. But gradually he and Holmgren began changing. Prodded by the gentle thumping hand of quarterback aide Steve Mariucci, now coach at the University of California, Favre sought compromises for the first time. “Be a flatlin-er,” Mariucci kept telling him, a reminder to slay on an even keel. Holmgren, who devised the game plan but had never consulted with Favre about what plays the quarterback might like the best, started weekly Saturday meetings to get Boring Brett's analysis. The coach had never been tougher verbally on any quarterback he had previously worked with, but he now began backing off from the constant critical barrage.
Boring Brett: “Now I will study our game plan and know what coverages they will use in certain situations. Like in the red zone. We are having a lot of success scoring in the red zone this year and people probably think it is awesome when it works like it is. But I have thought it through going into the game ... who to go to in what situations against what defense. Never would have done that before. That is my reasonable side coming through.
“Before, Mike could never understand the way I played. Joe (Montana) never played the way I did. (Holmgren) would call a play back then on third and 20, and I would throw a pick (interception). He didn't know it at the time, but I was going to throw it 21 yards no matter what the percentages. If a guy was covered, I'd throw it as hard as I could and maybe it would bounce off the defender's helmet and we'd catch it. Now, I will take a look, and if it is not there, I won't do it. He'll still ask me sometimes, 'What the hell were you doing?' And I'll look at him and tell him. 'I'm not exactly sure.' And we'll laugh.”
It's tough not to laugh around Favre. Brash Brett is naturally, consistently funny. He is the king of practical jokers, the dean of storytellers, the dry-humored master of the quick, bawdy comeback; a constantly upbeat, engaging, charming man who hides a sharp mind behind a misleading veil of down-home simplicity. His locker-room antics are sopho-moric, but no one ever said pro athletes were anything but wealthy big kids anyway. “When we'd drive to practice, Brett would be in the back of a truck,” says cornerback Terrell Buckley, a former teammate now with the Dolphins, “and Brett would moon people. Or a bunch of us would be sitting in the Jacuzzi in the training room and he would dive in belly-flop style.” Or maybe he'll catch Reggie White daydreaming just long enough to dump a bucket of ice water over his head. Or he'll put shaving cream inside the earpiece of a phone and tell a rookie he has a call.
Even with the dominating presence of White, this is very much Favre's locker room and Favre's team. He's everything an elite quarterback normally isn't. In college, his friends were offensive linemen; with the Packers, his best pals are center Frank Winters and tight end Mark Chmura. His father was a small-town high school football coach who called two passes a game and expected his quarterback/son to run over tacklers, not around them. Otherwise, he was a sissy. So pound Favre on sacks and don't expect him to develop happy feet.
“No, instead you can see the steam coming out of him,” says Vikings defensive coordinator Foge Fazio, whose unit capitalized on the Packers' unsteady offensive line and sacked Favre seven times and knocked him down another 10 during a 30-21 triumph September 22, Green Bay's first of two defeats this season. “You can see him looking for people to knock down. I admire him so much. What a competitor. He's getting a little smarter out there, but the fire in him hasn't diminished one bit.”
Surely, Favre has to be the only quarterback in league history to be threatened by a fine from his own team for overzealous celebrating. Holmgren tired so much of watching Favre rejoice after scores by racing into the end zone and knocking down teammates with full-speed embraces, he told his quarterback if he kept it up, it would cost him $5,000 a collision.
“I was convinced he was going to hurt one of his own teammates,” Holmgren says in all seriousness.
Brash Brett: “If I had someone like Mike standing over me while I play golf and saying, 'Ah, not that club, not when you are in the rough and the hole is around the bend over there, beyond those trees,' I could be six or seven strokes better. But it's too boring to take the easy way.”
It's that unrelenting, brain-dead competitive side of Favre that threatens Boring Brett in every game. “Everything has to be a contest with him,” Chmura says, “and it'll drive you up a wall. I mean, you can't even go from one hole to the next on a golf course without him saying, 'Let's see who can get there first with our carts.' You want to yell at him, 'Stop already.'“ When Favre plays golf with his attorney, Bus Cook, he refuses to take strokes even though Cook is a scratch player and Favre is eight or nine shots worse. He loses every time, but the thought of accepting help to win when he is so sure he always will prevail is unfathomable to him.
