He handed King the penny.
18
Something About
* * *
ON NOVEMBER 13, 1997, six members of the New England Patriots headed to Boston for an Everclear concert at the Paradise Rock Club. Among those in attendance were Scott Zolak, the backup quarterback, Max Lane, an offensive tackle, and Drew Bledsoe, the team’s star and leader.
At the time, Bledsoe was in the running for the NFL’s best—and most coveted by those seeking celebrity endorsers—quarterback. He was tall, strong, handsome, successful. “Drew had it all going for him,” said Terry Glenn, a New England wide receiver. “He was the package.”
Toward the end of the show, the Patriots players gathered on the rear of the stage and, one by one, took dives into a crowded mosh pit. When Bledsoe jumped, he allegedly landed atop Tameeka Messier, a 23-year-old Maynard, Massachusetts, woman who, as a result of the evening’s happenings, underwent surgery on her neck and spinal column to treat various injuries. Predictably, Messier filed a lawsuit against Bledsoe and the nation’s newspapers and sports radio programs had a field day.
A couple of days after the incident, Bledsoe called Bobby and Peter Farrelly, the sibling directors of two of the country’s biggest comedy hits, Dumb and Dumber and Kingpin. They had recently cast Bledsoe in a small role in their upcoming film, and were scheduled to begin work in a few weeks. “I can’t come and do your movie in Miami,” Bledsoe said. “If they find out I did a movie after that they’re going to run me out of town.”
The Farrellys immediately turned to their second choice, San Francisco quarterback Steve Young. They sent him a copy of the script, and he failed to read more than a few paragraphs without laughing. There was, however, the issue of Young’s faith. “That’s the funniest script I’ve ever read,” he told them. “But I cannot do it, because if I do it, it’s R-rated and I know all the Mormon kids will be sneaking in and I wouldn’t feel good about that.”
This is how Brett Favre came to play himself (aka: Pack Man) in There’s Something About Mary.
The Farrellys called, asked if he’d like to spend a few days in Florida filming a small role. Money was offered, but Favre requested it be donated to charity. “We had a meeting before Brett got there, and the one thing he asked for was no autograph requests,” said Bradley Thomas, the producer. “So we told the 250 people on the crew not to ask Brett to sign anything.” When Favre entered his trailer, he was greeted by a box filled with 100 footballs and a black Sharpie. “He signed every one,” said Thomas. “I loved him from that moment. You could not have had a more likeable, fun, cool athlete fill that part.”
Though he had appeared in a handful of commercials, Favre’s acting debut came just a year earlier, when he played a janitor in Reggie’s Prayer, a brutal here-and-gone film starring Reggie White as “Reggie Knox,” a retired football star turned high school history teacher.* The Farrellys never inquired whether Favre could act, because, really, it didn’t matter. “He was somebody the audience would like and admire,” said Thomas. “That’s what was most important.”
Favre spent three days on set, filming what he figured would be a funny-yet-forgettable two-minute scene for a film that starred, among other A-listers, Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, and Matt Dillon. He uttered five pieces of dialogue (“Hi, Mary,”; “I’m in town to play the Dolphins, you dumbass”; “That’s right, Mary. You know I’ll always be true to you”; “Thank you”; and “God, Mary, I’ve missed you”), each one as wooden as dry oak, and gave the experience little thought. One line from the film, in particular, resonated. After Stiller’s character exits a room to allow Favre and Diaz to resume a romantic relationship, he walks down a sidewalk, mourning his loss by hysterically crying. Diaz chases him down and assures him he’s her true love. To which Stiller replies, “But what about Brett Fahvra?”
There’s Something About Mary opened in theaters on July 15, 1998, to packed houses and glowing reviews. It grossed $176 million in the United States and $369 million worldwide. Seventeen members of Favre’s family drove to a theater in Gulfport, Mississippi, to see their kin on the big screen. “When Brett comes out, the people behind us are heckling that he needs to stick to football,” said Brandi, his sister. “They didn’t know who we were, but we were all cracking up because we knew how bad it was.”
