In action … but missing

Sporting News, The, Nov 29, 1999 by Dave Kindred

Where have you gone, Joe Montana? For that matter, has anyone seen Brett Favre? Suddenly, the NFL has no quarterbacks. Ken Stabler and Dan Fouts, put down those beers --it's time to fling the hoghide again. If this keeps up, John Elway could play one series a week and own the Broncos. Troy Aikman, Steve Young, Dan Marino and Vinny Testaverde have been replaced by men so obscure, so mysterious, so faceless that one's first guess at their identities is: federal witness protection program?

Sammy Baugh, call Leigh Steinberg. (Come to think of it, Steinberg probably has called Sammy already.) It's an absolute certainty, guaranteed or your money back, that Joe Theismann goes to bed every night thinking he could get out there, one leg shorter than the other, and do anything Jim Miller can do. Jim Miller? Who's Jim Miller? Dunno, but he got the Bears 422 yards the other day, only 98 fewer than his total passing yardage in four previous years.

The NFL's hottest quarterback is Kurt Warner, once of the University of Northern Iowa, the Iowa Barnstormers and Amsterdam Admirals. There is Jeff George, once of Every NFL Team That Got Sick and Tired of Him for Good Reason. There are Damon Huard and Jon Kitna. (Both played college ball in the state of Washington, which means less once you remember Ryan Leaf also played there.) There mainly is Peyton Manning, the only real thing in the NFL today.

Otherwise, everybody is Gus Frerotte's backup, and nobody is Billy Kilmer, who threw 'em end over end but won games because he stood on the bar at New Orleans' Old Absinthe House declaring, "I hate the Cowboys." Certainly, nobody is Brett Favre, not even Favre himself.

On a spring day in 1994, Favre sat on a dock by Rotten Bayou, a rotten bayou next door to his home. This was outside Kiln, a one-blinking-yellow-light town, pop. 1,200 or so, lost and forgotten in the southern Mississippi piney woods. Favre's take on Kiln: "People work on cars all day, party at night and wrap it all up with a few barroom brawls."

Not yet the Brett Favre he would become, he remembered the Brett Favre he had been. Which was a Brett Favre once about dead, the result of a confluence of liquor, a car and a tree. He also was a Brett Favre chosen in the first round of the 1991 NFL draft by the Falcons, for whom he mostly threw toy footballs into stadiums' upper decks.

"Always doing something like that," he said, explaining why he and fellow backup quarterback Billy Joe Tolliver bought those whistlin' Neff footballs that would fly forever with proper propulsion.

"Pregames, we'd throw 'em 98 yards, them things whistlin' like bombs," Favre said. He did it because he was a country boy having fun in the big city. He also did it to remind Jerry Glanville he could do it, though the coach didn't much notice or care, which may or may not explain why the coach is no longer a coach.

But in time, the country boy having fun saw what was good for him, or as Favre put it that day on the bayou: "Did anybody want a partying third-stringer who can throw a whistlin' Neff ball 98 yards? If you want the circus, here he is: Brett Favre!"

Even the Harley-riding coach-as-circus Glanville didn't want Favre around. So, of the 1,001 dumb things Glanville did with the Falcons, he then did the dumbest of all. He traded Favre to the Packers.

Not that Glanville's foolishness was immediately evident. It took a while for the circus-boy quarterback to learn the sophisticated West Coast offense as adapted by the Packers' coach, Mike Holmgren.

"One time," Favre began, laughing, "I called the snap early, bumped into a receiver in motion, bounced off a running back and stumbled out into the flat and had to get rid of the thing."

So?

"I threw it underhand, and I threw it so late that just as our guy caught it, he got hit and knocked unconscious. We wound up winning, thank God, but when we're watching film later, Mike goes, `What in the hell was that play? I can't even chart that.'"

Even if Favre didn't become Brett Favre suddenly, he did it certainly. Now thrice the NFL's MVP, a Super Bowl winner and loser, he learned to work with Montana's efficiency, Elway's improvisations and Stabler's transcendent moxie. What a glorious thing it was to see, Brett Favre inventing ways to win when there was no way to win.

Now, too often, it's sad to see him at work. A Monday night against the Seahawks, with Holmgren on the other sideline, Favre was rendered forlorn. Has any Hall of Fame-quality quarterback ever played as poorly? He threw eyes-closed, ducking-the-rush, off-balance prayers to (and over) double- and triple-covered receivers. He seemed utterly and irredeemably lost, and though it's unfair to call him the Favre dumped by Glanville, it's fair to say Favre at age 30 with Ray Rhodes as the Packers' coach is not Favre at 25 with Holmgren in his ear.

This too shall pass. Favre is too good and too young to be done. He'll be back because he's the bold hero/quarterback/adventurer that the writer Jack London had in mind when he wrote, "I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor than a sleepy, permanent planet."