That is why, in Favre's mind, the whole offseason ordeal over his addiction to painkillers has been misinterpreted and misunderstood. Long before he was paid to play, he was taught by his father that pain and injuries were no excuses to leave games. So he has always fought through both, ignoring any toll to his body, which already has endured five operations. The result is 71 straight starts, the longest current quarterback streak. Besides, it seemed pretty heroic last season when he stayed in a game against the Steelers despite throwing up blood from a hit in the chest or when he threw five touchdown passes against the Bears despite an ankle so swollen he could only hobble, not run. And there is a part of him that fears once he goes to the sideline with an injury, he might never regain his starting spot. That's what happened, after all, to Don Majkowski, who sprained an ankle during the 1992 season and lost his job to a cocky reserve named Brett Favre.
Imagn Images
That he carried this macho approach too far by forming a reliance on pain pills is not disputed by Favre, who stood bold and told the world about his dependence and how he was going to lick it by entering a drug treatment center. Now he is treating his after-care, which includes a ban on alcohol, like another competition. He doesn't want to hear anything about his possible addictive personality. If Brash Brett says he can have a beer or two and not get carried away, then that's how it will be— and he doesn't need the NFL or wise counselors to tell him otherwise. His streak of independence—”It's an indication he still has some immaturity,” Holmgren says—the same one that makes him stick that hand into the forbidden cookie jar, balks at being placed under any restrictions, particularly when he voluntarily admitted he had a problem.
Brash Brett: “People think everything that happened in the offseason matured me. (The addiction) could have been a lot worse if I hadn't stopped it, but (rehabilitation) is not the reason I am a better player this season. It might have some bearing on it, but each year I have more maturity.
“The older you get, the less you want to go out. You want to settle down, you want to ...” He lets his voice trail off. He pauses, thinking about how his marriage this past offseason has altered his uninhibited approach to life. “At first, you say to yourself, 'I can't believe I'm married. I can't believe I am settling down.' When I go home now, I think more about football and life after football instead of what happened that day. I've got business things and family and trying to have kids, trying to win a Super Bowl. Five years ago, if you told me I would be thinking about these things, I would have told you were (expletive) crazy.” He stops again; when he resumes, Boring Brett is talking.
“It's like football. At first, it is fun just to go out and throw it around, but then you realize to be the player you want to be and to get the team where you want it to be, that is not going to work. If I want to be in the Super Bowl, I can't be the gunslinger. A little bit of that will help us, but I guess I have to be—what?—a molded quarterback.” He stops again and makes a face, as if he had just eaten a sour grape. He obviously is running the words “molded quarterback” through his mind, perhaps where Brash Brett resides.
“Sometimes I hate to think I am that. A molded quarterback. It kills to me to be that, to throw it away because I may be wasting an opportunity when I could throw it up the field and do better, but being more careful probably will help us in the long run.”
Now, more than ever, Favre needs to be really boring. With his two best receivers, Robert Brooks and Antonio Freeman, sidelined with injuries (Brooks is gone for the year; Freeman's broken arm could be healed by early December), Favre is tempted to take on more responsibility, which could translate into too much Brash Brett, which would not be good for the Packers. He claims he is trying to restrain himself and have confidence in veteran Don Beebe and improving youngster Terry Mickens; the proof will be in Favre's performance these next few weeks.
But before you think Favre has become some robo-man, dutifully regurgitating Holmgren's intricate schemes, think again. That's the beauty of what has happened to Brash Brett in Green Bay. “He's a lot more cerebral now, but he hasn't lost any of his toughness or creativity,” the Colts' Blache says. “They didn't chip away his cockiness; they packaged it and put it in the system. That has been the genius of the coaching of Mike and his assistants. They recognized Brett's talent and harnessed it without taking away his brashness or beating him down so he is submissive. From gunpowder, they got dynamite. And in turn, Brett's realized he owed it to the team to give them his next step. Sometimes to beat the elephant, you have to take one small bite at a time.”
