The Chronicles of Favre-ia Brett Favres
Posted: Thu Jun 08, 2023 5:13 am
The list starts with a "Majik Man" and ends with a journeyman. There's a McMahon somewhere in there, too, along with two Heisman Trophy winners and two other QBs to start Super Bowls -- or three, if you count Kurt Warner, a camp arm in 1994 who never made the final roster cut.The one constant in this motley fraternity of quarterbacks?The indestructible Brett Favre, who kept each and every one of them on the sideline while making 321 consecutive NFL starts, playoff games included, over 19 seasons.Like Favre's streak, the list of pa sers who backed him up is long and distinguished.Don Majkowski, aka the "Majik Man," was runner-up to Joe Montana in the 1989 MVP vote before giving way to Favre-mania when he rolled his ankle in the third game of the 1992 season. Ty Detmer, winner of the 1990 Heisman Trophy, landed in Green Bay as James Johnson Jersey a ninth-rounder in 1992. Mark Brunell, a fifth-round pick of the Packers, started 151 games in the NFL and piloted the to two AFC title games after he left Favre's side. Jim McMahon, the "Punky QB" who shuffled to a with the 1985 , spent his final two seasons backing up Favre and got another ring to show for it. Doug Pederson, Favre's backup for seven seasons, is now the offensive coordinator.There was also Steve Bono, a 15-year NFL veteran with a 28-14 record as a starter, and Danny Wuerffel, the 1996 Heisman winner. Both spent a season in Green Bay. Also in the club: little-remembered guys like T.J. Rubley, Ingle Martin, Craig Nall, J.T. O'Sullivan, Sage Rosenfels and . , mostly a career backup, finally replaced an injured Favre in the starting lineup in Week 8 of the 2010 season.Then there are the guys still playing: backup , Favre's understudy in his one season as a , and , who on Sunday joined Favre in another exclusive club as the only two QBs to win four consecutive regular-season games in a season at the age of 40. And, of course, , the guy who finally took over for Favre in Green Bay in 2008, and who has done pretty well for himself since.All of them had a front-row seat for one the greatest feats in sports: Favre's weekly hair-on-fire a sault of the NFL record books.Bumps. Bruises. Broken bones. Separated shoulders. Torn ligaments. Rolled ankles. Concu sions. Favre battled through enough injuries to fill a medical encyclopedia to make each week's start, often playing some of his best football when he hurt the most."I was a part of games where he would break a finger or tweak a knee and you'd think he wasn't going to play the next week," Pederson said. "He'd roll an ankle and he couldn't practice on Wednesday, Thursday, sometimes even on Friday, but by Saturday he was ready to go and by Sunday you couldn't keep him off the field."You also couldn't help but root for Tyrell Terry Jersey the guy. Favre's toughne s inspired fierce loyalty among his teammates, while his practical jokes and spot-on impersonations, or his retelling of stories from his boyhood in tiny Kiln, Mi si sippi, would leave the locker room in hysterics. As Favre nears Boban Marjanovic Jersey entry into the greatest football clubhouse of all -- the Pro Football Hall of Fame -- we asked some of the card-carrying members of his backup club to paint a picture of the man, the myth and the legend.You can't, as the saying goes, make this stuff up. "I went out and played, all right. I was all over the place, like a chicken with his head cut off." -- Brett Favre Ty Detmer, Packers backup QB, 1992-95:One of Brett's first plays when Don Majkowski got hurt, Brett goes in and his first play was an audible. It was like, What the heck, we never talked about that? Balls are flying everywhere, he was so wound up and going. Then at the end of the game, we're behind, two minutes left, and he throws a howitzer and hits Kitrick Taylor in stride for a touchdown. Nobody else in the league could've made that throw at that time. It was just a rope, about 45 yards down the sideline. That was cover 2, so he beat the safety. He threw it so flat that the safety never even touched Kitrick. It was just kinda one of those deals where it was like, Man, wow. And he was going nuts, the whole place is going crazy. That was the beginning.Mark Brunell, Packers backup QB, 1993-94:One thing about Brett, you quickly found out that he liked to have a good time. In the meeting rooms, everything was very light. He wasn't a serious guy. But I can remember, in that first year, Brett Favre taught me as a young QB how you play the game at that level. On the field, he played hard. Detmer:Here Mike Holmgren came from Joe Montana and Steve Young to Brett Favre. I'm sure he was thinking, Dennis Smith Jr. Jersey like, "Man, what have I gotten myself into?" Early on, he was not one of those guys that was real profe sional in just the way he prepared and all those kinds of things, just kinda wingin' it. But he had a really strong arm. He had a lot of the tools that coaches are looking for and you knew he was probably going to take a little time to develop.Steve Mariucci, Packers QBs coach, 1992-95, NFL Network Analyst:Patience is not one of Mike's virtues, OK? He wanted a Steve Young or a Joe Montana to play quarterback for us overnight. Whether it was Don or it was Brett or somebody else, he wanted excellence and he wanted great production right away and he was kinda spoiled that way.Brunell:He'd start to do something crazy, and it wasn't just Mike, everybody would be like, "Brett, no! No! No! No! No!" And then all of a sudden, it's a touchdown pa s, and it's like, "Yes!" That was early Brett Favre. Some of those no's stayed no's, though. Detmer:He couldn't put a formation with the play together that first year. You never knew what formation was going to be called. I remember Sterling Sharpe was one of our veteran receivers and he would come off the field laughing. He was like, "You should've heard what he called that time."Mariucci:In Atlanta he was running the Run and Shoot, which is a completely different offense than the West Coast offense, and he had very little experience or background in Freddie Gillespie Jersey reading defenses, no experience with the system and what it entailed. We were basically starting from scratch.Brunell:I've told this to a lot of people, but that was probably the most fun I ever had in a QB room because Brett would tell stories and nobody could tell a story like him. He's gotta be one of the funniest guys I've ever been around. I can remember Steve and Ty and myself just crying, laughing at Brett. As a young player, I just thought, "Man the NFL is great. This is it. Are you kidding me? We're not getting anything done, we're just telling stories and having fun and making fun of each other." It was pricele s. Detmer:One of our first blitz meetings, we would go in early Wednesday morning and the QBs would meet with the O-line coach, the RBs coach and the QB coach and go over teams' bli