Gunslinger Page 15

  Now, as he jogged out onto the field, trailing 7–0, the pressure of a football program heaped upon his shoulder pads, Favre looked at Daye, grinned slyly, and screamed, “Whiskey!”

  Favre entered the huddle and was choked up by the tears streaming down his teammates’ cheeks. “It was a great reception,” he recalled. “Right up to the snap.” On the first play, Favre dropped back and was drilled into the ground. When he failed to rise, Doc Harrington, the trainer, sprinted toward his side. “Oh, God, Brett, what’s wrong?” he asked.

  Favre struggled for breath. “Doc,” he gasped, “I got hit in the balls.”

  “Oh, good,” Harrington said. “Stay down.”

  “No,” he replied, “not good.”

  Favre played terribly throughout the first two quarters. Alabama held a 17–10 halftime lead, and outgained Southern Miss by 241 yards to 36 yards. The Southern Miss quarterback returned to the locker room exhausted and beaten up. Save for the three series where Whitcomb provided a breather, Favre took all the snaps. His numbers were awful, his impact immeasurable. “You could see the emotion he brought to those players,” said Hollingsworth. “Shit, he’d roll out, duck, move, spin, run, drop back and throw it, and somehow the receiver would be there. That team believed in Brett, and believed they could always win as long as he was playing.”

  During his halftime speech, Hallman pleaded with his players to keep the score close. “If we can stay within a touchdown, we’ll win this,” he said. “The pressure is entirely on them. The closer we are, the more nervous they’ll feel.”

  Thanks to a series of brilliant runs from halfback Tony Smith, Southern Miss entered the fourth quarter tied with Alabama at 24. This was supposed to be Stallings’s coronation as the heir apparent to Bear Bryant. Instead, the Alabama offensive line looked inept, and its defense couldn’t make big stops. Alabama had four turnovers and 54 yards in penalties. “At times,” wrote Chuck Abadie in the Hattiesburg American, “[the Tide] had trouble even getting the proper 11 players on the field.” With 7:23 left in the game and the score still deadlocked, Southern Miss took over at its own 20. There would be no more Whitcomb insertions, and no more questioning Favre’s readiness. This was his game.

  Slowly, meticulously, the Golden Eagles drove down the field behind a series of runs and short passes. Favre’s moment came five plays into the series, when he danced around the pocket, avoided a charging Sullins, ducked, pumped, and threw a laser to halfback Eddie Ray Jackson over the middle for 34 yards. Shortly thereafter Jim Taylor—“a straight-on kicker with one of those clown shoes,” said Daryl Daye—booted a career-long 52-yard field goal, and Southern Miss somehow escaped with a 27–24 victory. “This isn’t supposed to be happening!” Allison screamed to McHale in the coaches’ box. “This is Alabama, Hoss! Alabama!”

  At midfield, Hallman and Stallings embraced. “Curley,” Stallings said, “I just hope your quarterback is OK.”

  Hallman laughed.

  “Coach,” he replied, “my quarterback is fine.”

  9

  Senioritis

  * * *

  THEY BEGAN ARRIVING in the middle of September, shortly after the win over Alabama reminded people that Brett Favre was alive and well. By now, the Golden Eagles’ senior quarterback was enough of a national name that a good number of NFL scouts were familiar with his strengths and weaknesses. They knew, when he escaped the pocket, he tended to sway toward the right and throw against the grain. They knew he had a bad habit of forcing balls into double coverage. They knew he played above the level of his surrounding peers; that Favre belonged at Miami or UCLA, not slumming with C-level talent at Southern Miss.

  What they did not know, however, was whether post–car accident Brett Favre was still NFL-worthy.

  So they came to games and practices. They sat down with Curley Hallman, who insisted his quarterback was destined for big things, and with Mark McHale, who told the story of a high school nobody finding himself. Then they watched him throw from the pocket, throw on the run, check off one wideout, another wideout, dump the ball to a halfback out of the backfield.

  And they thought, collectively . . . meh.

  Just meh.

  It was hard to blame them. The Brett Favre with Heisman ambitions no longer seemed to exist on the Southern Miss campus. Oh, the cockiness was still there. As was the bowlegged strut and the undying belief of his teammates. But if the car accident didn’t sap his arm strength, it did sap much of the hype among pro football executives, who now viewed him as the nation’s fourth- or fifth-most-NFL-ready college signal caller.

