Are You Ready For Some Football?!

Today I’m leaving work two hours early to get home in time to watch the Packers’ first game of the season.  They open against NFC North Division rival, and my dad’s favorite team, the Minnesota Vikings.  The last time I saw the Packers play was in a hospital a few days after my daughter was born, and if it hadn’t been for her wonderful arrival, I probably would’ve taken the game’s result much harder than I did (or should’ve).  It was the NFC championship game against the NY Giants and, quite shockingly, they lost, the final blow being Brett Favre’s last pass as a Packer being intercepted.  A poetic, if not upsetting, end to Brett’s illustrious Packer career.

Brett is a Jet now, of course, and yesterday I got home from church just in time to watch him take a knee and run out the clock in their victory over the Miami Dolphins.  Yes, he was still wearing green, but it was the wrong shade.  It was just weird to see him in green and white instead of green and gold.  Such is life in the world of modern professional sports and I wish him all the best in New York (well, technically its New Jersey).

Tonight begins the Aaron Rodgers Era in Green Bay.  I don’t know if a new quarterback has ever faced a more difficult situation.  Brian Griese, perhaps, after John Elway retired, or whoever it was that took over for Dan Marino, but as loved as those two legends were (Elway and Marino, not Griese and what’s-his-name) the bond between Brett Favre and Green Bay, Wisconsin is something different.  And those replacements had the luxury of their forebears staying retired.  Rodgers not only has to live up to the Favre mystique, but also the comparison to Favre himself.  Even if he does reasonably well, and I think he will, if Favre and the Jets do even a little better, there will be grumbling.  Its not fair, really, but, hey, its not fair that I’m losing my hair either.

I’m anxious to see Rodgers play and to succeed.  I think he will, but when and will it be quick enough remain to be seen.  Good luck, kid.

YouTube Friday: Farewell Brett

I was talking to the ex-Storekeeper, Pastor Josh, the day Brett Favre retired and he said something I hadn’t thought of.  Brett was the last of the great players of the 90′s.  All the great Cowboys, 49ers, and Packers from the era that Josh and I were in our sports watching prime are now gone.  That link to our youth is now severed.  It truly is the end of an era.  Here’s Brett’s emotional retirement press conference from yesterday and a couple of highlight reels to remember better times.

Favre No More

The news blindsided me from out of the blue, if I can mix my metaphors.  I was in my truck on my way to work when out of nowhere Brian Murphy from the Murph & Mac morning show on KNBR just blurted it out:  Brett Favre retired today.

“WHAT?” I shouted out loud.  I couldn’t believe it.

It seems a little silly to care so much about the comings and goings of a sports star at the age of thirty, but I’ll be honest and say that I’m pretty bummed out.  Brett has made toying with retirement a postseason ritual for the last few years, but this is the one time when it seemed apparent that he would return for another season.  The Packers were 13-3 last year, a surprise to everyone including Brett, and missed the Super Bowl by a field goal.  Individually, Brett had not only his best season in years, but one of the top three or four in his 17 year career.  With a career resurgence and a young talented team, it seemed natural that Brett would come back for at least one more run.  I guess that’s why the news came as such a shock.

I became a Brett Favre fan, as did most everyone I suppose, back in the mid-90′s.  I grew up in the Bay Area so I had plenty of exposure to great quarterback play in the person of Joe Montana, but Brett’s game was more exciting to me.  Some would say that was because he took unnecessary risks, which he often did, but more often than not those risks paid off.  Sure, he ends his career with more interceptions than any other QB in history, but also more TD’s, wins, completions, and an unbelievable streak of 272 consecutive starts.  Watching Brett work was pure entertainment.  I mean the man’s first completed pass was to himself!  What a perfect way to begin a brilliant and exciting career.  The great thing about watching him is that you could always tell he was enjoying himself.  I can’t say how many times after he’d throw a touchdown pass I saw him run over to the receiver, pick him up over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and run around the field, while pumping his other fist in the air.  Or who can forget the time he ran for a touchdown and then attempted (emphasis on “attempted”) to dunk the ball over the goalpost crossbar.  Who else in the history of the NFL would ever do something like that.  The stoic Tom Brady or calm, cool, collected Montana?  I don’t think so.  He played the game like we all think we would play it if we had his immense talent.  You could tell he was actually enjoying himself. 

Now that he’s finally hung them up, the debate, which has already been simmering, on his place among the all-time great quarterbacks will begin in earnest.  There’s going to be a lot of people saying that Montana or Marino or, someday, Manning and Brady were or will be better, and maybe they’re right, but for my money I’ll take Brett every time.

