Gunslinger

by Jeff Pearlman

  The Packers were 3-6 with the Eagles coming to Milwaukee.* Featuring an electric quarterback named Randall Cunningham, Philadelphia was considered a legitimate Super Bowl contender. By now, opponents were game-planning for Favre, which meant studying the tapes and tracking tendencies of the man leading the NFL’s 16th-ranked offense. The early reviews were strong. Lynn, the Bengals’ defensive coordinator, compared Favre to John Elway. John Robinson, the former Los Angeles Rams coach, said he was the new Bobby Layne. And Joe Woolley, the Eagles’ personnel director, believed the league was seeing a young Terry Bradshaw.

  Thirteen minutes into the first quarter, with the thermostat reading 17 degrees and the agony of frost-powered numbness settling in, Reggie White and Andy Harmon—two of the Eagles’ star pass rushers—sandwiched Favre. A fire-like pain shot through his left arm as his shoulder popped out of the socket, the arm drooping to his side. Holmgren immediately motioned for Majkowski to warm up, but Favre refused to leave the field. He somehow manipulated his shoulder back into place and three plays later found Sharpe for a 5-yard touchdown. It was the toughest thing anyone had ever seen. “I wondered, ‘Who is this guy?’” White recalled. “His left arm had seized up so bad he couldn’t even lift it, much less hand off to that side.” At halftime Clarence Novotny, the team physician, injected the painkiller Xylocaine into the shoulder, and the pain subsided. It wasn’t the first time Favre had taken pain medication, and it would be far from the last. Whatever was needed to stay on the field, he willingly did.

  The statistics were strong (23 of 33, 275 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions), the lasting impression stronger. The Packers held on for a 27–24 win, and White—the man who would not have been able to distinguish Brett Favre from a grocery store clerk three hours earlier—sought the Green Bay quarterback out afterward. “You,” he told him, “have as much guts as anyone in this league, and it was an honor to play against you. I won’t forget it.”

  The victory improved the Packers to 4-6, but the infusion of confidence counted more than the record. What began as one victory over a high-quality team turned into a six-game winning streak, the longest for the organization in 26 years. The local media came up with different reasons for the roll (Holmgren’s genius, Wolf’s savvy, a ramped-up defense), but the greatest contributor was the odd yet perfect coupling of Favre and Sharpe—a bad movie cliché brought to life.

  The quarterback and the star wide receiver were both big Southern kids (Sharpe was raised in Glennville, Georgia) who loved football, but the similarities ended there. Favre was a beer-swilling country boy. Sharpe didn’t drink. Favre talked to everyone, about everything. Sharpe largely kept to himself. Favre was not one to brag. Sharpe would stand naked before a locker room mirror, inviting teammates to admire the full physical splendor that was Sterling Sharpe. When he was nabbed by Green Bay with the seventh overall pick in the 1988 NFL draft, friends presumed Sharpe would be devastated to have to play football in a cold, mostly white wasteland. Not so. “My family was all like, ‘Ugh,’ and I was like, ‘Yes!’” Sharpe said. “I never wanted to be famous or market myself. I just wanted to play football.” His first professional season was good (55 catches, 791 yards), his second, stellar. Sharpe caught 90 passes for 1,423 yards and 12 touchdowns, introducing himself as Jerry Rice’s new rival for NFL’s best pass catcher. Sharpe had enormous meaty hands, and wrists as strong as iron. He wasn’t particularly fast, but ran precise routes. He was also one of the few Packers wide receivers to never have a finger snapped by Favre, and actually relished the challenge of catching his passes at close range. “We used to have this thing on Saturday mornings where we’d stand 10 yards from the quarterbacks and see if they could throw it through our hands,” said Sharpe. “They could throw it as hard as they want, but they couldn’t throw it through my hands. Never. Not even Brett, bringing it with everything he had. Why? Because I can catch.”

