Does Green Bay Packer Brett Favre rank on the greatest NFL quarterback list?

No

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by Michael Daly

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While there is no denying that Brett Favre was a capable and successful quarterback, to rank him among the NFL's greatest is overselling his career and underselling his very real weaknesses as a quarterback.

Favre's early years certainly showed his genuine talents, as he led a Packers team that had been largely irrelevent (they famously refused to draft quarterback Joe Montana) into the 1990s and into their first sustained playoff success in many years. But as the 1990s wore on Favre found getting to the Superbowl was a struggle, in part because the Packers faced a roadblock in the Troy Aikman Dallas Cowboys that won three Lombardi Trophies in the mid-1990s, and in part because the only team Favre could beat in the playoffs was the Detroit Lions.

It was in 1996 that it all changed and the Packers reached Superbowl XXXI. But entering this game they faced a New England Patriots squad that had overtaken them in their previous meeting in 1994 but which was plagued with a running controversy involving lameduck coach Bill Parcells. Parcells had been hired in 1993 by James Orthwein, and when Foxboro Stadium owner Robert Kraft purchased the team in 1994 he retained Parcells and the control over personnel that Orthwein had given him. Parcells, however, had gone 21-27 in his first three years coaching the Patriots, and his one winning season (1994) had been such more because Parcells turned the offense over to quarterback Drew Bledsoe than because of his own leadership (best shown in New England's comeback win over the Minnesota Vikings in '94 when Parcells tore up his game plan after halftime and told Bledsoe to sling the ball as he pleased; the Patriots won 26-20 as a result).

Parcells also constantly inferred that he would quit the team after every season, and Kraft, who wanted to run the team as he ran his other businesses with the kind of open-ended cooperation between managers he was used to, didn't feel Parcells was serious enough about the team to trust with full control; he also wasn't pleased with Parcells' poor choices in free agent players.

As a result, Kraft took personnel control away from Parcells, and Parcells seethed through the season into Superbowl XXXI. When the big game finally approached, Parcells focused more on telephone calls to line up a new job as coach of the New York Jets than on properly preparing for the game at hand. The Patriots team thus took the Superdome field with what amounted to a patchwork game plan and an indifferent coach. Favre built a 27-14 lead but the Packers surrendered a third-quarter touchdown and could not move the ball with any consistency from halftime onward.

In stepped kick returner Desmond Howard, who'd already torched the Patriots once in the game and who delivered a 99-yard kick for the back-breaking touchdown. The Packers' 35-21 win was the team's third Superbowl triumph, but it also helped create the myth of Favre as a playoff winner. It was a myth that, surprisingly, wasn't toppled when the Denver Broncos shot down Favre and the Packers in Superbowl XXXII in a game where Favre's gunslinger method of quarterbacking led to turnovers. Nor was the myth toppled when the San Francisco Forty-Niners shot down the Packers at the gun of their 1998 playoff matchup.

And largely lost in the Favre mythos was the state of the NFC as well as his division, the NFC Central - later changed to NFC North following 2002 divisional realignment. The Packers faced only one consistently strong divisional foe through the majority of Favre's career, and that was the Minnesota Vikings; late in Favre's career the Chicago Bears became a power as the Vikings declined into mediocrity. The Detroit Lions, despite often beating Favre in the old Pontiac Silverdome, were never a serious division threat, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were only a decent club in their final years in the NFC Central, not a true threat.

The rest of the NFC wasn't much better, as the conference steadily lost ground to the AFC before Denver's two Superbowl triumphs heralded a tectonic shift of power balance toward the AFC. Since Superbowl XXXII the AFC has usually been the stronger - often by far - of the two conferences, winning the majority of interconference games to go with eight of eleven Superbowls starting with Denver's defeat of Green Bay.

But the myth kept getting pounded as Favre kept making the playoffs and kept throwing away games. He threw six interceptions against the St. Louis Rams in 2001 and then surrendered an easy Atlanta Falcons playoff win in Green Bay's own building in 2002. His only playoff wins since 1997 came against a grossly overrated Seattle Seahawks squad (twice) and a Forty-Niners squad that won just once in twelve career meetings with Favre. Favre blew it again against the Eagles in 2003 and then coughed up an embarassment against the Vikings, whom he'd swept in the regular season by identical 34-31 scores, in 2004 31-17. His final playoff appearence came in 2007 as he bested the Seahawks and then blew it against the NY Giants in a snow-covered slopfest of a 2007 NFC Championship Game in which the Giants bullied Favre and the Packers yet kept shooting themselves in the foot with penalties and two botched field goal tries, finally nailing it in overtime after Favre served up an interception on the opening play of the extra quarter.

Making the Hall of Fame is not an issue for Favre, as his win total and passing stats make clear. But a 12-10 playoff record testifies only to longevity rather than true ability, and his running habit of choking in the postseason is more in tune with the real Brett Favre than the regular season triumphs.

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