Favre-palooza

Well, since the whole of the national sports media has been "All Favre, all the time" since Brett Favre's game winning touchdown pass in yesterday's Vikings/49er game, I thought I would join the parade. And so, allow me to share my personal favorite Brett Favre moment.

It was the 2003 NFC Divisional playoff game between Favre's Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles. A very exciting game had led to overtime. The Eagles won the toss and elected to receive, but after a 3 and out, the ball, and thus, the game, was in Brett Favre's hand. On the first play of the series, Favre dropped back, looked down the field, and gave the ball a mighty heave. It soared majestically down the field, until it came down, into the waiting arms of... Eagles safety Brian Dawkins - with no Packer within 20 yards of him and the ball. Dawkins ran the ball back 35 yards to the Packer 35, the Eagles drove 20 more yards and then kicked the game winning field goal to advance to the NFC title game.

If you remember that game, or are aware of my affinity for Philadelphia sports teams, you probably saw that coming. I bring it up for two reasons: First, because it really is a fun memory, and second, because I've been wondering for the last 24 hours plus when exactly it was that the media at large lost all sense of perspective on Favre.

Now, I am not a Favre-hater. In fact, there was a period in Favre's career where I would probably have ranked him as one of my favorite players that didn't play for my favorite team. I get why people liked him. He was an immense talent, had a seemingly very "every man", down to earth demeanor, and he played the game with passion and with a gunslinger's mentality that everyone who has dreamed of NFL glory while playing in a pick up game in the backyard can relate to. He was an excellent quarterback, one of the absolute best in the game in his prime, and enjoyed a good deal of success. He merited attention.

At some point, however, this thing got way out of control. I'd love to blame the president of the media's Favre fanboy club, John Madden, but he was only the most obvious culprit. At some point Favre almost became bigger than the game, and his flaws as a player (which certainly existed) were routinely whitewashed while his successes were overemphasized. The story I started with is a perfect example - in addition to making a lot of incredibly positive game-changing plays, it wasn't that uncommon for him to hurt his team's chances with an unnecessary risk or poor decision. That was the downside of having his talent and his mentality - he always believed he could make a throw. There's a reason he's the NFL's all-time leader in touchdown passes, and also interceptions. He did cutdown on the latter in his prime, but not at all entirely.

At this point in his career, and after all the years of "will he/won't he" around his retirement status, Favre is still being assigned a place in the game, that, in my opinion, he doesn't deserve and never really did. The man was great, in all but the strictest definitions of the term, but let's not get crazy. He played a substantial portion of his career alongside 3 quarterbacks who I wouldn't hestitate to rank ahead of him in the NFL pantheonon of greatness in Elway, Brady, and Peyton Manning, and alongside several others (Young, Aikman quickly come to mind) who certainly are in the same neighborhood as he. At present, he has to show for his efforts exactly one Super Bowl win, ranking him alongside such lumanaries of the game as Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson, and one loss to Elway. He also has, alongside those, a few catastrophic meltdowns like the one I opened this thread with that sent his teams to the golf course.

And yet, one game-winning TD pass, in the 3rd game of the season, and it's wall to wall Brett-mania on ESPN. Almost completely lost in the euphoria has been the fact that Favre's pass would have been for naught had the less than Pro Bowl caliber wideout Greg Lewis not made one of the better catches you'll ever see in the very back of the end zone. In fact (and I chastise people all the time for building arguments around "if" statements that really can't be proven wrong, so I apologize for this), I'm guessing that if all but 2 other active quarterbacks (Brady and P. Manning being the other) had thrown the ball, the headlines would have been talking about a game-winning catch, rather than a game winning pass. However, as a point of support, when referencing the end of last year's Super Bowl, do people more often refer to Ben Roethlisberger's winning pass, or Santonio Holmes' winning catch?

Anyhow, I wish Brett Favre the best, and he has been excellent this season by any reasonable measure. I just wish that the media would allow us all to appreciate Favre for what he is and was, without the need to hyperbolize and hero worship.