A Long Way From Lambeau
Thank You, and Goodnight
by Mark Lyne-Austen
15/3/2008
 
It has finally happened. The legendary figure of Brett Favre will no longer grace the frozen tundra of Lambeau in a competitive game. The agony of the Conference Championship round defeat against the New York Giants at the end of last season was tempered by the prospect of further Favre spectacle. Now that is not going to happen. The retirement seemed so much more likely at the end of the 2006/07 season with most pundits predicting more struggle for the youthful Packers team. Instead it has happened now but Favre is not only player to have announced his retirement.
 
Favre's name overshadows others in the retirement class and perhaps rightly so but others who made their mark in the league and stuck around for a very long time also called it quits this year. Two others who join Favre on the sofa are Warren Sapp, the former Tampa Bay and Oakland defensive tackle, and Vinny Testaverde the multi-retired quarterback who started for half a dozen teams in a 21 year career.
 
That Favre casts such a long shadow over the others players making their exit from the gridiron is in part down to his glorious and record breaking career, but it is also in part due to the infectious spirit that reflected an era of the game most of us look back fondly upon. Favre's stats are easy to measure – the three MVP awards, the records for consecutive starts and wins by a quarterback, career records in the air for touchdowns, completions, attempts, and interceptions, and Super Bowl XXXI.
 
Were these the only impact that Favre made on the game, it would be impressive but not hold the same affection in the hearts of fans from most franchises across the league. In today's wider open offensive game it seems unlikely that Favre will hold on to many of the records forever though two may well stand for a very long time – consecutive starts and interceptions. These two are indicators of what made Green Bay's favourite Mississipian son different.
 
Prior to Favre's arrival, Green Bay was not a great side. The team had failed to win the NFC Central for 20 years, and that 1972 win was the only time the Packers had taken a Divisional title since the AFL-NFL merger. With Brett at the helm, the team did manage winning records at least and recorded three back-to-back Conference titles between 1995 and 1998, a stretch that included Super Bowl XXXI and the loss to John Elway's Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXII.
 
Favre's winning mentality is far from a unique attribute and he definitely benefited from having some quality in the squad, especially defensive end Reggie White who brought a threat on the defensive side of the ball from 1993. Favre did though bring an energy and hope to a team and became an icon the equal in status to the fearsome head coach of the 1960s, Vince Lombardi.
 
Winning helps any player develop iconic status but Brett had something else and the consecutive starts and interceptions help to illustrate that. Starting so many games at quarterback with 275 including playoffs only happens to a player with instincts and with a physical and mental toughness to endure. The warrior mentality in a successful QB is rare. Aside from the kicking positions, quarterback is the one spot on the field where a player is not typically looking to impose their physical presence on the opposition.
 
Equally rare is that a quarterback with quite so many interceptions is lauded as one of the greats. Above all else in the modern game, QBs are measured by the number of interceptions thrown. Eli Manning of the New York Giants is an excellent case in point – a player lambasted by the media and supporters despite putting up reasonable numbers each year suddenly became a hero when he stopped throwing the ball to the opposition.
 
The gunslinger cliché does not quite get to the heart of why Favre's interceptions never dimmed the outpouring of support for this one player. A gunslinger is a reckless and brave battler who backs his own abilities to out-shoot a dangerous opponent. While those may well be attributes most ascribe to Favre's career, it is the slightly different attribute of hope that helped the fans identify. While a clinical analysis might prefer reckless, hope is what Favre had and what the fans who watched him felt each time the ball headed out towards a receiver. Hope is what all fans have in their team, that the impossible could just happen and that glory could just lie around the corner.
 
Trying to fit the ball into windows that really are not there gets a QB fired quickly and ruins their confidence. The winning record of the Packers under Favre gave him immunity to that shattering approach. Had he appeared 10 years later, maybe he would not have lasted a long but that is another part of the appeal. Favre just doesn't quite fit in a QB world of Tom Brady or Peyton Manning. Arguably both better passers than Favre and candidates to take the legend's career records away, neither is the player who magicked something up because they believed it. Each possesses a clinical and deadly arm and mind but neither would even attempt the pass while barely off the snow ground against Seattle in the 2007/08 playoffs.
 
Favre will be missed and there probably will not be another player just like him for a very long time.
 
Still, Favre is not the only player to have retired this year and though he is a lock for the Hall of Fame other players who left the game should not be forgotten. One player who clashed with Favre on many occasions was former Tampa and Oakland defensive monstrosity Warren Sapp. Sapp did not endear himself to Packers fans with one of the most controversial hits of recent years against lineman Chad Clifton. The blindside hit left Clifton in hospital for days and resulted in a change of the rules around unnecessary roughness.
 
Despite that hit and an unpopular attitude, Sapp was also player who changed his position. Playing on a defensive side that eventually went on to win Super Bowl XXXVII, Sapp was a crucial ingredient of the Tampa Two defense that went on to gain popularity across the league but rarely as successfully as in that Tampa team. Sapp was a big reason why. Playing defensive tackle, Sapp was a disruptive force up the middle and able to both clog the running game and get to the quarterback, a standard that all DTs are now measured by.
 
Getting pressure up front and taking blockers on, Sapp allowed other Tampa players such as linebacker Derrick Brooks and pseudo-linebacker John Lynch to make the plays that in combination helped a relatively poor offensive side lift the traditional bottom-feeding Buccaneers to Super Bowl XXXVII. Sapp was the 1999 Defensive Player of the Year and though sacks have not been measured properly in NFL history, reached the QB an impressive 96.5 times.
 
Another player who saw retirement overshadowed was also an iron-man quarterback. Vinny Testaverde started for 6 different teams in his 21 year career that started with his first overall selection by the same Tampa Bay team that drafted Sapp early 8 years later. While Vinny does not hold the same impressive span of records that Brett Favre does, he is able to lay claim to one – no other player has ever thrown a touchdown in more consecutive seasons than Testaverde's 21.
 
Though it is always the glory boy quarterbacks and defensive troublemakers that grab the limelight, another notable player retired this year – Sean Landeta. This one may have slipped by more understandably because punters are not the most respected position around and Landeta had not actually got onto the field since 2005 but his retirement should not be without note. A former United States Football League player, Landeta secured two Super Bowl wins with the New York Giants and is second behind only fellow Giant Jeff Feagles in key punting stats. Landeta was also named to the NFL's all-decade team twice – the 1980s and the 1990s, one of only five players to be represented in both teams and giving him one more all-decade nomination than both Sapp and Favre.
 
With these and other players retiring, others will fill the their positions on the field at least in theory. Very few players will have made the mark that these players did in their chosen professions, and almost none will have had the effect that Brett Favre did on every NFL fan.