“Quit” is Not in Brett Favre’s Vocabulary

Brett Favre has won his release from the New York Jets, who after drafting Mark Sanchez no longer required the services of the Joan Collins of quarterbacks, making him free to sign with any team he chooses.  Of course, Brett already told us in no uncertain terms that he is retired from the NFL.  Finished.  Done.  Nothing left in that right arm of his.  He’s faded off forever into the sunset like so many gunslingers before him. Given up NFL glory for the peace and quiet of his lawn, his fishing hole, his hunting ground.  So, it is irrelevant that Brett is now a free agent – the status he sought to be granted last off-season by the Packers, who preferred, in the name of self-preservation, to trade him as far away from Minnesota as they could.  The story is over.  The final chapter has been written.  There shall be no epilogue.

And if you believe all that, you don’t know Brett Favre.

In fact, with Favre, there is seemingly no such thing as a final chapter.  Like Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys, Favre just can’t stop writing.  And now the novel of Favre’s life has become so bloatedly voluminous that, as with Douglas’s tome in the aforementioned film, it has become self-indulgent and even ludicrous.

No, the career without end has not, in fact, ended, in spite of Brett’s promises to the contrary.  A little over a week after securing his release from the Jets, Favre is meeting with Vikings coach Brad Childress, who has looked into the eyes of Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels and decided he would rather have someone else steer his ship.  Favre, for his part, looks at Minnesota and sees the thing he has longed for ever since Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy brought a premature end to his Packers career:  a chance to gain revenge on the franchise with which he achieved fame, fortune and everlasting glory.  By playing with the Vikings, and beating the Packers, Favre can both help ruin Green Bay’s season, and prove that he’s still better than Aaron Rodgers, even with 40 years behind him and a biceps tendon that’s hanging by a string.

Never mind that, by reaping this revenge, Favre will be sticking a dagger in the hearts of the fans that loved him for 17 years, that helped pay his gigantic salary, that cheered for him and defended him even as he threw away playoff games.  Such considerations don’t enter the equation for a man like Favre, a superman who plays by a different set of rules.  For Favre, all that matters is the itch, the burning need, the bee in his bonnet.  It’s always been that way with him – it certainly was in the Packer years, when his relentlessness and drive and, yes, egomania, made him into a Super Bowl winner and an icon of sports.

Packer fans loved him then, even if they suspected he had a screw loose.  Now, however, those same fans find themselves on the other side of the glass.  They wish Favre would just quit, because they don’t want to have to root against him.  But don’t they realize that this guy doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit?  How did he scramble free of all those certain sacks?  How did he make all those broken plays into touchdowns?  Because he doesn’t know how to give in.  And that’s why he’s pondering a return now, because his ego and need to prove himself won’t allow him to just let bygones be bygones.  He has to show the ones who slighted him, the same way he spent all those years sticking it to the people who said he would never be an NFL quarterback.  Favre hasn’t changed a bit since he entered the league, except to become more of what he was.  And, physically, less.

So, Packer fans will just have to endure the unendurable – the sight of their beloved #4 suiting up for their second-most-hated rivals.  They will have to boo him.  They will have to cheer when, this time, he doesn’t escape the sack.  They will have to high-five each other when he throws one of his signature interceptions, to a defender wearing green and gold.  They may even have to pity him a little, if it turns out that he’s lost more than he or the Vikings think.