Inside the Green Bay locker room, Favre took tremendous grief over his limited acting chops. Teammates ridiculed his intonation, his stiffness. Sean Jensen, the longtime NFL writer, was there one Friday after practice when a player said to Favre, “Wow, Brett, you’re pretty brutal in Something About Mary. It looks like you got no acting lessons.”
Favre, owner of one of the game’s great senses of humor, looked the teammate over. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “how many movies have you sucked in?”
The cinematic breakthrough was only one nugget in an eventful few months for Favre, who skipped out on the Pro Bowl (his knee was bothering him), cooperated in an undercover autograph sting involving two men forging his signature (Rex Valenti wound up serving 60 days in prison and paying a $5,000 fine), watched Green Bay name a street Brett Favre Pass, signed on to have Treat Entertainment sell a six-and-a-half-inch Brett Favre action figure, and took batting practice with the Milwaukee Brewers. He also became part owner of Dale Jarrett’s NASCAR Busch Grand National team and played some pretty bad football.
Actually, “bad” might be a stretch. But for all the magic of the past two seasons, the 1998 Packers and Favre were both merely good. His positive numbers again jumped off the page (4,212 yards, 23 touchdowns), but so did 23 interceptions and Mike Holmgren’s ever-rising blood pressure. Favre slogged through the worst three-game stretch of his career, throwing back-to-back-to-back three-interception outings against the Panthers, Vikings, and Lions. There would be no fourth-straight MVP trophy. “It’s a little surprising,” an exasperated Holmgren said. “He’s still making some great plays, but it reminds me a little of 1993, when he was trying to make every play.” In front of the media, Holmgren mildly admonished his quarterback, urging him to stop trying to play like Superman. Behind closed doors, he was near apoplectic. What happened to the player he’d groomed?
The quarterback had his own questions about Holmgren. By now, the coach seemed somewhat checked out. At one time he loved the small quaintness of Green Bay, but after six full years it wore thin. Holmgren didn’t like seeing fans standing in his driveway, photographing his home, asking for autographs every time he stopped for gas or a Pepsi. “He was quieter than he’d been in the past, not as outgoing,” recalled Bob Harlan, the team president. “He’d get on the team plane and kind of be by himself. There was a different demeanor. It seemed to me that he knew it was about to end for him in Green Bay.”
Holmgren and Ron Wolf no longer spoke regularly—two powerful men, two large egos, two drifting ships. Even as the Packers wrapped the season with an 11-5 mark, there was little belief inside the building that a third Super Bowl run was at hand. They were no match for the rival Vikings, who went 15-1 to take the NFC Central, and yet another first-round playoff meeting at San Francisco did not bode well. Indeed, the 49ers toppled the Packers, 30–27, on a 25-yard touchdown pass from Young to Terrell Owens with eight seconds remaining, and the string of Super Bowls came to an end.
Shortly thereafter, Holmgren agreed to an eight-year, $32-million contract to become the coach and general manager of the Seattle Seahawks. His replacement, former Eagles coach Ray Rhodes, figured to bring in his own staff, his own changes. This was presumed to be the biggest challenge Brett Favre would have to face.
People had no idea.
It is impossible to know what impact Brett Favre’s problematic drinking and womanizing had on his on-field performance over the previous few years—if there was any impact at all. He was still an elite NFL quarterback, one of the game’s two or three best. But by the aftermath of the 1998 season, Deanna Favre had had enough.
Following a lengthy in vitro fertilization struggle, she was pr
egnant for the second time and hopeful that, with another child on the way, her husband might finally behave responsibly. Yet it was not Brett’s way. Deanna heard the rumors, found the scraps of paper (with numbers jotted down) in his pockets, knew the names of his preferred clubs and beverages. “I was even more depressed than I’d been when Brett was popping pills,” she recalled. “At least then I hadn’t been pregnant. Now, here I was, carrying the child we had worked so hard to conceive, yet Brett seemed to care more about partying with his friends than being a husband and father.”
