Gunslinger

by Jeff Pearlman

  Minnesota got the ball back with 89 seconds remaining. Before the offense returned to the field, Bevell said to Favre, “We’re going to have to start throwing it.”

  The plays came quickly. On first down, Favre hit Shiancoe in the right flat for 12 yards. He followed with a 9-yarder to Rice, an incomplete duck, and another 5-yard completion to Harvin, which placed the Vikings on their own 46. Favre spiked the ball with exactly one minute left, then missed Rice on a 44-yard lob that landed out of bounds. One play later, Harvin found a gap in the defense and snagged a 15-yard completion. Another spike, a 7-yard pass to wide receiver Bernard Berrian, and now, with 12 seconds remaining and the football sitting on San Francisco’s 32, Bevell called for “All go”: Two wide receivers to the right, two wide receivers to the left, all heading toward the end zone.

  Favre stood in the shotgun, with halfback Chester Taylor directly to his right. When the ball was snapped, Favre pump-faked to his left, then rolled the opposite direction. San Francisco’s Justin Smith, an elite pass rusher, came charging, and Taylor briefly walled him off to the side. Favre kept rolling, did some sort of Sugar Ray Leonard bolo punch motion with his right arm, readied to throw, and launched the ball just as Manny Lawson, a linebacker, hammered him from the blind side. The pass was a blur through the air, but as it neared the end zone one couldn’t help but watch Greg Lewis, a six-foot, 180-pound wide receiver who had recently been signed as a free agent. He was crossing the paint, one step ahead of strong safety Mark Roman, one and a half steps ahead of free safety Dashon Goldson. Lewis soared through the air and somehow pinned the ball to his chest, landed with both feet inbounds, and fell to the ground. Paul Allen, broadcasting the game for KFAN radio in Minneapolis, offered up the best call of his career . . .

  “He gets away from the pressure . . . fires to the end zooooooone . . . it’s caught! It’s Greg Lewis! Touchdown! Oh my heavens! Greg Lewis, welcome to Minnesota! Oh! My! Heavens! Greg Lewis’s first catch has given the Minnesota Vikings an improbable victory! No flags on the field. Brett Favre! Greg Lewis! How do you like that?”

  The stadium’s 63,398 fans went berserk. The 27–24 win wasn’t only amazing, it was Favre-esque. He was brought to Minnesota to win in ways other Vikings quarterbacks had been unable to. Now, with the team 3-0, he had done it.

  “Bottom line was that Favre makes plays when he needs to make plays,” said Takeo Spikes, the 49ers linebacker. “That’s just who he is.”

  When members of an NFL team are first presented with the schedule for the upcoming season, they immediately look for “their” games. This doesn’t always mean what one might think. A “their” game isn’t necessarily one against an archrival, à la Steelers–Ravens or Cowboys–Giants. No, a “their” game could be one against your best friend from college, or against a defensive tackle who tried ripping your knee out a year earlier. It could be a chance to exact revenge against a coach who did you wrong, or blanket the wide receiver who burned you for 180 yards and three scores back in the day.

  For Brett Favre, there were two “their” games.

  Green Bay at Minnesota.

  Minnesota at Green Bay.

  The first meeting would be held in Week 4 on Monday night, and the regional hype reached a Super Bowl level. In both cities, the narratives were intense, harsh, Shakespearean. Favre was either the new hero or the betraying brother. In Minnesota, he was a Norse god. In Wisconsin, he was a traitor. Nick Barnett, the Packers linebacker, tried to explain the bruised feelings of his team’s fan base, noting, “They were in love with Brett Favre and he dumped them and went with another chick. So they’re a little heartbroken.” Perhaps a better representation of the mood came from a restaurant, Milwaukee Burger Co., that organized a celebratory burning of Favre memorabilia. Regrettably, Rick Merryfield, the Eau Claire deputy fire chief, deemed the torching illegal, so the eatery instead lit aflame a single Favre jersey and donated the hundreds of other used Favre items to Goodwill.

  Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay’s quarterback, was asked twice in a media session whether he and Favre had conversed since the Viking signing, and his answer (two variations of “I think that’s between him and I. I don’t think that has relevance to the game”) spoke volumes about a nonrelationship and Rodgers’s genuine contempt for his predecessor. Call him? Why would he call someone who treated him like dog excrement? Favre said revenge had nothing to do with his existence as a Viking. “Never was motivated for that reason,” he said—and it was ludicrous. He was motivated for that very reason. Nobody explained it better than Curtis Martin, the former New York Jets halfback who was asked by ESPN what it was like to play against a former team for the first time. “I would want to annihilate Green Bay,” he said. “I would want to stomp on their heads and crush them if I were Brett Favre.”

  Exactly.

  The game was a dandy. When the captains came to midfield, Favre and Rodgers found themselves face-to-face for the first time since the end of the 2007 season. The exchange was quick—“Good luck. You, too”—and uncomfortable.

  On the first offensive series of the evening, Rodgers, who by now was beginning to exert himself as a top-level NFL quarterback, marched the Packers 50 yards down the field, only to fumble the ball away on a sack by Allen and Brian Robison. When Favre stepped into the huddle for his first crack, the stadium—filled with 63,846 people—sounded like an airport runway. He drove the Vikings to the Green Bay 1-yard line, and—backpedaling, backpedaling—hit Shiancoe with a pass for the score, and the 7–0 lead. What followed was a boxing match between two free-swinging sluggers. Rodgers started to scramble, pulled up, and chucked a jump toss to tight end Jermichael Finley for a 62-yard score—Bam! Favre looked left, pumped, swiveled his head to the right, and hit Rice for a 14-yard strike—Pop! Clay Matthews, the Packers linebacker, ripped the ball from Peterson’s hands and returned it 42 yards—Wham! Peterson pounded the ball across the line from a yard out—Smack! At halftime, it was 21–14, Vikings, and the home locker room was overflowing with confidence. “Favre came out on fire,” said Peterson. “Me personally, I definitely wanted the game for Brett. I could see it in his eyes.”

  Allen and the Vikings’ defensive line made Rodgers’s life miserable, while Favre enjoyed long stretches of uninterrupted pocket time. He hit Berrian for a 31-yard score early in the third quarter, and an Allen safety 18 minutes later gave Minnesota a 30–14 advantage. Green Bay came back late, but it wasn’t enough. The Vikings walked off the field with a 30–23 victory, a 4-0 record, and a belief that they were the best team in football. “I was about as nervous as I’ve ever been before a game,” said Favre, who would turn 40 in five days. “I had church about 3 o’clock, and I was throwing all kinds of prayers out there.”

  Four weeks later, Favre learned that his nerves had yet to hit a peak. Now 7-1, the Vikings traveled to Wisconsin for the return of the fallen icon, and the scene was ugly. “I thought after the first game, ‘OK, butterflies are gone, I’ve kind of gotten back to reality,’” he said. “‘Lambeau is gonna be easy.’ Wrong.”

  If an outsider spends enough time in Green Bay, he inevitably comes to see the region’s denizens as folksy, kind, good-natured. People will ask about your hat and your children and whether you have any room left for pie. It’s an inexpensive place to live and a difficult one to leave. “We’re a tight community,” said Jim Schmitt, Green Bay’s mayor since 2003. “It’s a family-oriented world here.” When Favre joined the Vikings, people felt punctured. “For almost 20 years,” read an editorial in the Waterloo (Ontario) Chronicle, “Brett Favre was like a member of every Wisconsin family.” Mark Sinclair, a bartender from Barron, Wisconsin, has three Favre tattoos on his body. He felt punctured. David Kinsaul, a correctional probation officer from Madison, named his twin sons Brett and Favre. He felt punctured. Jim Doyle, Wisconsin’s governor from 2003 to 2011, felt punctured. “You’re talking about very strong feelings,” Doyle said. “Very, very strong.”