  For many teams in need of quarterbacking help, the place to be was Southern California, where San Diego State’s Dan McGwire was compiling one of the best seasons in Western Athletic Conference history. The brother of Mark McGwire, the Oakland A’s slugging first baseman, Dan’s size (six feet eight, 240 pounds) had scouts imagining him towering over defenses, throwing deep bombs with gusto. “McGwire has the talent to be a great quarterback,” Charlie Armey, the Atlanta Falcons’ player personnel scout, told the New York Times. “He has the stand-up courage like a John Elway or a Dan Marino or a Johnny Unitas. He sets back in the pocket, stands there and reads the coverage. He throws the football and doesn’t worry about the pressure. He knows he’s going to take the hit, but he stands tall and takes it. Some guys won’t do that.”

  By comparison, Favre was frail and damaged. Scouts loved his arm strength (even in his depleted state, he could muster velocity McGwire only dreamed of), but wondered whether he could survive on the next level.

  In keeping with their recent tradition of playing an impossibly hard schedule, the Golden Eagles followed the Alabama win with a lovely bus trip to Athens, Georgia, home to the University of Georgia. The Bulldogs, 0-1 but favored by 12 points, did not seem overly concerned. “We were supposed to beat the living shit out of them,” said Paul Etheridge, Georgia’s tight end. “I don’t think any of us knew shit about Southern Miss, except they were on the schedule to serve as an easy game. Concerned? Um, no.”

  Located one and a half hours to the west of Athens was the headquarters of the Atlanta Falcons, where Ken Herock was serving in his third year as the team’s vice president of player personnel. A onetime tight end with the Oakland Raiders, Herock loved his job, and particularly the challenge of prospecting hard-to-find diamonds at college games. He knew of Southern Miss, of course, and had heard a few things about the quarterback with the oddly spelled name. “But I didn’t have much information,” Herock said. “He was a guy on a list.” As opposed to many NFL franchises, the Falcons also had little need for a new quarterback. The team’s starter, Chris Miller, was 25 and already one of the league’s better players. His backup, Scott Campbell, was more than serviceable. Still, on the morning of September 15 Herock made the drive, arriving at Sanford Stadium in plenty of time for the 1:00 p.m. kickoff. “I got there for warmups,” Herock said. “I had no idea what type of quarterback he was. I’m watching the pregame, and he’s skinny. Really skinny, almost frail. He had the intestine thing and he lost all this weight. And I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know about this. I just don’t know . . .’”

  He quickly knew.

  Brett Favre completed 11 of 20 passes for 136 yards and two touchdowns and was the best player on the field. There was a magnificent 31-yard should-be-touchdown sling to Michael Jackson that was erroneously ruled a fumble by officials. On one particularly dazzling third-quarter play, he was captured in the backfield by a Georgia defensive lineman named Mike Steele, who outweighed Favre by at least 80 pounds. Steele yanked the quarterback toward the ground, but Favre somehow freed himself, shimmied, and launched a 62-yard touchdown pass to Jackson. Southern Miss led, 17–6. “From that point,” Favre said, “I felt like we were going to win.”

  Under constant pressure, Favre spun his thin body away from defenders. It was like watching the magical Doug Flutie during his Boston College days, only with Jeff George’s cannon arm. “He was just a tough son of a g
un,” said Ray Goff, the Georgia coach. “You hit him, he came back at you. His toughness was at a new level.”

  The Bulldogs fought back to take an 18–17 fourth-quarter advantage, but Favre was not done. A fabulous Tony Smith kick return, along with a Georgia penalty, gave Southern Miss the ball on the Bulldogs 25 with 1 minute, 40 seconds remaining. After Smith lost a yard on first down, Favre roped a pinpoint pass to receiver Ron Baham on the left sideline. The junior caught the ball at the 15, but fell out of bounds for an incompletion. On the next play, Favre again targeted Baham on an out pattern to the right side. The throw was perfect, but Baham turned a second late and the football trickled off his fingertips. On fourth down, Hallman had Jim Taylor attempt a 42-yard field goal. The kick traveled long, high—and directly into the right upright. “That’s my biggest miss of all time,” said Taylor. “If I don’t hit the upright, we beat Alabama and Georgia. Not bad for a bunch of packrats, huh?”