There were lies on top of lies. One weekend Brett told Deanna he was going camping. Instead, he was at a bar. He insisted there were no other women—but there were many, spread across the map. Brett’s younger brother Jeff got married, and at the wedding reception Brett said to Deanna, “Don’t let me drink!”
She agreed, then said, “You have to help me, too. You can’t hide this stuff from me. This had to be a 50-50 deal, and you have to do your part.”
A few hours later, with an exhausted and pregnant Deanna ready for bed, Brett told her he was going to drive to Biloxi with a bunch of the guests—but that he wouldn’t drink. “You shouldn’t go,” she told him. “You know what you’re going to do.” He ignored her, left, and didn’t return until the next morning. It was the final straw for a wounded woman. She gathered Brett’s belongings, placed them in the courtyard of their house, and reached out to a divorce attorney. Brett pleaded for another chance. “If you’re not going to quit drinking, you can leave,” she told him. “I’m not going down that road again. I’m done. Brett, I love you to death. We have been together since we were little kids. We have been through a lot together. I was with you before you started drinking, and I want to be with you after you stop drinking. But I would like for you to be alive through this.”
During the conversation, the phone rang. It was the divorce attorney. With Brett within earshot, Deanna assured him she was ready to end her marriage. She hung up and told Brett he had two choices: leave or suffer the public humiliation of a 911 call. Bus Cook, his agent, came by to pick him up. The two left the house, and Brett asked Cook not to drive him to a hotel, but to the airport.
He would be returning to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas.
This time, the rehabilitation was not for Vicodin, but alcoholism. There would be no press conference and no brave declarations of self-improvement. The Packers told no one. It wasn’t brave, it was embarrassing. He’d been through this once before, and afterward told everyone the demons were kicked. In truth, the Packers organization knew Favre had been living a lie, and did everything it could to hide their moneymaker. One writer recalled having seen Favre drinking at a bar after a game, then receiving a call later that night from a team PR person. “I heard you ran into Favre,” the representative said. “You know it was nonalcoholic beer, right? It wasn’t a real beer.”
The label on the bottle had read MILLER.
The exact Menninger check-in date was April 1, 1999, and he traveled via chartered plane. The pilot didn’t know he’d be flying the famed Brett Favre until he arrived at the airport, and even spent 20 minutes chatting with his passenger before realizing—holy crap!—that’s Brett Favre. The flight was quiet and heartbreaking, with the quarterback wondering what his life had become. Upon arriving and checking back in, Favre was happy to see the familiar smile of Kerry Collins, the New Orleans Saints quarterback whose alcoholism had led to great public shame. “For the first time in a long time, I started to take a look at myself as a person,” Collins said of rehab, “and tried to find out what I was all about and what was wrong, and what I needed to do for myself.”
During his time back in Menninger, Favre, too, made personal discoveries. Any of the joy he gained from a night out was crushed the following morning, when he inevitably felt guilty, alone, pathetic. He thought a lot about what it meant to be a husband and a father, and also about the hell alcohol brought to his life. For all the fun, the joy, the action, and adventure, he came home to darkness and secrecy. On the football field, Favre was bravado and guts. His legendary trash-talking exchanges with Tampa Bay’s Warren Sapp were catnip to NFL Films—the smaller quarterback giving it to the behemoth defensive lineman, a sly grin accompanying every insult (“You fat piece of shit . . .”). Off it, though, he was wayward. Favre knew he needed to change, what with a second child on the way (a daughter, Breleigh Ann, would be born five weeks premature—but healthy—on July 13) and a wife with one foot out the door. He was turning 30 in October; no longer the kid in the locker room. Almost all of the guys he came up with were gone. The bars remained fun, but he couldn’t keep up as he once did. Favre was still the life of a party. But the parties no longer went until 2:00 a.m. Many of his friends had settled down—marriages, kids, mortgages, family vacations to theme parks. It all seemed simultaneously appealing and terrifying. He was growing up without fully committing himself to growing up. LeRoy Butler called Favre “Peter Pan” for his eternal boyishness. But, he was learning, immortality is mere myth. You grow. You change. You evolve.
