The mj15 Blog Hall of Famer: Brett Favre

The lasting images of Brett Favre's final seven games played in 2010.


Before I continue, I just want to make it clear that the Brett Favre that was chosen as the first of this blog's five 2011 Hall of Famers is not the Brett Favre that we all knew between the years 1992 and 2008. I repeat, this isn't the Brett Favre that you saw in Green Bay win a Super Bowl, receive multiple MVPs and break a ton of quarterback records including most TD passes, most career yards and most interceptions to name a few. Neither is this Brett Favre the Brett Favre that we saw constantly adored by John Madden and by the Green Bay faithful, was actually the sympathetic person during his first un-retirement in the summer of 2008 and was actually slightly less irritating than he was as late as this past January once upon a time.

No, wonderful reader of mine, the Brett Favre that I'm inducting here tonight is the one whose life and career we saw unfold before our very eyes from the period of the summer of 2009 to the winter of 2011. This was the Brett Favre who one year saw his football career reach the highest of highs, and then reached low, schadenfreude-tastic proportions the next. In this span of time, we also saw Number Four take part of two straight offseasons in which he re-retired the one minute and then spending an entire summer (much like in 2008) with the sports media watching his every move in his Hattiesburg, Mississippi home, coying everyone about his desires to come back and play football even though we all knew that's what was going to occur. And of course, we saw a man go from one of the most beloved players in the game to one of the most loathed, someone that many people loved to hate.

In addition, it was the Brett Favre that was one of the topics which I periodically brought up on this blog in these past two years (most of the time during football season, obviously), and that's really the most important in this situation.

Anyways, this infamous (and most likely final) period in the 20 year long Brett Favre saga all began as early as February of 2009, nearly five-and-a-half month before I decided to start this blog, when the ol' gunslinger (then a member of the New York Jets) decided to retire for the second time in two years. Even though Favre later conducted an interview with ESPN's Ed Werder claiming that this retirement was "the real deal," once the Jets officially released him from his contract on April 28th, making him a free agent by definition, suspicion began swirling across the football world that the former Packers QB would now be signing a deal with his former team's rival, the Minnesota Vikings, who were lacking in good QB talent (their #1 starter in the 2008 season was Tavaris Jackson, who did help lead the team to a division title that year and was athletic but was never close to being as good of a passing quarterback as Favre). For Favre, signing with the Vikings would mean that he would go to a team that has a dome stadium where he could potentially prove that he was still a good QB after a relatively disappointing year in New York (capped off with an interception in his final pass of the season) and, of course, was a way to try to get back at Ted Thompson and the rest of Green Bay's managing office for failing to let him back in as a starter the previous season in favor of initiating the Aaron Rodgers era. After all, if you're gonna get back at a team, why not do it by beating them twice in one year?

Since this was a very logical place for Favre to play, and because football fans had seen what happened when Brett Favre retired a year prior, many of us just assumed that this all-time great would eventually sign with the Vikings. And yet despite all of this, it took nearly four months, the end of training camp and one preseason game in the books to finally get Mississippi's finest to stop throwing football to high schoolers at some local Hattiesburg, Mississippi football field and instead throwing it to actual pro wideouts like Sidney Rice and Bernard Berrian. In that span of time, we got to saw an unbearable four month coverage of the situation that saw him being interviewed by Joe Buck on HBO in which he stated that the Vikings offense is familiar to him (playing it for 16 years in Green Bay) and that he went through surgery to repair his torn biceps tendon, then-coach Brad Childress hilariously giving him an ultimatum like it was supposed to mean something, and Favre announcing that he will stay retired in late July. Again, it was a four month game of hard to catch by Favre that would make any of Andrew Marvell's lovers look at him in awe.

But the worst part of the whole thing was, of course, the media's coverage of the whole thing, specifically from ESPN and the NFL Network who had reporters ranging from Werder and Chris Mortensen to Chris Hansen and Rachel Nichols stationed outside of his ranch home for weeks, following his every move until he arrived via the Vikings private jets to team facilities on August 18th to sign his 2 year/$25 million deal. It would be because of this constant amount of reporting for something that was, in hindsight, a forgone conclusion months earlier and the fact that Favre's ego was so big that he would allow this story and his constant spotlight on him to continue that would cause the massive backlash against him that still stands to this day and probably will until years after he doesn't complete a season as an active player.

But while the lead-up to the Vikings signing was pretty awful, once Favre finally put on that Minnesota uniform and actually began playing as the team's starting quarterback for the '09 season, the remainder of the year was anything but. By the time the regular season was over, Favre ended up leading the Vikings to a 12-4 season, good enough for a division title and a #2 seed in the NFC playoffs. It was also during this season that the then 39 year old had himself one hell of a rebirth wearing the purple and gold, throwing for career highs in completion percentage (68.4%), yards per pass (7.91), and TD to INT ratio (33:7) while also throwing for over 4,200 yards and earning his 11th career Pro Bowl selection. Meanwhile, the man's quest for revenge against the Packers was a complete success with the Vikings winning both of their meetings with Green Bay that season and Favre (throwing for 515 yards, 7 TDs and O INTs) and it appeared that the constant hyping by the media and his center of attention in the summer paid off for every network covering the NFL as ratings soared every time his team played in a nationally televised game (most notably Minnesota's game against the Vikings on Monday Night Football receiving the highest ratings in cable TV history). Basically, it was a great four month period to be Favre.