  Favre was devastated. He retreated to the locker room in near tears. He was exhausted, battered, and somewhat nauseated. He’d probably dropped 10 pounds of sweat off an already reduced frame, and greeted his 20 family members in attendance after the game with an uncomfortable dispiritedness. Favre could generally laugh at himself, win or lose. This time, there was no laughing. “I felt real good today,” he said afterward. “But there were a few plays that I may have made before that I couldn’t today. But that was no excuse for us losing this game.”

  Herock had planned on sticking around only for the first half. He stayed for all four quarters. “He’s beating Georgia by himself!” he recalled. “He gets them in a position toward the end of the game to kick a field goal and win, and they miss. But he took them there, singlehandedly. I liked everything I saw.”

  Ron Wolf wasn’t so certain. The New York Jets’ personnel director visited Southern Miss shortly after the Georgia game, and watched Favre work out. Unlike Atlanta, the Jets—with an aging and immobile Ken O’Brien at quarterback—needed new blood. Wolf was relatively unimpressed. Favre’s velocity was good, but not up to the usual otherworldly standards. Compared to the Herculean McGwire, he seemed small and erratic. The tapes from Alabama and Georgia only mildly interested him. “I remember being intrigued by Brett, because the coaches loved him and everybody talked about the way he carried himself, the way he was such a winner,” recalled Wolf. “But then I got in with those tapes and it just wasn’t anything really special.” The whole visit was a disappointment. Where was the Brett Favre people had raved about? Where was the sparkle? This guy looked like just another solid college quarterback. Before he had the chance to depart for a scouting trip to Jackson State, Wolf was stopped by Thamas Coleman, a Southern Miss administrative assistant. He urged him to watch some footage from Favre’s junior season, pre-accident. “I told him he wasn’t really seeing Brett Favre,” Coleman said. “I told him if he just saw one game from the season before, he might have a different opinion.”

  Wolf acquiesced, and like Herock, he was thunderstruck. He was a fan of the untraditional, Fran Tarkenton/Billy Kilmer/Ken Stabler model of weird-yet-successful quarterbacking. Favre, always in motion, always jabbering, always weaving and skipping and hopping, fit the bill. “As far as throwing the football is concerned, he was the perfect quarterback,” said Wolf. “There were several movies out back then about what to look for in a quarterback, and how to do certain things, and Brett Favre had it all covered.” Wolf was scheduled to stay one night in Hattiesburg. He spent two—“To see more tape, see what else there was. You can’t skimp on a quarterback. You need to know everything.”

  With Favre, there was a lot of everything. First, potential employers would want to know whether the quarterback (their future quarterback) was mature enough to serve as the face of an NFL franchise. Teams were well aware of the car accident, obviously, and his proclivity for beer was increasingly common knowledge. What remained hush-hush, however, was the existence, back in Hancock County, of Brittany Favre, his daughter. This was not a ploy of any sort. When asked in his day-to-day life, Favre talked openly about the little girl, now a year old with the dimples and giggles to prove it. But he was rarely asked, and even a large number of teammates did not know their fast-living leader was a father.

  By his own later admissions, Favre was minimally involved, available for visits and cuddles between games and practices and classes and parties. It wasn’t indifference so much as immaturity. He loved the girl, just as he loved Deanna. But he also loved the spotlight, and the buzz, and being with his teammates their final year together. Brett was now the biggest celebrity in Hattiesburg, and everyone wanted a piece of him. Come to this party! Visit this bar! Free food! Free drinks! He was a regular at the Sigma Chi house, home to shindigs that featured flowing taps and the prettiest coeds on campus. During the season, the hottest spot was the End Zone, the popular sports bar on West 4th Street where Southern Miss football jerseys adorned the walls and pitchers of beer were dirt-cheap and Monday Night Football telecasts were weekly holidays. “Man, I would eat about 20 chili dogs, they were so good,” Favre recalled of his visits. “Best of all, they were free, which was key when you’re a college student.”