So Brett Favre stopped drinking.
He was done. Kaput. Over. No more beer, no more liquor, no more wine (not that he drank much wine). He returned from Kansas after a couple of weeks determined that he would never go back to alcohol. “I don’t want 15 years to go by and be looked at as a goofball bum who could still throw touchdown passes and defy the odds,” he said. “And I don’t want to be remembered as just being a good football player. I want to be remembered as a good family man, too. At times I haven’t been that.
“In this job, guys drink beer,” he told ESPN’s Chris Mortensen. “The linemen go out and drink beer after the game. I went to drink beer. Yeah, I’ve done all those things, but [now] I can’t wait to get home.”
Brett Favre hasn’t had a drink in 17 years.
Were there ever a season where alcohol could have come in handy, it was 1999.
Training camp commenced on July 26 with Favre still in Mississippi alongside Deanna and their new daughter. He arrived six days late, 30 pounds lighter than the previous year, and a sight for sore eyes to Rhodes and his staff.
Throughout his first few weeks, all the new-coach platitudes were applied to Rhodes. Unlike the power-hungry Holmgren, Rhodes—the first African American head coach in team history—was relaxed and refreshing and open and direct and compassionate. He would joke with players, pull youngsters aside and offer tidbits of wisdom. “He came to you like a man and would be totally honest,” said Basil Mitchell, a Packers running back. “He’d lay out expectations and expect you to meet them.”
Rhodes had played running back at Texas Christian and wide receiver at Tulsa, then enjoyed a solid pro career with the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers from 1974 to 1980. Rhodes spent four years (1995–98) as the head coach in Philadelphia, and following two straight 10-6 seasons he was the most beloved man in the city. Unfortunately for Rhodes, optimism faded, two subpar seasons followed, and he was fired by the Eagles after going 3-13 in 1998. Wolf first broached his name midway through the ’98 season, when Holmgren was clearly preparing to leave Wisconsin. The Packers’ GM felt his team needed more toughness. Everyone who Wolf confided in believed Rhodes was the perfect man for the job. “I thought he would bring something back,” said Wolf. “An attitude we sort of lost.”
Maybe it would have worked. Maybe. In winning all four preseason contests, the Packers were a popular Super Bowl pick and a clear-cut divisional favorite. (In the Acclaim Sports’ NFL Quarterback Club 2000 simulation of the season, the Packers demolished the Jets in the Super Bowl, 47–16.) But in an August 23 exhibition game against the Broncos in Madison, Wisconsin, Favre was rolling right when—while releasing a pass—he banged his right thumb on the helmet of John Mobley, the blitzing linebacker. “I knew it was bad right away,” he said later. “I was scared it was broken. It felt like someone slashed my hand with a knife.”
Afterward, Favre said the injury was merely a bruise, an
d that nobody had to worry about him missing time. “It’s all right,” he insisted two days later. “Just sore.” Yet his thumb wasn’t merely bruised—it was mangled. Late in the season, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer was granted a close look. He described the knuckle on his right thumb appearing to be dramatically larger than the knuckle on his left, and the area near the joint also significantly swollen. Wrote the scribe: “When Favre extended both thumbs out with his fingers clenched, he showed that he can’t bend the right thumb back as far as the left one.”
The malady remained a tightly kept secret. Throughout his Super Bowl appearances and multiple MVP trophies, Favre never forgot how he received his break: Don Majkowski’s injury. He played with a sense of insecurity and lingering fears that, with one missed snap, his job could vanish. Favre believed himself to be the best quarterback on the planet. But that wasn’t enough to survive in the NFL. He had to be the toughest, too. The Packers’ backups were Matt Hasselbeck and Aaron Brooks, both young, raw, and promising.* Though never a jerk to either man, Favre hardly went out of his way to groom them. “Brett made himself pretty clear,” said Brooks, a rookie out of the University of Virginia. “He was like, ‘I’m gonna teach you some things, but I’m not going to teach you to take my job.’ I did my learning from afar, just watching.”
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