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Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Falcons lost Favre to city night life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Frankly, you could cover Brett Favre’s career as a Falcon on a postcard. In fact, maybe no more than a postage stamp. He came, was rarely seen, gone after one season, and Atlanta hasn’t been able to shake him out of its hairy memory to this day.
When he retired from the Packers on Tuesday, it was black-type front page stuff. Kings and queens have vacated thrones with less of a stir. And there in the background of his NFL biography loomed the ever-pathetic image of the heavy-handed, intolerant Falcons who in barroom myth ran off the mudcat from Mississippi, described by all the crooning broadcast voices as “one of the greatest, if not the greatest of all quarterbacks of all time.”
You should forgive them, for they are short of perspective that comes with vintage. In their grasp for ear-ringing superlatives, they forget, or are unaware, that there was an Otto Graham, a Johnny Unitas, a Bobby Layne, a Joe Montana, and more who could sing in that choir of the “greatest.” Make no bones about it, Favre had the same kind of stuff, and records that back him up. But throughout it all, the Falcons weren’t able to shake the image as the dullards who dumped him.
They have one substantial authority on the subject who backs them up — Favre himself.
This is the way it was: Here was a small-town guy from Kiln, Miss., present-day population 2,040 (it has sprawled since Brett was a kid), who had never “been to town” before. Atlanta was the new rage of the South. Temptations on every corner. Open bars. Booze on the hoof. He should have been in Green Bay, larger than Kiln, but his kind of town.
In a book under his byline, he takes the blame. “I drank Atlanta up,” he says. He later spent some time in a center that wrings out drunks.
He missed the sitting for the first team picture. Hung over, he was late. He wasn’t married yet, and Atlanta was already a magnet for southern beauties looking for a big time. Jerry Glanville was the Falcons’ coach, and he was looking for a quarterback to back up Chris Miller, who had a good career going. Ken Herock had drafted Favre out of Southern Miss, and Favre was the GM’s “boy.” Glanville soon had enough of Favre’s libertine life pattern and demanded that he be traded. Herock resisted.
The story is that Glanville asked that his offensive coach, June Jones (the same), be allowed to cast the deciding vote. Jones was with Glanville, and the deal was made. Favre went to Green Bay for the Packers’ first-round draft pick in 1992, and the Falcons drafted another player from Southern Miss, Tony Smith, a running back. He lasted a season.
Favre got the news sitting at his parents’ table in Kiln — usually he could be found at the Broke Stroke, the town social center — eating crawdads and drinking beer. His “career” in Atlanta amounted to five passes, two caught — by the other team — zero yards. The Packers saw what in this country playboy?
Ken Herock was borne out. Glanville could build a case for himself, but on the other hand, had he not been able to see the talent raging inside this Cajun from Kiln? Put the whip to him, send him on the field instead of clumping along with Billy Joe Tolliver as his backup? Truth is, Glanville didn’t like him, didn’t like his habits, didn’t like his addiction to the playboy life. Curse Glanville, if you choose, he who often rode onto the field aboard a motorcycle, but what he missed was “one of the greatest, if not the greatest quarterback of all time.”
Favre himself gives the Falcons a pass. And in passing, let it be said that his presence on the national scene has corrupted the preferred Cajun pronunciation of the name — it’s “Fov,” not “Farve.”
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