The Beginning of the End of an Era?

With the retirement of Brett Favre this week, the NFL has officially entered the second half of the current Golden Age of Quarterbacks. A mere two years ago, the league was enjoying a phenomenal run of high profile, exciting to watch quarterbacks. Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Donovan McNabb, and Michael Vick were all "Faces of the League", and all were helping to sell out road games in whatever city they happened to be playing in that week. The fact that guys like Carson Palmer, Daunte Culpepper, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning and even Philip Rivers were performing at a high level or at least seemed to add to the already high profile of the position just served to add that much more to the feeling that we were seeing an unprecedented level of league wide talent at the position. My, how quickly things change. Vick, as you know, is currently in prison, McNabb may or may not be on his last legs in Philly, and now, Favre has called it quits.

The retirement of number 4 has spawned an alarming amount of discussion on sports talk radio and the internet regarding just how good he really was. After being force fed years of man-love from Peter King and John Madden, the sports punditry has let loose with a backlash that's a little unsettling, to say the least. Is Favre the best quarterback in NFL history? That's not what we're saying. But, to reduce his 17 years to a series of poor decisions, forced throws, and avoidable turnovers is a tad over the top.

Certainly, the "Brett Favre just has fun playing football" notion has been beaten to death, but he did manage to bring a level of enjoyment to watching football that any of the other players mentioned above haven't done, and most likely, won't do. The reason that Favre resonated with the average fan is because he played the game the way that we would like to think we would play it, given the chance. The fact that he made a snowball and threw it at a teammate during the Divisional Round playoff win against the Seahawks underscores that point. Imagine if you were in the backyard, playing your own personal version of the Icebowl in a driving snowstorm. Doesn't that seem like something you would do to one of your buddies if you had just thrown a game turning touchdown pass? Sure it does. That's why Joe Sixpack loved watching Brett Favre. He seemed like one of us. A down to earth type that realized that playing quarterback in the NFL was a blessing and a dream come true. At a time when other players in the league were busy running around with models or pop starlets, Favre was content to live the married life on his farm in the offseason, and stay out of the blinding flash of the papparazzi. When you view him in these terms, it's easy to understand why Peter King and John Madden, as well as casual fans around the country loved to watch him play. As for his place in history, let's discuss that for a moment.

While Favre holds just about every meaningful passing record, he is probably just keeping the seat warm for Peyton Manning. And, yes, he only has the one Super Bowl ring. And, he's probably not in the top five quarterbacks that played in 2007 on the list of "If you had to pick one quarterback to start one game you had to win". With all of that said, Favre still sits at the top of our list for quarterbacks we would pick if we had to make one play to win a game. Time and time again, he seemed to make plays that nobody thought he could make, or should make. Whether it was forcing a pass into double coverage, stumbling out of the pocket and making one of those underhanded tosses like in the Divisional playoff game this year, or drawing up plays in the dirt in the huddle, Favre had a knack for making the most exciting and memorable plays over and over. One such play that defined his career took place in a playoff game that the Packers actually lost. In the fourth quarter of a close playoff game with his team trailing the 49ers, Favre led his team down the field, and threw a go ahead touchdown pass to Antonio Freeman on a play that Mike Holmgren later said was "drawn up in the dirt". With little time remaining, and his team knocking on the door of the endzone, Favre told Freeman in the huddle that he would "audible" at the line, but to run a different route than the audible called for. In fact, the route he told Freeman to run wasn't in the playbook at all. Since the 49ers ran the same version of the West Coast Offense that the Packers ran at that time, the San Francisco defense was extremely familiar with the verbiage and hand signals that the Packers were using. Coming to the line, Favre surveyed the defense, and used a hand signal to change Freeman's route to "Q18", a route in the West Coast Offense that called for him to break off his pattern if he saw the safety playing over the top. In the huddle, Favre told Freeman to break as if he was going to cut the pattern short, and then bolt behind the safety once he had bitten on the underneath route. Once the safety saw the hand signal for "Q18", he certainly knew the route, and was in what he thought to be perfect position to make the play. After the snap, Freeman ran his route as Favre had instructed him, and the safety made only one fateful step forward. Freeman slipped behind him, and Favre threw what Steve Young called "the ugliest duck" of a pass over the safety's head for six. Returning to the sideline, Mike Holmgren uttered not a word to his quarterback, furious that Favre had just run what amounted to a backyard play at a crucial time in a playoff game. If he had, one would imagine that he would paraphrase the manager in "Major League": "Nice throw. Don't ever fucking do it again." That's what made Brett Favre a fan favorite and frequent recipient of slurp jobs from many in the media. If the running soap opera of his will he or won't he retirement over the past couple of years, or the seemingly constant stream of obnoxious praise heaped on him by the media have served to make some talk show hosts or bloggers sick of him, almost everyone will miss watching Brett Favre make plays that he probably shouldn't.