Sports

No Doubt, Favre Remains All But Certain

BY JAY GREENBERG

Brett Favre remains absolutely, positively, 100 per cent retired.

Probably.

“There’s always second thoughts,” he said Friday at Rockefeller Center, where he appeared at a luncheon for a game manufacturer making Favre the first retired — or probably retired — NFL player ever to grace its box. “But I’m not saying I’m coming back.

“It wasn’t ever a clear-cut decision. There were a lot of reasons to stay and a lot of reasons to go and I can’t expect people to understand that. I have had people say ‘why don’t you come back, [the Packers are] close? But I (also) had people (once) say to me ‘we were 3-13, you can’t retire now. Come back and redeem yourself.’

“Until you get injured or until the team is going in a different direction then it could (turn out to) be ‘You stuck around too long.'”

If there is a lingering reason the No. 1 all-time NFL quarterback in yards, touchdown passes, consecutive games played, deep down doesn’t know, it’s only because a person never really knows, which is what Favre says was all he meant on David Letterman Thursday night,

“I was just talking about butterflies, that anxiety you get before training camp, which is not a good feeling,” said Favre. “This year it may be one of ‘Did I make the right decision?’ I don’t know, we’ll find out when that time comes.

“But that’s all I meant, not that the phone is ringing. I think the Packers used that roster spot yesterday for someone else. A lot has been made about [a late August call from a contender making an offer] but I am not going to keep myself in shape.

“It would be nice to dream about. I’m sure after training camp is over and all the hard work it would be nice to say, ‘Okay, Now!’ But I still feel good about [the decision].”

Certainly, that’s the sense Matt Hasselbeck, the Seahawks quarterback who was Favre’s backup in Green Bay for two years, gets from talking to him.

“I think he is loving [his seven-week old retirement] absolutely loving it,” said Hasselbeck, who also was on the Favre program in the Rainbow Room on Friday with his ex-coach Steve Marriuci, and his ex-wide-out, Sterling Sharpe. “He probably is looking forward to the day he gets to sit back and watch.

“He is on all kinds of commercials which is something he never used to do. The first time I talked to him after retirement, a couple days later, he had just gotten a facial and a pedicure with (wife) Deanna at Beau Rivage Casino near his [Mississippi] house.

“I feel really bad for the woman who had to do the pedicure. He’ll hate me for telling you this and I don’t mean to shatter his man-image. But it’s true, he did it.

“I think he is doing a pretty good job of being retired.”

Favre said at his March 6 press conference that it wasn’t the physical demands causing him to hang them up but mental ones. Simply, it got harder and harder to be Brett Favre and having to produce, even if physically, he still knew he could.

Coming back to take one more shot with a Packer team good enough to reach the NFC title game last year would make anything less than a Super Bowl championship next year, a failed season, Favre said. And he didn’t want to play with that gun to his head at age 38, after 17 years.

“I totally get that,” said Hasselbeck. “When he said that I looked at my wife and we smiled and didn’t even have to say anything because we understood.

“We lost a Super Bowl two years ago and that’s the way you feel, that the season was a total failure when obviously it wasn’t. And he had done it so much longer than me, under so much more pressure and scrutiny. He was the guy having to win, having to play hurt, doing it every week for 17 years. It just wears on you physically, mentally, emotionally. I can see someone needing a break.”

“The guys that have retired, when they come back and talk to us, they all say the same thing. ‘What I miss the most are the bus rides or the times in the locker room or sitting in the ice tub.’ Nobody gets more energy from that than Brett. He’ll grab the microphone from the bus driver and tell jokes.

“My guess would be that would be the stuff he will miss. I think he has had his fill of getting hit and being in games.

“He probably said what he did on Letterman because he was on Letterman, a comedic show. I can’t see him coming back and playing anywhere else but Green Bay, but look at history. Joe Montana played for the Chiefs, Franco Harris for the Seahawks. It happens.

“Some crazy scenario comes up, a star quarterback gets hurt for a team that thinks it’s on the way to the Super Bowl and they don’t have a backup, you never know. But I don’t think anyone can envision No. 4 on anyone else but Green Bay, Brett as well.”

And if Favre really can picture himself elsewhere, the place certainly is not New York. Asked how he enjoyed doing Letterman, Favre said: “It was okay. I went to a Broadway Show after that enjoyed, Jersey Boys, now that was great.

“(Since the announcement) I have only been hanging around, doing stuff at my place, nothing fancy. It’s a little bit different there than New York. I’m ready to go home. And I just got here.”