New Starr Is Born : Packers’ Favre Remains Unexplained Phenomenon

The Brett Favre Story, Take One.

Favre returns to the Green Bay Packers after spending a few days in his Mississippi bayou hometown of Kiln.

Favre is the Packer quarterback. In this 1995 season, he is the best quarterback and player in the league.

He leads his team to a victory, then dutifully showers, slips on his undershorts, and walks into the locker room to meet with his father, Irvin.

Outside, dozens of reporters and cameras wait. He will be asked about records, and greatness, and Bart Starr. A nation of fans will be listening.

But first, Irvin wails.

“Hey, those are mine,” he says.

“What are yours?” Favre says.

“Those underwear you got on.”

“How do you know?”

“Look at the dang front.”

Scrawled in magic marker across the front of the shorts is the incriminating word:

DAD.

“You did it again,” Irvin says. “You came home, did laundry, then packed the wrong clothes.”

Favre pauses. “Damn,” he says. “I’m supposed to be some big-time football player, and I’ve got on 15-year-old underwear.”

Cut.

*

Brett Favre wants to be a star. Not a big one, not like his hero, Bruce Willis. Honest.

Maybe just a medium one. Like those people on those daytime TV talk shows he watches.

“The other day I saw something about wives cheating on wives,” he said. “That stuff is great.”

Maybe a fast-food hamburger commercial. Don’t budding league MVPs do fast-food commercials?

Drew Bledsoe is doing one and he’s had, what, two good months? Favre is having the most exciting season of any quarterback in recent memory, and he’s not getting a sniff.

Before today’s possible playoff-clinching game against the New Orleans Saints, he led the NFL in touchdown passes (32) and passing yards (3,804).

He has thrown five touchdown passes despite a sprained ankle that forced him to spend the previous week on crutches. He has tied the NFL record with a 99-yard touchdown pass.

With daring scrambles and crazy tosses and more moves than a point guard, he has become one of the few NFL players worth the price of a personal seat license.

He paints as he goes, with no one able to predict the outcome until the last drop has been splattered.

Not even him.

And not one major endorsement.

It ain’t right.

“Drew Bledsoe throws 21 interceptions, he’s improving. . . . I throw 24 interceptions, they say I should be benched,” Favre said.

Maybe a shoe commercial. OK, so he doesn’t always wear shoes. He’s not wearing them for this interview. He is the only person in Wisconsin who wears thongs after October.

“I can get dressed up,” he protested. “If I go to a nice function, I’ll wear slacks.”

How about a milk commercial? Yeah. Steve Young does a milk commercial, and Young never threw a no-look touchdown pass.

Of course, Young has never been given a play by the coach, and then made up something entirely different between the sidelines and the huddle. Something that hasn’t even been a play since he and his teammates were scoring touchdowns in driveways.

But Brett Favre is having fun. Isn’t anybody out there buying fun anymore? “I look around the league, and a lot of quarterbacks aren’t having nearly as much fun as I am,” he said. “You ask me, it’s their own fault.”

He doesn’t want to be a star because of the bright lights. If he did, he wouldn’t have built a home right down the street from 1213 Irvin Favre Road.

That was where he grew up, on a dirt road named after his father because the Favres were--and are--the only ones who live there.

This brand-new home is near the bustling town of 800 called Kiln but pronounced “Kill,” along the same waterway where Favre played as a child, something called, “Rotten Bayou.”

“Don’t know why it is called that, nothing really rotten about it,” Irvin Favre said. “Of course, there’s alligators.”

Brett also doesn’t care about the fame. If he did, he would not spend his football seasons indoors, in front of a television set, playing a destructive-sounding video game called “Road Rash.”

He doesn’t go out because he hears people whispering words he can neither understand nor believe. “They’ll say, ‘Oh God, it’s you,’ and it’s so embarrassing,” he said. “You try living like that, somebody saying, ‘Oh my God,’ everywhere you walk. It’s awful.”

Couldn’t be the money. Favre still drives a truck and wears a T-shirt with holes that were caused by a washing machine, not a fashion designer.

Brett Favre says he wants to be a star because of the respect. That simple. The validation from his fans and colleagues that he has evolved from a scatterbrained kid to a legitimate NFL product.

“It would just be nice to be on top once in a while,” Favre said. “It’s still like every single time I take the field, I am proving somebody wrong.”

There is a problem with all of this, of course.

He wants to be a star, but he won’t shave regularly. This is fine, except he won’t grow a beard, either. Check out his face some time. The Lambeau Field end zone in January is prettier.

He also won’t get regular haircuts, leaving his blond mop to shrivel in the cold.

And he will not, for all the ridicule his family can dish, get rid of those ‘60s sideburns. His friends call them, “carpet sample sideburns.” He can’t believe nobody notices a resemblance to something else.

“I think they look like Elvis,” Favre said. “We’re from the same state, you know. Don’t you think they look like Elvis?”

His family thinks he looks like something else. “Like a person who does not want to change for nothing,” Irvin Favre said. “His agent talks to him, we talk to him. . . . He wants all these things, but he don’t want to become a big shot.”