Super Super Bowl

I wasn’t real enthused about watching this years Super Bowl, not least because my team, the Green Bay Packers, should have been playing in it and weren’t.  After their loss to the charmed New York Football Giants, on the Frozen Tundra no less, I was done with football.  I didn’t watch a single minute of the 336 hours of hype leading up to it.  Didn’t want to hear about the Giants amazing run of nine straight road wins, or the New England Patriots’ quest for perfection.  But being a good, red-blooded American boy, I couldn’t very well not watch the game and so I took my place on the couch with a record 97 million of my football loving friends around the world.  And I’m glad I did.

 Like probably the majority of non-Eastern seaboard sports fans, I’m pretty darn sick of Boston and New York always being in the spotlight, so all I really wanted was a competitive game.  If I have to watch it, they may as well do me that small favor.  Fortunately I was not disappointed.  The score was only 7-3 New England at half-time, but it had to be the most exciting 7-3 game I’ve ever seen.  There were big hits and some big plays and the specter of a Giants upset was becoming much more of a serious possibility.  I’m as tired of the ’72 Dolphins’ smack talk as the next football fan, but the Patriots have become the equivalent of a WWF villain in the past couple seasons.  Or as Bill Simmons calls them (his favorite team, by the way) the Cobra Kai Yankees.  The team everyone loves to hate.  Especially this year, with the Spygate scandal, to running up the score on everybody early in the season, to coach Belichick’s bellicose personality, to the pretty-boy QB Tom Brady.  It wasn’t their confidence that was infuriating, it was the smugness. 

Now, again, not a Giants fan…usually.  But Sunday was different.  Not only would they keep the Pats from being perfect, but a Giants win would maybe make the Packers look a little better–they would have then lost to the champs–plus their’s was a pretty good story.  Its not often a New York based sports team is in the role of underdog, but they certainly were and the rise of Eli Manning during this post season was something special.  So on Sunday, I was all in for the G-men.  So in in fact, that it might have been a good thing the Pack wasn’t in this game.  My heart was pounding as it was, and I don’t even like the Giants.  If the game had gone similarly but with Favre and company, I may be writing this post from my local cardiology ICU.

After halftime, and a pretty decent show from Tom Petty, the intensity kicked into high gear.  Neither team could get much going in the third quarter, but the fourth proved action packed.  Manning lead his team on a dramatic march to score a go-ahead touchdown, but the Patriots finally began to look like themselves as Brady brought them down the field with a barrage of pinpoint passes and before anyone knew it Randy Moss was scoring a touchdown with less than three minutes left.  This is what the Patriots do.  You hang with them for three quarters and think you’ve got a shot, and then just like that you’re down a score and times almost up.  But the Giants didn’t panic.  On an improbable drive, that will no doubt become legendary, Eli took his team down the field, showing no fear, even as they faced two third and longs (more than 10 yards) and a do-or-die fourth and one.  But one play in particular will be remembered as the key to the victory.  It’s one of the best football plays I’ve ever seen.  Watch:

I have no idea how Eli didn’t get dragged to the ground when three, yes three!, three hundred pound defensive linemen had a hold of his jersey.  And the catch!  David Tyree pins the ball to his helmet!  Just awesome.  That is why I watch sports.  Of course the Giants went on to score with only about thirty seconds remaining and held on to win the game.  In the confusion at the very end, most everyone thought the game was over and poured onto the filed.  However, there was actually one second remaining on the clock.  Apparently Belichick didn’t feel it necessary to stay on the field to play out the last second of his loss, and he ran off to the locker room.  Another classy act, for a real classy guy.  Yahoo! football columnist Michael Silver was right when he wrote that Belichick is a terrible winner and an even worse loser.  He’s really earned a place amongst the greatest villains of all time, joining the likes of Darth Vader, Henry F. Potter, and Johnny Fairplay.

That’s the great thing about sports.  You’ve got heroes and villains, drama and suspense, inspiration and heartbreak, all in the small space of one afternoon.

Of course, you can’t talk about the Super Bowl without mentioning the commercials.  There were a few decent ones this year.  Here are a few of my faves:  a spoof of a famous Godfather scene, a talking baby, and a horse in training.

For an extra little trivia tidbit, the actor in that Audi commercial was actually in The Godfather, in the role of Moe Green.  So there you go.

YouTube Friday: #4

Argue all you want about who the greatest quarterback of all time is, but I defy you to name any other that has had a song written about him.  Yes, it is a little weird.  And of course I love it.

And more Brett Favre love.