  But for all his accomplishments, Sharpe was far from beloved by Packers fans. Part of the reason was likely race—Green Bay simply did not seem to embrace black stars the way it did white ones. But the biggest factor was perceived attitude. Beginning during week 9 of his rookie season, Sharpe stopped talking to the local media. “They would write something about me without ever asking me anything,” he said. “So I was like, ‘OK, if you guys wanna do that, I’ll do that, too.’” The boycott lasted throughout his career, and it did not go over well. Sharpe was perceived to be selfish, arrogant, indifferent, removed. He lived across the street from the stadium, and walked to practices accompanied by his pet, a rottweiler named Luger. Technically, animals were not allowed in the Green Bay facilities. Technically, Sterling Sharpe didn’t give a damn. “One time we had a players-only meeting, and everyone’s going around, talking about why they play football,” said Sydney. “Well, Sterling stands up and says, ‘I’m playing for me. I need to get the numbers. I need to get paid.’”

  But Sharpe played hurt, played sick, played in the minus-10-degree winds without a moment of debate. He was a ferocious downfield blocker, and used his strength to physically beat down cornerbacks off the line. He and Majkowski emerged as one of the NFL’s most dynamic connections, and often hung out to watch Monday Night Football. Once Favre became the starter, Sharpe deemed it his duty to give the new quarterback a security blanket. In the week following the Cincinnati game, Sharpe enrolled in Brett Favre 101, studying his drops, his mannerisms, his reactions after good throws, after bad throws. “Here’s an example,” Sharpe said. “In practice everyone is more relaxed and we call 22ZN—it’s a 14-yard route with Brett taking a five-step drop. No hitch in his throw. But in a game everything moves faster, and that 14-yard route we practice is now 12 yards. So I’d run it 12, and Mike [Holmgren] would ask, ‘What was that?’ I explained my thinking. It was all good.” Favre and Sharpe were emotional players, and fans presumed there was tension. They also presumed Sharpe was bullying Favre into throwing him the ball. Not true. “I never told him to get it to me,” Sharpe said. “Never. Beforehand I’d always say, ‘Let me help you.’ People thought that was me looking out for me. No. It was me looking out for him. We understood each other, we liked each other. Best friends ever? No. But close teammates who worked well together? Without a doubt.”

  With Favre generating most of the national hype, and with the Packers’ No. 1 receiver ducking out of the locker room after games, it was easy to overlook Sharpe putting together one of the greatest seasons in NFL history. He burned the Eagles (and star defensive back Eric Allen) for seven catches, 116 yards, and a touchdown, and a week later, in a 17–3 thrashing of the Bears, caught five more passes, including a backbreaking 49-yard touchdown bomb. The following Sunday, in a 19–14 revenge victory vs. Tampa Bay, he destroyed the Buccaneer secondary for nine receptions. His hands, decimated by arthritis, were swollen and plagued by shooting pains, and he told no one.

  The capper of a surprisingly terrific season came on December 20, when the Packers won their sixth straight game with a sound 28–13 beating of the Los Angeles Rams before 57,000-plus attendees at Lambeau. The kickoff was scheduled for noon, and the temperature was 10 degrees, with a windchill of minus 15. Three hours before start time, thousands of fans could be found in the expansive parking lot, grilling bratwurst, sizzling steaks, bundled in—to cite the Washington Post’s Leonard Shapiro—“enough blaze-orange hunting coveralls to scare the local deer population all the way back to Minnesota.” Less than a year earlier, the idea of Brett Favre excelling in such conditions was preposterous. Now he seemed to thrive in the weather. Did Favre love blistering cold? No. But he found himself enjoying the feel of brisk air surrounding his skin, and particularly liked seeing opposing defenders wrapped in thermal along the sideline, shivering like newborn penguins. Favre inherited a raw toughness from his father. To hell with the elements—this was football. Sharpe had a similarly profound approach to the cold: fuck it. He didn’t care, wasn’t bothered, gave it little more than a second’s thought. Whether it was 90 degrees or m
inus 20, he always wore short sleeves. Against the Rams he caught eight passes for 110 yards and two touchdowns. The most impressive play of the game came with time ticking off the clock toward the end of the first half. “We’ve got 20 seconds to go, we’ve got no timeouts, we throw [Sterling] the ball and he’s hit two yards short,” recalled Gil Haskell, an assistant coach. “And he still gets in the end zone. That’s pretty much his whole season for us.” Haskell failed to mention the five Rams Sharpe dragged along for the ride

  The Packers were now 9-6 heading into the season’s final game at Minneapolis. A win (plus a loss by either Washington or Philadelphia) would have them in the playoffs for the first time since 1982. The good news for the Packers was that the last matchup against the Vikings—a 23–20 overtime loss in the season opener—came with Majkowski at quarterback. “If there was one game we could have back, it’d be the Minnesota game,” said Brian Noble, Green Bay’s standout linebacker. “It was one we probably let slip away that we should have had.”