Brett Favre, 26 and sometimes feeling like 50, answers the question with another question.

“Who says I have to change?” he asked. “Because I’m making more money? Because I can fill up my truck with gas whenever I want? I’ve already changed. And I ain’t changing no more.”

*

The Brett Favre Story, Take Two.

Favre and older brother Scott are throwing a football in their Kiln backyard.

They are just kids, yet Brett’s arm is so strong, and so wild, that he breaks every pane of glass above a storage shed while trying to hit his brother on a simple down and out.

“That’s it,” Irvin Favre says, walking outside, grabbing the football, and showing some of his own arm strength by throwing it into Rotten Bayou.

Brett loves football, but not enough to serve his arm to a creature that has already eaten three of his dogs.

He and Scott eventually move to the front yard. A new football. A pile of old carpet sits in front of a picture window. Brett sends Scott running toward the pile, then lofts the ball to him. Scott catches it and bounces off the carpet.

It’s a blast. Until Brett leads him too far. Scott dives and crashes through the window.

“That’s it,” Irvin Favre says, walking outside, grabbing the. . . .

Cut.

*

When somebody becomes a star, his friends are approached for favorite stories. A star’s friends are guarded. Favre’s friends can’t shut up.

“I remember one time it was like the whole world was falling in on him, he was dead in the pocket and there were no receivers open,” Packer tight end Mark Chmura said. “Then he starts running and he jukes four guys and gets a first down. Comes back to the huddle, looks at me, and starts laughing. He can’t believe it either.”

Anthony Morgan remembers the time Favre completed a pass to him through three defenders while off-balance and with pass rushers grabbing for him. A dumb pass. A wonderful pass.

“Right after that, there was a TV timeout, and in the huddle I said, ‘Brett, how did you do that?’ ” Morgan said. “He is breaking up and shaking his head and saying, ‘I have no idea, I have no idea.’ I wish there was a microphone in our huddle so the whole world could hear how often that happens.”

The basic story surrounding Favre is a familiar one.

Small-town superstar, small-town college (Southern Mississippi), big-city blues (two interceptions in five passes for the Atlanta Falcons), big-time trade to Green Bay (for a first-round pick).

In rural Green Bay, Favre immediately felt at home. “Except it was 100 degrees colder,” he said.

He thought he had made it during his first year there, in 1992, when he passed for 18 touchdowns with 13 interceptions and 3,227 yards in only 13 starts.

But in his second season, his tendency to take chances resulted in more interceptions (24) than touchdowns (19) and more than a 10-point drop in passer rating (to 72.2).

Critics called for his benching, but Coach Mike Holmgren stuck with an instinct.

“As a coach, you can sense certain things about people,” he said. “You know when a guy is trying, and Brett was trying. He knew what had to happen. It became a matter of, ‘OK, just show me.’

“Well, Brett has showed me. He’s showed us all.”

Favre has become so accomplished, Holmgren said with no trace of sarcasm, that, “He now throws the ball to the guy who is open. Most of the time.”

*

The Brett Favre Story, Take Three.

Flash to his first year in Green Bay. Favre is standing in a bar with teammates. One of them, huge lineman Rich Moran, is hassled by one of the locals. Favre steps up and cold-cocks the guy.

“Brett, Brett,” Moran says as they hustle from the joint. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing that for you.”

Flash to this year. Favre throws for three touchdowns and runs for a fourth against the Cleveland Browns. One of their receivers, Andre Rison, angrily calls him a hillbilly.

To which Favre says thank you.

“Because I am,” he says.

Cut.

*

The hillbilly is 12-0 in freezing weather.

The bumpkin leads all quarterbacks with 59 consecutive starts.

Brett Favre cannot explain it. He cannot explain anything. And not, unlike other NFL quarterbacks, because he won’t.

Because he can’t.

“I cannot tell you how I will react when a guy is in my face, I just react,” he said. “A lot of times I’ll watch films and say, ‘My gosh, how did I do that?’ And then I’ll say, ‘I never want the opportunity to do that again.’

“Because I have no idea what I’ll do again.”

How about athletic apparel? Troy Aikman does athletic apparel commercials, doesn’t he? The ones where he says, “Get real.”

So much for that. Millions may truly need to get real. Brett Favre isn’t one of them.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Making His Point

Brett Favre’s 32 touchdown passes and three rushing touchdowns this season have accounted for 61% of the Packers’ total scoring, a substantially higher percentage than any other quarterback.

THE TOP FIVE

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Player, Team TD Pass TD Rush Pts. Pct. Favre, Green Bay 32 3 61% Blake, Cincinnati 26 2 54% Mitchell, Detroit 26 3 52% Kramer, Chicago 26 1 48% Everett, New Orleans 23 0 48%

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NOTABLE OTHERS

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Player, Team TD Pass TD Rush Pts. Pct. Moon, Minnesota 28 0 47% Young, San Francisco 17 2 45% Marino, Miami 23 1 42% Elway, Denver 23 1 42% Aikman, Dallas 14 1 25%

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