Favre, The Hometown Boy, Makes Himself Feel At Home Green Bay Quarterback’s Big Plays Instrumental In Super Bowl Victory
When Brett Favre took the Green Bay Packers to their Super Bowl championship on Sunday, it was a victory for every country kid in cutoffs and T-shirt who ever threw a rock in a pond and dreamed about being an NFL quarterback.
Favre’s pond was just 50 miles or so away from the Superdome, in tiny Kiln, Mississippi, a place deep in Bayou country where he grew up the son of a high school coach and blessed with a rocket right arm.
The arm alone wasn’t quite enough to carry Favre to his championship. He needed the courage to survive a rollercoaster year that began with 46 days in a rehabilitation program after he became addicted to painkillers. It continued with the death of his best friend in a van-train accident in which his brother was implicated, and the involvement of his sister in a drive-by shooting.
And it ended in the glare of the Super Bowl, with Favre doing pretty much what he wanted against New England.
“It’s great to win this anywhere, but so close to home makes it special,” Favre said.
On the second play from scrimmage, he changed the call at the line of scrimmage and threw a 54-yard touchdown pass to Andre Rison, who was so wide open he strutted into the end zone.
Coach Mike Holmgren had said his quarterback could always change plays. “But it’d better work,” the coach cautioned. Favre made sure it did.
“They showed blitz,” Favre said. “That’s what you do when they show blitz. They took a chance. You know what happened.”
Favre was jumping around like a kid who had just caught his first fish in that pond. “I was a little excited at the start, a little nervous,” he said. “It’s a Super Bowl. When we scored, I got so excited.”
The quick TD was followed by a field goal that built the Green Bay lead to 10-0. When Drew Bledsoe brought the Patriots back for a 14-10 lead, Favre merely hooked up with Antonio Freeman for an 81-yard TD, the longest TD pass play in Super Bowl history.
Then he punctuated another drive by running wide, scoring a TD by extending the ball over the goal line just inside the end zone pylon. In the first half, he had put his stamp on the biggest game of the season.
After Desmond Howard’s 99-yard TD kickoff return in the third quarter, Favre threw a two-point conversion pass.
It was the exclamation point on a second straight MVP year, another brushstroke on a work in progress that is molding him into the next great quarterback in the NFL.
“I don’t know what else I’ve got to do,” Favre said. “I’ve won everything I possibly can. Winning the Super Bowl feels better than the MVP.”