Long Live The Gunslinger

I’ve never really had a favorite between college and professional football. They’re different experiences, both exciting in their own right. College is rawer, more emotional, loyalty is everything, where the NFL is beautifully choreographed, certainly thrilling and up-tempo, but more controlled.

This year was the first where college football threatened to take the lead, at least in my imagination. All of those upsets, the shootouts and quarterback of the week contests (Ryan’s Heisman? Tebow’s? Woodson’s? Dixon’s?) had almost edged out the chilling dominance of the Patriots, the unlikely resurgence of the Lions, or the hilarious collection of quarterbacks in Chicago, Carolina, and Buffalo.

But then came the Monday Night Football game of October 29, 2007 and the force that is Brett Favre. Despite the Pack’s 5-1 start (marred only by a rather amusing Jekyll and Hyde upset at the hands of the Bears) the doubters crowed on. He’s too old, too reckless, can’t carry the team by himself, give the ball to Aaron Rodgers already, they said. The Packers played right into it. Favre’s own center introduced him as ‘Vinny Testaverde’s Dad’ while giving the lineups (in my humble opinion, the lineup emcees are a rather poor broadcasting ploy, but this was the most amusing occurrence to come out of them since Street Sense the thoroughbred did the duty for Louisville).

But the man, the myth, the legend was alive and well on a crisp night in Denver and it certainly looks as if Green Bay will laugh all the way to playoffs. The Pack’s normally anemic running game came up with over 100 yards, taking Favre’s pass attempts down to a very reasonable 27 (his previous low was 37 attempts). He made the most of those, completing 21 for 331 yards and taking both Champ Bailey and Dre Bly to the house on passes of 79 and 82 yards, respectively.

He looked calm and confident throughout and perhaps the most telling play was when he went the wrong way on a handoff, found himself alone with the defensive line hot on his trail, and alertly went down instead of trying to make something out of nothing. Not only has he apparently not lost a step, his decision making is better than ever.

Favre’s performance even managed to derail the Jay Cutler drool-fest that Ron Jaworski had obviously been up all night preparing. Incidentally, Cutler looked good in a paler imitation of Favre, but Jaworski’s man-crush was obviously going to be reminiscent of the creepy Gary Danielson-Tim Tebow dynamic and we all did well to ignore it. In fact, the Packer quarterback was so mesmerizing that he upstaged his own wife as well as Vince Vaughn, neither of whom received the heaping dose of Kornheiser worship that they must have been expecting.

Then came the overtime. As Brett Favre trotted out to take the ball at the 18, anyone worth their salt in football analysis knew he was going to go for it all. That’s the beauty of the gunslinger. The downside of course, was that you also knew the chances of Dre Bly catching it instead of Greg Jennings were juuust under half.

But this was Brett Favre’s night. Long live the gunslinger.