Brett Favre is the greatest quarterback ever

Go ahead, admit it… you love Brett Favre. It’s OK to say it. It’s cathartic even. Seriously, do it:

I love you, Brett Favre!

See how easy that was?

The strange thing about this is that I even had to say it at all. Why wouldn’t everyone blather on about the gunslingin’ quarterback who just loves to play the game? Really, he just has fun out there. Besides, it’s impossible to write a sentence about Brett Favre without using the word, “just.”

Here’s the thing that’s just so lovable about Brett Favre (two names, please) — he always, always, always delivers. Every time. He’s like Michael Jordan that way. Tiger Woods, too. Whenever we need something in a football game, Brett Favre makes sure we get it.

Some say Brett Favre is overrated as a quarterback. OK, that might be true when talking about the actual quarterbacking skills. Throughout his career, Brett Favre has had 96 games in which he has thrown at least two interceptions, and seven games in which he has thrown at least four interceptions. Brett Favre has also been to the conference championship five times and has one more win than Donovan McNabb (one more Super Bowl victory, too).

So when it comes to the stats and his performance in big playoff games, yeah, Brett Favre might be a bit overrated. But then again, aren’t we all?

The truth is Brett Favre is completely underrated when it comes to the true essence of the NFL. In terms of the entertainment dollar, no one beats Brett Favre. Sure, Peyton Manning comes close, but that’s like comparing Superman to Batman. Superman can make the earth spin in reverse on its axis because he’s not even an earthling. He’s a mild-mannered freak from another planet and he flies. Superman is not perfect, but he rarely makes the same mistake twice.

Batman is human. He has hubris and vices. He falls down and gets concussions and still figures out how to go back to work only to repeat the entire process again.

Certainly the “humanness” of Brett Favre has been waxed upon for decades. There’s no new material there and in our selfish, mundanity of our everyday lives, we look at the rehashing of Brett Favre’s story as if it’s just another TV repeat. Worse, in this case the Brett Favre show isn’t even in syndication.

However, no one ever talks about how spectacularly Brett Favre fails. Sure, some quarterbacks throw bad passes in important parts of the game. Sometimes passes are dropped and tackles are missed. You know, the same ol’, same ol’.

But when Brett Favre goes down it’s like that old-timey newsreel of the Hindenburg exploding. Some guys watch their seasons go down the drain with a kneel or a simple expiration of time. Not Brett Favre. He grabs a flamethrower, amps it up as high as it will go and burns it all to the ground.

And we should love him for it.

When it comes to putting on a great show, yes, Brett Favre is ridiculously underrated. Better yet, there is no middle ground with him—people have extreme emotions to one side or the other. Yet the thing about the folks who loathe Brett Favre (just the football player, I hope) is their emotions are wrong. Certainly that’s a difficult judgment to make about another person, but it’s true. You are all wrong about this guy.

He’s great because he’s never lets you down.

How many guys have ended the past three seasons for three different teams with interceptions? I don’t have the figures or the charts, but I’m guessing this feat has never been done in the history of the NFL. In fact, the costly interception that kept the Vikings out of the Super Bowl (again) and ruined two weeks of unadulterated Brett Favre media coverage wasn’t even the worst (shouldn’t that be best?) one. Frankly, the interception he threw against the Eagles at the Linc in the 2003 Divisional Playoff game was totally awesome.

Remember that one? It was set up by the 4th-and-26 reception by Freddie Mitchell from Donovan McNabb to send the game into overtime. Then, after winning the coin toss, Brett Favre took the first snap, dropped back and threw the ball so high and far into the air that it was like a punt. Brian Dawkins was standing by himself so far back in the secondary that it seemed as if he should have called for a fair catch on Brett Favre’s punt/interception toss.

It was the most inexplicable throw by a quarterback in the history of the game. It was like a game of all-tackle-one broke out in the middle of a playoff game.

