Say it Ain't So Brett
Oh, How We Will Miss Thee...

297. That number, I think, will survive with Brett Favre along with the iconic number 4 that has been on his jersey since he first came into the league. 297 is the number of consecutive regular season starts that Favre made between 1992 and last Monday night. (12/13/2010) To put how amazing that number is into perspective given the nature of football, if Peyton Manning, 34, does not miss a start in the next 5 years, he will still be 9 games short of Favre. Unfortunately, the number 297 is going to define his career when it should be defined by the love he had for the game.

Now we are nearing the end of his career, his streak has stopped, the Vikings season is over and there is a very real chance that Brett Favre will not be in the NFL next year, especially with the injuries he has suffered this year and the Jenn Sterger allegations looming over him and his family. We are not going to get to see the passion with which he played every play and every game. We are going to be deprived of the amazing moments of which I am so fond. We are going to miss out on the amazing throws that only he seemed to be able to complete and the bone-head idiot throws which he made you wonder whether or not he was bought off by the opposing team. We are going to miss his inability to tell a lie during a press conference and how he always told us how he felt regardless of who he might offend.

I could sit here and rattle off the statistics he has accumulated during his career with all the touchdowns and yards and interceptions but that would just cheapen the simplicity of Brett Favre. He is a man from Mississippi. He likes to hunt. He likes to ride his tractor. But most of all he was a football player. He just happened to play QB and be one of the best ever.

So next year when football season comes around and we are all gearing up for large men hitting each other because they are wearing different colored uniforms, there is going to be a little something missing from the NFL. We will still watch it and we will still love it but there will be something just a little off. Something just sitting there like a “splinter in your mind”, to quote Morpheus. Something that makes the NFL just a little less fun. And that something is going to be the absence of Brett Favre.

To all you people who hated his waffling and his indecision to return to play or to retire, do not start complaining when there is a lack of, “Oh my God did you see that” moments and no more, “I cannot believe he threw that ball” interceptions. Since I have started watching football, he has been responsible for more amazing moments, sights and images than anyone I can remember. In the big games and in the big moments, the great ones will make you stand up and cheer. Brett Favre would just make you sit there with your mouth agape in silence and you would wonder if you were dreaming because there is no way you just saw what you did. Hopefully, Brett can make these last three starts of the season and we can enjoy it while it lasts. Because he is going to be gone next year and frankly, the NFL is going to be worse off for it.