Of Favre's league-high 27 touchdown passes this season, more than half have benefitted from a touch of his ad-lib abilities. “If I had done the right thing every time, I'd have 10 TDs,” Brash Brett says. Yet moments later, Boring Brett is talking about a 37-6 victory over the Bears in which he tossed a 50-yard Hail Mary scoring pass to Freeman at the end of the first half. But he's not discussing that throw. Instead, he is carrying on about how he dumped a pass two plays earlier. “Best play of the day,” he says. “I could have thrown a pick, but I didn't, so we still had a chance for the Hail Mary.” Guess what play Brash Brett liked best?
It's this combination of the two Favres that has produced a new look to the West Coast offense. Holmgren, the purist, still would rather see Favre evolve more into a Montanalike craftsman who patiently carves up defenses and rips out their spirit with time-killing, multiple-play drives. But Favre doesn't have the personality to copy Montana's steadiness. So he might cut off his progression reads faster, relying on his mighty arm to complete throws Montana would have passed up. Or, using his escape ability, enhanced by an offseason conditioning program that put him in the best shape of his career, he is more willing than Montana ever was to leave the pocket quickly to find receivers. But unlike when he first started in Green Bay, he now can see the entire field, putting added pressure on defenses. The result is an offense that strikes quicker than the old 49ers, doesn't function quite as efficiently but still scares the be-jabbers out of opponents.
Still, Montana's way won four Super Bowls. The Favre way can only boast of two victories over the 49ers in the past nine months. But no titles and not even a triumph over the Cowboys, the next great mental barrier this team and this quarterback must overcome. They both thought the Cowboys would fall last January in the NFC championship game, particularly on the heels of an impressive destruction of San Francisco, the highlight of Favre's MVP season. On the plane home after that game, Boring Brett sat down next to Holmgren, a first in their relationship.
“I see it, Mike, I'm getting it,” Favre said. Holmgren nodded. Finally, at 38,000 feet, he discerned the maturity he had been seeking from his quarterback. “He's a little like the son I never had,” says Holmgren, 48, who has four daughters. Favre isn't quite sure they're that close, but at least the coach has finally become a friend.
Within a week of the victory in San Francisco, their dream crashed in Dallas. Favre started poorly, guided his team to a 27-24 lead in the fourth quarter, then threw a crushing interception that helped the Cowboys pull out a 38-27 victory. “I was good enough to win a Super Bowl last year, but I didn't know it,” Favre says. “Damn, we could have won it. We had Dallas in the fourth quarter, and I could have been a little bit better. I guess you have to go through it to understand it. We were as good as Dallas, but they found a way to beat us because there was a time in that game when we didn't believe we were as good as they were. Maybe our Super Bowl game was San Francisco, but you still have to play another game and we know that now.
“I'm not saying we are going to beat Dallas this time. But if we are up in the fourth period, I guarantee you we will believe we think we can win it. It has taken some time to get there, but we do believe we are the best team, and I am the quarterback who can get us there.”
Favre laughs. He recalls something he had said at a press conference after he left the rehab clinic. “Super Bowl or bust,” he declared that day in his best pugnacious manner, turning this season into a mission of sorts. Later, at home. Boring Brett told his wife, Deanna, “That was really stupid; what if I don't play well?” But on this afternoon, Favre isn't regretting anything he says. Everything is upbeat. He has avoided injuries so far, so the whole subject of painkillers has faded. Even though he is getting a challenge from John Elway, he is again the league's MVP. He has helped return optimism to a storied franchise. It has become a very good life.
Besides, he is going to be brash and boring enough these next few months to celebrate the victory of his dreams. In New Orleans this January. After the Super Bowl.
This story is from the Nov. 18, 1996 edition of The Sporting News, written by Paul Attner