Sure, like any addicts we have are enablers like Chris Berman of ESPN who goes on and on about Brett Favre with a voice that makes one want to drive an ice pick into their middle ear. But the truth is we’re really going to miss him. Perfection, as we’ve learned, is sometimes a façade and always boring.

Brett Favre was never perfect and never boring.

Putting it to bed

Phew! What a crazy few days it’s been around here. Firstly, as was well-publicized here and other places, I did the whole Landis thing last weekend, which culminated with an appearance with Floyd on the Daily News Live show on CSN yesterday. That was crazy enough until one throws in all the e-mails I received (all positive, which I wasn’t expecting, but thanks), mixed with normal life, marathon running and work.

Truth be told, I am horrible at multitasking so a normal day for most people wipes me out… so bookended between a 15-mile run in Lancaster and a 9-mile run along the Schuylkill in Philadelphia was a 30-minute outing on TV. In that regard, everyone says it went well (of course it did – would anyone tell you if you sucked… well, some might but most have a semblance of couth) but it definitely could have taken the entire 90-minutes and there are a few more things I would have liked to say.

One is that if Floyd Landis played baseball or football instead of being a professional cyclist, he never would have tested positive. Never. That’s a fact.

Conversely, if Barry Bonds were a cyclist (and what a huge cyclist he would be), he would have been banned from the sport a long time ago and he could even be looking at personal bankruptcy.

As written here before, it’s lazy, stupid and irresponsible for journalists to write how cycling (or running) cannot be taken seriously when the doping issues in baseball and football are perhaps more rampant and yet they can somehow take any of those games seriously. My guess is a lot of them used to cover baseball and football regularly and either missed the steroids stories, ignored them or were a decade late in coming to the table and have now decided to take it out on sports that have no unions and pro-active and Draconian doping policies.

During the 1990s, the only thing differentiating Major League Baseball from professional wrestling was the script.

Anyway, I think it would have been neat to talk about Floyd training and crazy stunts, such as how he decided to ride to France from Spain before the 2004 Tour de France. I could talk about training and racing stuff all day long.

OK… one last time. Here are a few snippets from Floyd on DNL:

* Floyd Landis talks about why he decided to write a book
* Landis talks about spending the past year trying to clear his name
* Landis on what happened with the testosterone tests
* Landis says he is still planning on racing in the future

And here are the links to the Landis stories:

More: Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

I also added it here: Finger Food: Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

And here: Finger Food Columns: Floyd Landis on Tour to Clear His Name

And now I’m done. Thanks for indulging and we will return this to its normal lunacy as soon as possible.

OK… here’s stage 17 from last year’s TdF:

And of course...

And then...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRIbmhqSiME]

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Here’s a funny one – I was catching glimpses of the Phillies game from Houston on television last night while having dinner at John Turner’s resplendent U.S. Hotel in Manayunk, when I quipped, “Geez, watching Burrell walk up to the plate to hit is like watching Saddam’s hanging. You’re sitting there the whole time thinking, ‘are they really going to go through with this? This is not going to be pleasant to watch.’”

Then sure enough, he smacks a home run. Take that, me.

On another note, it’s nice to see Aaron Rowand get an All-Star nod. Kudos to him.

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Not that anyone else cares, but the only proper way to top off yesterday’s action-packed day would have been to roll down I-95 to Washington, D.C. to see Joe Lally and The Evens show at Fort Reno Park. I don’t want to even think about it because I know it was probably a really good show and I’m bummed that I couldn’t be there.

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I'm not sure where I read it, but it is worth a note...

According to someone (not me and I'm upset I wasn't smart enough to come up with it, but I wasn't watching anyway), Florida basketball player and newly drafted Joakim Noah showed up at the NBA Draft in a suit and look that made him look like, "all of the villains from Batman rolled into one..."

Can you see Joakim getting dressed before heading off to the draft? I imagine him looking in a full-length mirror, tugging at his lapels and saying, "Wait until they get a load of me..."

Hey, if he can get away with it, let your freak flag fly.