  The lead-up was labeled “Favre Week” in
Green Bay. The local convention and visitor bureau held a contest soliciting the best ways to “welcome” Favre back—and within two days they received 1,600 e-mails.* On Tuesday, Schmitt temporarily changed the name of Minnesota Avenue to Aaron Rodgers Drive. Titletown Brewing Company offered up a new menu item, waffle fries, to remind diners of Favre’s interminable hedging. Schmitt encouraged people to wear flip-flops to work on Friday. There was a heavily attended Favre funeral procession that went from the Lambeau Field parking lot, past Brett Favre’s Steakhouse, and to a bar, Tom, Dick & Harry’s. The event included an open casket (holding a dummy wearing flip-flops, Wrangler jeans, and a Vikings jersey and helmet) and three hearses—“one to carry Brett’s body, one to carry Brett’s ego, and another to carry Brett away from here before he changes his mind and decides he didn’t want to be dead after all,” explained Len Nelson, a local radio personality. Favre once had a street named for him, and before the game a civic-minded resident covered the P on Brett Favre Pass. “It’s almost like divorcing your wife,” explained LeRoy Butler, the former Packer, “and marrying her sister.”

  That the matchup was a battle for NFC North supremacy (Green Bay was 4-2) took a backseat to the story line. Favre, preparing at the Vikings’ facility in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, understood. “If you’re a true Packers fan, you want the Packers to win,” he said. “If you’re a Brett Favre fan this week, you obviously don’t want me to win. Or you hope the guy does well, but hope that the Packers go all the way.”

  Something like that.

  The whole thing was disorienting. The Vikings stayed at the Paper Valley Hotel in Appleton, about 30 miles south of Green Bay. Favre knew of the hotel, but had never been there. When the bus arrived at Lambeau, Favre steeled himself for the negativity. But even with nearly two decades of NFL service, there was no way he could have prepared. “I didn’t think it would be a good reception,” he said. “And it was worse than that.” Minutes before the start of the 3:15 p.m. game, the Vikings jogged onto the field, one by one, sometimes two by two. The booing from the 71,213 spectators was loud, as it would be for any contest against a heated rival. As soon as Favre emerged from the tunnel, though, the tone . . . feel . . . texture . . . throatiness changed. As if by script, he was the last Viking to appear. There’s rote booing, and there’s I-would-prefer-for-you-to-be-stabbed-in-the-kidney booing. It wasn’t, We want you to lose. It was, We want you dead. “It’s by far the worst I’ve ever felt,” Favre said. “Ever.”

  Among some of the longtime Packer executives and employees, this was not a joyful occasion. Bob Harlan, the team’s former president, could barely watch. Jerry Parins, the longtime head of security, hated everything about it. He saw Favre wink playfully toward teammates during his reception, but didn’t buy it. “He’s human,” Parins said. “He can say it didn’t hurt, but I know it did. It had to.”

  When the game finally began, it was predictably physical and fierce. It was also, to the horror of locals, a blowout. The Vikings jumped out to a 17–3 lead, and when Favre found Harvin crossing the field and hit him for a 51-yard touchdown early in the third quarter, the 24–3 margin symbolized a Packer fan’s worst nightmare. Not only was Favre winning, but he was behaving like a six-year-old, jumping and laughing and pumping his fists. When he was Green Bay’s six-year-old, this was fine. But now it just seemed obnoxious and wrongheaded. “He wanted us in Lambeau,” said Greg Jennings, the Packers wide receiver. “He knew everything. Every check our defense made, he knew it all. He was calling our blitzes before they were happening. And he picked us apart.”

  When all looked dead, the game turned fascinating. The Packers answered with a 26-yard Mason Crosby field goal, recovered a fumble on the kickoff, scored on a 16-yard touchdown pass from Rodgers to Spencer Havner and another Rodgers-Havner hookup—this one for 5 yards. Suddenly, with 1:57 left in the third quarter, the Minnesota advantage was down to 24–20.

  “I don’t know if I could play any better,” Favre said—but he had to. Following the second Havner score, Harvin returned the kickoff 48 yards, and moments later Favre, facing third and goal, rolled right and tossed a 2-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jeff Dugan. It was 31–20, and the crowd again hushed. With 11 minutes remaining, Rodgers scrambled for 35 yards and completed a 10-yard touchdown pass to Jennings, slicing the margin to 31–26. Favre was masterful. Rodgers was masterful. There was no bad quarterback here, no goat. Green Bay’s Crosby missed a 51-yard field goal try midway through that fourth that would have cut the lead to 2, and on the Vikings’ next possession Favre found Berrian for a 16-yard game-sealing touchdown.