  The bad news was that, at 10-5, the Vikings were the class of the NFC Central—deeper and more experienced than the Packers and hard to handle in the Metrodome. By the time the game rolled around, the Vikings’ defense was ready. Tony Dungy, the defensive coordinator, knew Sharpe would inevitably get his (he caught six passes for 45 yards and set a league record with 108 receptions), but refused to allow Favre to sit back and comfortably pick the secondary apart. Minnesota’s coverage packages were advanced and disguised, and Favre wound up being intercepted three times by Vencie Glenn in a lopsided (and dull) 27–7 defeat. Afterward, the Packers’ looker room—usually jovial and upbeat—was silent. Chuck Cecil, the safety, sat slumped in a chair, blood dripping from his nose. Jurkovic, towel draped over his shoulders, admitted the Vikings were the superior team, but “it feels like I swallowed a rotten egg.” Favre reclined by his small cubby, dejected, heartbroken. The season had surpassed all expectations, and cemented his status as one of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL. His statistics (3,227 yards, 18 touchdowns, 13 interceptions) jumped off the page. He was even a Pro Bowler. But the numbers and accolades mattered not. He didn’t merely aspire to win the Vikings game. He expected it. “We keep telling ourselves that we had a good year, but I can’t accept a loss like this,” he said quietly. “We’ve got to work harder to become a playoff team.”

  With that, he turned and walked off to the shower.

  13

  God and the Devil

  * * *

  IF THERE IS something particularly surprising about Brett Favre’s early days with the Packers, it’s this: nobody knew him.

  Oh, they knew him, in the way you know a teammate who farts and burps and cracks jokes and snaps towels and cites Tupac lyrics and chows down on barbecue ribs and drinks alcohol by the crate.

  But if one had asked the 80 or so men who wore Packers uniforms in 1992 whether their quarterback was a father, or had a hot-and-cold, on-again-off-again girlfriend, the vast majority would have shrugged.

  It’s not that Brett Favre deliberately kept Deanna Tynes a secret. Heck, she even flew in from Mississippi for a handful of games, stayed at his apartment, met some of the guys. It was just that, well, there was soooo much out there. So much alcohol. So many women. So many nights on the town, where the shots flowed and the midriffs were exposed and the 20-something groupies hovered around their new football god. The state of Wisconsin was long derided among NFL players for its thin (well, not so thin) selection of sexy women, yet Favre made do. The talk of settling down to focus solely upon football? Eh . . . um . . . ah. No. On their off days, many of the Packers traveled to Milwaukee, just 118 miles down the road, and hit the Water Street bar scene. This was also the era before iPhones and Twitter, when a celebrity’s every move wasn’t chronicled, then distributed to the masses in a flash.

  However . . .

  The video exists. It existed in 1992, but not for widespread consumption. The man at the center of the 2-minute, 38-second clip is dressed in a dark-blue collared shirt. He has brown hair and a boyish face. He holds a beer bottle in his right hand, and takes repeated swigs and chugs. He is Brett Favre, and the bar patrons surrounding him chant his name as a man with a microphone bellows, “Let me hear you all shout for Brett Favre—welcome to Milwaukee!” A thin blond woman with early ’90s hair, big gold hoop earrings, jean shorts, and high stockings struts back and forth before stopping to shake and twist her slight rear end. Brett Favre takes hold of the microphone, clears his throat, and harkens back to a particular melody he enjoyed in college: a 1986 Sinatra-esque classic from 2 Live Crew titled “We Want Some Pussy.”

  “We used to sing this little song!” Favre says to the adoring crowd. “And I was singing it earlier! Heeeeeeeey, we want some puuuuuusy . . .” The men all join in as Favre repeats himself four times. Eventually, the scantily clad women arrive, and begin stripping down to their underwear.

  Ah, good times.

