Not Welcome

Unless you’ve been living in Siberia these past few days then you know Brett Favre has done it again. He’s making his second come back to the NFL to play for the Minnesota Vikings, the arch rivals of the Green Bay Packers. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a darling of American sports return for a second time. Michael Jordan, the epicenter of sport for two decades, made a comeback in the 01-02 season with the Washington Wizards after drafting then thought to be promising rookie Kwame Brown. Jordan had been out of the league for three years, and after leading the NBA in scoring every single year he’d played a full season and winning just about every championship and MVP in the 90’s, he failed to even sniff the playoffs with the Wiz. Jordan dinged what had been an immaculate resume, one that even included him sitting out a season and a half on a gambling probation while claiming he was following his late father’s dreams to play baseball, but one tiny scratch on a fleet of Maseratis generally goes unnoticed. Favre’s return violates the Spoonie Luv Principal of Shame found here. It’s basic premise is, you can fool us once and we’ll forgive you, (if you’re playing for a team in another conference) but if you wrong us twice, then we have reason to despise you (especially when you join your former team’s enemy). With all the hype and news coverage Favre has been gleaning since his stated return you may be reluctant to believe that his return is destined to fail, but it is. This isn’t some radical game theory, it’s fact. Makes you want to say HE DID WHAT!

In 1997 I experienced a heavy tectonic shift in my world view of sports. The year seemed to be marked by much preening, as I saw the Pats make the Super Bowl, Tiger emerge as a great charismatic golf presence, and the Rockets put together a championship run on the backs of three veterans in the twilight of their careers. These accomplishments carried very ephemeral hopes as the Rockets were dismembered by Drexler’s lazy D on this shot by Stockton, Tiger was dissected and scrutinized by his peers, and the Pats lost to a well-coiffed hurler and a special teamer. I knew that the Rockets were finished and that Tiger would bounce back from such indignities (and I would love him), but what really weighed on me was the difference between the vanilla Stonehenge of Drew Bledsoe and the brazened heroics of QB1 Brett Favre. Flag footballers across the country began modeling their offenses after the kid, attempting to squeeze throws into impossible places, airing it out on first down, and making nothings into scrambling push pass somethings. His style was new wave and spontaneous, a bastion of fresh air from the horse faces and playoff losers. What people refused to know, was that Brett Lorenzo Favre lived every moment of his life with that same gun-ho passion and it quickly caught up to him. In a Sports Illustrated article by Peter King, right before his super bowl year, Favre revealed how he almost lost his life to a seizure as a result of his addiction to pain killers. The article goes on to detail that he was literally taking fistfuls of vicodin and that his wife Deanna came close to leaving with their bastard child who was conceived seven years before they were married. Of course Favre persevered and went on to win two more MVP awards.

So Dream, what does this have to do with his inability to produce this year? Basically, everything. Brett Favre is stuck in the year 1997, but with a twist. He not only believes that he can produce at the same level on the field, but thinks he warrants the respect of a guy who’s played in 270 straight games. Vicodin for breakfast, lunch, and dinner baby! The contradiction here is that these two beliefs can’t mutually exist. Brett, you can’t have your respected peers calling you a legend without accepting that you do this a lot. Don’t call me a hater because I wanted Favre’s career to end in a spectacle of glory with him riding off into the sunset as the iconic figure he would have been in Wisconsin, Mississippi, and all over the country. Instead Favre has made himself a pariah, the embodiment of everything selfish in sports. He refuses to go through training camp but claims he still has a laser rocket arm. He strings the Vikings along until the 25^th hour, and then only after they name Helicpoter Rosenfels the starter does he decide to return, probably because in his country heart he knows that he’s “better”. Then there are the Packers fans, Oden and Sleazer alike. What are they left to think of this man who once owned a dresser full of keys to the city? I commented earlier that the only parallel I can think of would be if Jeter at the age of 42 announced his retirement then came back to play out a one year deal with the Braves, announced his retirement again then felt he could be the missing piece of a championship contending Red Sox team. Although the New Yorkers would probably forget him quicker than A-Rod lets him slip it in his anoose, he is still the modern day face of the franchise. What this really means for Favre, is that instead of remembering him for his triumphs in the face of adversity and death we’ll forever associate him and his sniffles with the other weeping prima donnas of this era.

The icon you could have been...

Aside from the Karmic implications of this comeback, Favre has to wrestle with one very big elephant in the room, is he still any good? Some superficial fans may come running with pitchforks screaming, “Dream he made the pro bowl last year he must be awesome!” To which I’d laugh and retort, the pro bowl is the least important glamor game in all of sports. No one cares for a game that comes after the entirety of the season and has a voting system that closes multiple weeks before the season is over. Some NFL big wigs think that playing the game the week before the super bowl is going to make a difference. This just restricts the game even more, penalizing those players who have reached the real pinnacle of the sport, the championship game. Let’s take a look at Favre’s numbers before and after his bye week last year (week 5).

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It appears that the Jets success was not a function of Brett’s. In his first four games Favre appeared to be the ’97 gunslinger we always loved, throwing for an average of 3 touchdowns and only 1 interception. His team was only 2-2 during this stretch with losses to the Pats and Chargers. It should be noted that the numbers are a little deceptive because Favre threw for 6 tds and 1 int against the super bowl runner up Cardinals in week 4. The games after the bye week tell a different story. The Jets allowed 9 less points per game and experienced a 5 game winning streak which included a dismantling of the unbeaten Titans. But what about Brett? In the final 12 games Favre struggled to not turn the ball over, averaging a pick and a half a game while throwing for less than one touchdown per. His QB rating (a slightly flawed metric) fell 30 points, well below his career average. As a Patriots fan I can assure you that he completely sucked in the season finale against Miami when he could have locked up a playoff birth for the Pats with a win. It must also be noted that the Jets had a tremendously weak schedule last year and that their losses after the bye came to the Raiders, Broncos, 49ers, Seahawks, and Dolphins. Yes that’s right, only 1 of those 5 losses was at the hands of a playoff team. The Vikings will be playing the Lions twice this year but also have games at Pittsburgh, GB, Carolina, Chicago, Arizona, and home games with the Giants and Ravens. That schedule isn’t so Stay Puft. My advice to Favre is to reconsider this comeback and do what most MLBers should and come clean. Admit that you made a mistake in judgment and that you are content staying in the backwoods hunting elk and fly fishing. Go fight breast cancer with your wife and take the millions the Vikings are willing to give you to start more research centers. If that doesn’t work then take pride in being the Wranglers man and follow in the footsteps of the bionic man who is going to obliterate all your records.