The fascination with Brett Favre and the subsequent saturation of coverage surrounding his new adventure with the Jets has gotten to the point where sports stations are updating the “Brett Favre arm fatigue” situation.
To that, coach Eric Mangini and his offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, have taken to playfully tweaking Favre.
“He’s fatigued, I’m fatigued, [receiver] David Clowney [who left the afternoon practice Wednesday] was fatigued,” Mangini said. “It’s training camp. It’s a hard transition. You go from vacation to hitting people and running around, tons of meetings. It’s not your normal day at the office. You have to get through that and eventually get into a normal routine and the body adjusts. It’s training camp.”
Schottenheimer acknowledged that he and some of the other coaches have been ribbing Favre, who on Wednesday revealed that his arm is “fatigued” and he needed to scale back on throwing in practice.
“We tease him,” Schottenheimer said. “He goes, ‘I’m a little bit fatigued,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, you’re old. You are. You’re old.’ ”
Indeed, Favre, at 38, is not only older than his offensive coordinator but also is older than his head coach.
Schottenheimer went on to praise Favre for the speed with which he’s picking up the playbook despite being here only a week.
“He’s had a lot going on,” Schottenheimer said. “There’s been a lot of things that he’s had to get acclimated to, whether it’s finding the lunchroom or learning the playbook or studying film and all that stuff. He’s doing a really, really good job. I’m very pleased.”
The Jets have used some unique ways to get Favre schooled up in their terminology, such as using crossword puzzles to help his recall.
“He’s into crossword puzzles,” Mangini said. “So we take the information and put it in the form of a crossword puzzle and give him that. There are a lot of different avenues.”
The Favre acquisition has added hours into the already long days for the coaching staff.
“When you get a guy in here a little bit late, it definitely adds some hours,” Schottenheimer said. “But it’s been fun; it’s been a fun transition. It’s been a lot of hard work. The biggest part that goes into it is just the translation of the information of the words and phrases.
“The plays are all the same; most teams run the same type of plays,” he went on. “It’s just what you call them. He’s really doing a good job picking it up. We have a number of guys on the staff and on the team that actually have been in the system that he comes from so you hear a lot of translating going on.”
Tight end Bubba Franks, who played his entire career with Favre before signing with the Jets as a free agent this offseason, has been the lead translator.
“Bubba’s the guy that actually can translate the best from anybody because he was just there with Brett [in Green Bay],” Schottenheimer said. “The system that he comes from has been branched off in different areas, so Bubba definitely helps. He’s one of the players who can help translate for Brett.”
Schottenheimer said Favre’s instincts will also serve him well in the transition to the new system.
“A lot of playing the position is you see something [and react],” Schottenheimer said. “He’s always had a good feel for solving problems and again he might not be able to put it into our terminology but he knows, ‘I have a problem over there, I am going to bail myself out over here.
“That’s where he and the players started develop a really good feel for signals and things like that. When you’re dealing with a smart guy it makes it easier.”