  When Brett Favre was home in Mississippi, he lived with his parents and devoted a reasonable amount of attention to Deanna and Brittany. He even encouraged his sorta girlfriend to quit working and return to college, which he paid for. But when he was back in Wisconsin, it was a different story. Drinks were free. Breasts were large. Life was a party. Did he love Deanna? Sure. But Heeeeeeeey, we want some puuuuuusy . . .

  In 1993 Favre made some decisions befitting the status of an NFL starting quarterback. One, he and his agent, Bus Cook, wisely decided it was time (and a good investment) to purchase a house. Having spent nearly his entire life living at home with Irv and Bonita, Brett knew not the first thing about real estate. Cook hooked him up with a local agent, Lynn Blache, who happened to be the wife of Greg Blache, the Packers’ defensive line coach. “The first time I went to meet Brett, I entered his apartment and someone yelled, ‘Duck!’” said Lynn Blache. “A pillow flies through the air, his brother Scott comes running through the door, and Brett tackles him into a table, and the table breaks beneath them. It’s my introduction to Brett.”

  Bus, Brett, and Lynn drove off to look at houses. The first one, located at 2114 Shady Lane in a quiet Green Bay neighborhood, was brand-new and enormous (4,450 square feet; four bedrooms, four bathrooms). It was brick, and a classic country French style. There was a two-story great room off the kitchen with a fireplace. The first-floor bathroom had a whirlpool tub. “I like this one,” Brett said. “I wanna take it.”

  “No,” said Lynn, “you have to look at more than one.”

  “I don’t care,” Brett replied. “I want this one.”

  Cook insisted they conduct a more extensive search, but at the second house Brett sidled up to Lynn and said, “Please, can we go back to the other house? That’s the one I want.”

  “No,” said Bus. “That’s not how you do this.”

  The third house was a last straw. “I can’t take this any longer,” Brett whined. “Can we just go back to the first house now?”

  The home was empty and under construction. Lots of work needed to be done. It was more expensive than homes two and three. “I’d really like this to be a finished rec room,” he said, nodding to one area. “So the guys can come down, watch games, play pool. They can be in one area and not mess everything else up.”

  Favre bought the home for $285,000 and took the unusual step of asking Lynn and Gayle Mariucci, Steve’s wife, to help decorate. “Gayle literally went through and bought every stick of furniture in the house—from the towels to the furniture to the bedroom set,” Lynn said. “He was so happy, like a kid in a candy shop.”

  The plan was to live by himself, with guests constantly coming and going. But then Clark Henegan, a pal from Southern Miss, moved in to both party and serve as a quasi cook. He was followed by Frank Winters, the Packers offensive lineman who arrived in Green Bay in 1992 after having played for three teams in five seasons. “When Brett was talking about the house,” said Lynn, “he said it was important there was a bar built in that Frank Winters could lay over if he drank
too much. He was very specific on that point—the bar needed to be strong enough to hold Frank.”

  “With Brett, you got to experience what it was to be a rock star,” said Henegan. “Deanna was in the picture, and I knew and liked her. But it wasn’t my job to tell her about all the women Brett was with. He had girls come to town. Lots of girls. But he was like a brother to me—I wasn’t going to tell his girlfriend what was really going on. We were having some great times.”

  It was a strange year for Brett Favre, who simultaneously lived the life of Green Bay’s new playboy and served as the No. 1 promotional tool for drawing football’s most important (and devoutly Christian) free agent to Green Bay. During the winter and spring months that followed the ’92 season, the NFL was abuzz with talk of two related subjects: (1) unrestricted free agency for the first time in league history, and (2) Reggie White’s availability. The seven-time Pro Bowl defensive end had spent his entire NFL career in Philadelphia, and now—thanks to a recent labor settlement that included free agency—he was the hottest name on a list of 298 players able to sign wherever they chose. Without much warning, the NFL offseason became a Price Is Right knockoff (Sports Illustrated called it “The Reggie Game!”) with teams itching to lure White to their cities. For example, four days after the free agency period began, the Cleveland Browns flew White and his wife, Sara, to town via private jet, ferried them by limousine to their $800-a-night suite in the Ritz-Carlton penthouse (a bouquet of red, white, pink, and yellow roses—Sara’s favorites—awaited), had Jim Brown call to talk up Cleveland, gifted Sara with a $900 leather coat, and then gave the couple a tour of their magnificent $12.3 million practice facility.