  The Golden Eagles lost a 13–10 heartbreaker at Mississippi State the week after Georgia,* then hosted Louisville in a game hyped as the final showdown between Favre and Browning Nagle. By now, despite Southern Miss having won the last eight meetings between the schools, the Golden Eagles and Cardinals considered themselves to be heated rivals. This was, in large part, because both teams believed they featured the best quarterback in college football. Like Favre, Nagle had traveled an untraditional route toward collegiate stardom—a highly recruited standout out of St. Petersburg, Florida, he attended three different high schools, committed to West Virginia, and transferred when the coaching staff switched from a pass-first attack to the option. “I guess,” he said, “I’m a survivor.” Nagle sat out a redshirt season at Louisville, then backed up quarterback Jay Gruden for another, before finally getting his chance as a junior. His 2,503 passing yards and 16 touchdowns told the story of a quarterback on the rise. “The comparisons were pretty right on,” said Gary Hollingsworth, the Alabama quarterback who played against both men. “Browning had a cannon for an arm, a lot like Brett did.”

  If, in anticipation of the matchup, fans sought some sort of personal animus to fuel their sense of the rivalry, they would be terribly disappointed. A couple of days after his car accident, Favre had received an unexpected call from Nagle. “I wanted to make sure I gave him my condolences,” Nagle said, “and tell him that I was pulling for him.” There were a handful of follow-up conversations, and both were elated to be nominated side by side for the annual Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, presented to the country’s top senior quarterback (Miami’s Craig Erickson wound up winning). “That was special,” Nagle said. “To be on that list together.”

  On the night of September 29 inside M. M. Roberts Stadium, they were together again, along with two dozen NFL scouts. For the first time in recent history, Louisville (3-0-1) was a clear favorite to beat the 2-2 Golden Eagles, whose offensive ineptitude against Mississippi State prompted the Biloxi Sun-Herald’s John Bialas to write, “A yard looks like a mile to this attack.”

  A crowd of 20,545 came to the stadium, more to see Favre–Nagle than Southern Miss–Louisville. And, in one sense, they were not disappointed. The physical incarnations of Brett Favre and Browning Nagle did, indeed, appear on the field, and they even tossed footballs through the air. But the game was awful. The Golden Eagles won, 25–13, because a backup walk-on fullback named Roland Johnson ran for 102 yards on 14 carries, including a 47-yard first-quarter touchdown burst. Neither quarterback did much of anything, though at least Favre had an excuse: he was sacked six times, hurried repeatedly, and leading one of the flattest offenses in Division I football. “Look how awful we were,” said one anonymous offensive player. “How do you have Brett Favre as your quarterback and have one of the worst offenses in the
country? We had a shift in philosophy, and it made no sense. The general idea was to keep it simple and win with defense. But we had Brett, Michael Jackson, Tony Smith, and we didn’t take advantage of the firepower.”

  The Golden Eagles won their next three games, but the offense was so dull and unimaginative that, in the midst of home victories against Tulane and Memphis State, fans booed when the unit took the field. When Southern Miss scored 23 points against an awful Memphis State defense, the Sun-Herald referred to the offense as a “good-looking machine.” A week later, against Virginia Tech (a team only slightly better than Memphis State), Southern Miss gained 81 first-half yards in a 20–16 setback. An hour after the game, every Southern Miss player was on the bus and ready to go, save Brett. “I’m asking everyone, ‘Where the hell is Brett? Where is he?’” said Hallman. “Finally I see him walking across the field.” Favre was dressed like a slob. His shirt untucked, shoelaces flailing, belt buckle undone. “Lemme tell you something, young man,” Hallman said. “You’re dressed about how you played today.” Favre reached to tuck in his shirt. “I’m serious,” Hallman said. “How you’re dressed is how you played.”

  Irvin Favre overheard the exchange, and asked the coach whether all was OK. “I was getting on him pretty good,” Hallman explained. “Just because ​—” Hallman stopped. He saw furor cross Irvin’s face. “Irvin,” he said, “Brett’s gonna be OK. I promise you, he’s OK. Relax.”

  Somehow, the Golden Eagles wound up with an 8-3 record, including a shocking win over No. 15 Auburn before 85,214 fans at Jordan Hare Stadium. It was Favre’s best statistical showing of the season (24 of 40, 207 yards, two touchdowns), and was capped by a game-winning 10-yard touchdown pass to tight end Anthony Harris with 46 seconds remaining. The victory ruined Auburn’s homecoming festivities, and gave Favre’s team—filled with players from Alabama—bragging rights over the state’s two football powers. “No Southern Miss team had ever done that,” said Hallman. “You can always brag about beating Alabama and Auburn in the same year.”