However, once the calendar year changed from 2009 to 2010, so did the fortunes of not only Favre, but for the Minnesota Vikings and for everyone (including I) who were tired of his antics. It began in January, when Minnesota met the New Orleans Saints in the season's NFC Championship game at the Louisiana Superdome for the right to play in Super Bowl XLIV. With the score tied late in the game and the Vikings having possession in Saints territory, Favre threw a costly interception straight into the hands of Tracy Porter with :12 seconds left in regulation time, sending this game into overtime. New Orleans would go on to win the coin toss, and eventually the game on a Garett Hartley field goal later on. The 2009 Vikings season wrapped up as a failure and Favre finished for the third year in a row throwing an INT as his last pass of the season.

While that was indeed a heartbreaking moment for Favre, the Vikings and their fanbase, it would not be the last time that we ever saw of #4 in Minnesota. For the second year in a row, we all had to sit back and watch another summer of "will he or wont' he" speculation as to whether Favre would return to play football with Minnesota (this time for his 20th season), with media once again covering the story to unbearable heights. As expected (again), Favre did agree to play for the Vikings during the 2010 season on August 17th, after a three month period that saw Favre go through arthroscopic surgery on his left ankle, a report from NBC sports saying that he declined to play for the Vikings, Werder having to sacrifice himself on Favre's truck in order for him to confirm that he was going to return to the NFL if healthy and a trip by three Vikings players in which they begged him to return.

Unfortunately for Favre (and a delight to everyone who has hated him for his antics the past year and a half) that August signing with the Vikings would mark the downfall of a man who, just a year ago, was one pass away from playing in his third career Super Bowl. Sure, he ended up throwing his 500th career TD pass and his 70,000th career yard, but the Vikings ended up finishing that year 6-10, and Favre had a down year while getting hit in the nuts in the process. Furthermore, on December 2nd, Buffalo Bills linebacker Arthur Moats injured Favre with a behind-the-back hit, an injury that was so bad that it finally forced a man once nicknamed the NFL's Iron Horse to sit out a game for the first time in 321 total games. If that wasn't all, two weeks later against the Chicago Bears in a frozen TCF Bank Stadium, Favre sustained a concussion after being tackled by defensive end Corey Wooton, a moment that would mark the last time he ever played on an NFL field. As this that weren't bad enough, one of his former teams (the Jets) made it as far as the AFC Championship game without it while another, the Packers, actually won the Super Bowl, forever proving that Ted Thompson, Mike McCarthy and the rest of the Packers management made the right call in the summer of 2008 trading the QB in favor of Aaron Rodgers.

Of course, 2010 didn't just see Favre experiencing some problems on the football field. On October 7th and 8th, the popular sports blog Deadspin published two major stories regarding the man. The first was an update on a story they did in early August in which Favre sent numerous voice mails and dong shots to former Jets sideline reporter Jenn Sterger during his 2008 season in New York, this time with the actual voice mails and pictures shown as proof that they weren't joking. The second was a report that Favre sent explicit text messages to two of Jets' massage therapists in '08 as well. These two reports resulted in the NFL investigating the matter and eventually fining the quarterback $50,000 (a bit too lenient, in this writer's opinion) and the two therapists eventually sued him for sexual harassment. So not only will Favre be known as the once great player who in his last two years held an entire organization and news media hostage for being the world's great media savvy whore, but also as the guy who was dumb enough to send sexts while married and not believing that he will ever get caught (two big reasons why I selected him as one of my top people of year 2010).

For some, the year 2010 marked a sad, spiraling end to a man that was once one of the league's best and most fun to watch players in the game. For others, that year marked a triumph of revenge. Me? Obviously, I fell into the latter group, as you can tell by the fact that I once listed "Brett Favre Haters" as my people of the month for October and that I've used the post label "f-you brett favre" 15 times (and counting) in the past year alone. I just thought that everything about Favre, from his "Boy Who Cried Wolf" tactics toward retirement from 2008 to 2010 and the fact that ESPN and every major network covering the NFL drooled over him like he was the epitome of how NFL players should act like, reached a major point of frustration that I never got out of. So when I saw the entire season unfold, from the Jenn Sterger story to the Corey Wooton injury, I felt like Kyle watching Cartman's amusement park fail on that 2001 "South Park" episode "Cartmanland." In other words, watching it all unfold and covering it on this blog brought a nice warmth into my heart knowing that things like karma do exist.

On January 17th of this year, for the first ever, Favre officially filed his retirement papers to the NFL, something that he never did in any of the three years prior. It appeared to be a serious move from someone that finally appeared to be serious about not playing in the NFL again. As further evidence of Favre's seriousness to finally remain retired, his agent, Bus Cook, denounced any rumor that he would un-retire to the Clarion Ledger, even if there are reports circulating that the Philadelphia Eagles are rumored to want him as Michael Vick's back-up. So, folks, I think it's officially safe to say it: Brett Favre is finally gone now. No more "will he or won't he," no more of Ed Werder hiding behind a bush outside of his Hattiesburg home, none of that! The NFL's version of a vampire is now officially stabbed to death at the heart with a wooden stake, now forever spending the rest of his mortal life as a retired player with tens of millions of dollars in savings and his next major appearance in the spotlights either coming during his inevitable jersey number retirement in Green Bay or during his first-ballot enshrinement to Pro Football's version of the Hall of Fame. I repeat: You no longer have to fear him! And thank God for that, because these past three offseasons have been nothing short of ridiculous!



One Hall of Fame inductee down, four more to go. Be sure to come back again tomorrow to see who else will join Mr. Favre into the 2011 class of The mj15 Blog Hall of Fame. In the meantime, in accordance with this "I Hate Brett Favre" theme, here's a Favre video parody from this past January (based on Lebron James' infamous "Rise" Nike ad) to finish this lengthy post off properly. Enjoy.



Sincerely,
Your pal: mj15




If you have any opinions on today's post, or if you just have any suggestions or tips for my next blog entry, e-mail me at: mj1599@aol.com. Your e-mails are greatly appreciated.