  The final score was 38–26, and Favre could not have been more relieved. Green Bay gave the Methuselah quarterback all that it had, and he’d emerged stronger than ever. In two games against his old club, he had seven touchdowns and no interceptions. His team was in first place, and Brett Favre was at the top of his game.

  From the outside looking in, this was turning into the perfect season. The Lambeau triumph began a four-game victorious streak for Minnesota, including back-to-back games of 35 and 36 points against Seattle and Chicago, respectively. Favre was, once again, one of the best quarterbacks in football, and he surely had to be the happiest 40-year-old in America.

  But he wasn’t.

  It’s not that Favre was miserable, or itching to retire yet again, or regretting the move to Minnesota. Nope, he simply could not stomach Brad Childress. Which didn’t actually make Favre unique. Of the 32 NFL head coaches in 2009, it would be impossible for any to be less liked than the one in Minnesota. “He was my least favorite coach in all of college, high school, the NFL,” said one veteran Viking, who requested anonymity. “He didn’t know how to treat people, how to talk to people. From the secretaries to the assistant coaches to the players, he didn’t show respect.”

  “Brad was probably a little delusional when it came to thinking he could dictate everything about a player’s life,” said Sean Jensen, the St. Paul Pioneer Press beat writer. “That was him—a dictator-type coach. But when guys are making five times more money than you, it doesn’t work.”

  One-on-one, away from football, Childress could be charming, warm, engaging. He was well read and well informed, a psychology major at Eastern Illinois University with a taste for Shakespeare. Before coming to Minnesota, he spent seven years as an Eagles assistant—the last three as offensive coordinator. There were few, if any, known complaints.

  When he was hired to guide the Vikings in 2006, however, Childress was told the organization needed discipline and seriousness. The 2005 season had been pocked by a humiliating scandal, in which 17 members of the team were involved in a yacht sex party than involved prostitutes and photographs and police charges. Mike Tice, the coach at the time, was a lovely man, but hardly instilled fear. “Brad was willing to do things players didn’t like,” said Scoggins. “He wasn’t afraid.” His most infamous move came during his rookie season, when Childress cut a wide receiver named Marcus Robinson on Christmas Eve. “That,” said Jensen, “is cold.”

  It wasn’t the frostiness that bothered Favre, but Childress’s need to be involved in every facet of every detail of the offense. Bevell was a mastermind who had the quarterback’s trust, but Childress refused to simply let his offensive coordinator handle the offense. He was particularly awful to Rogers, the quarterbacks coach, and demeaned him in front of players. “Childress just treated him like shit,” said the anonymous Viking. “Like he didn’t matter.”

  In his need to control everything at all moments, Childress struggled with Favre’s tendency to audible out of plays. Having come up under Mike Holmgren, Favre had the green light to see the field, observe the defense, and, if need be, change things. That’s how he played for 16 years in Green Bay and 1 in New York. But Minnesota’s boss hated two things: audibles and players who were bigger than the team. “Brad was not a good game coach,” said Chris Kluwe, the punter. “Great at personnel, but under him the sidelines were chaotic, you had guys all over screamin
g. And Brad wanted his plays to be what were called, not Brett’s.”

  Although he had been hailed as an offensive innovator with the Eagles, Childress did not actually call the plays in Philadelphia. Favre and his teammates knew this to be true, and their respect for his offensive smarts was nonexistent. Behind Childress’s back Favre would mock the coach’s knowledge and judgment—and with just cause. “Brett’s mind goes beyond strict execution of how plays are drawn up and techniques are designed,” Rosenfels, the backup, recalled. “He goes by feel and creates to get what he wants, instead of doing everything by the book. Most coaches cringe at that.”

  Although he insisted otherwise, Childress never seemed to fully trust Favre. He nearly replaced him with Jackson during a rough stretch in the home game against the Packers, then again in a November 15 win over the Lions. At Childress’s urging, Minnesota traded for Pittsburgh’s second-round pick in the 2006 draft to select the strong-armed but obscure Jackson, and his performance had been underwhelming. Childress still believed in the 26-year-old, or at least felt the need to believe. “He always thought he could rehab Tarvaris,” said Judd Zulgad, a Minneapolis Star Tribune football writer. “But he just wasn’t that good.”