Fourth in a series

OnMilwaukee.com is publishing exclusive excerpts from the new book, "Brett Favre: A Packer Fan's Tribute." The book was written by lifelong Packers fan Tom Kertscher, a Milwaukee news reporter who authored "Cracked Sidewalks and French Pastry: The Wit and Wisdom of Al McGuire."

"Tribute" captures the highlights of Favre's career and features dozens of behind-the-scenes photos shot by Packers team photographer Jim Biever.

CHAPTER 4 -- MVP

IT'S EASY TO GET CAUGHT UP in the statistics Brett Favre put up in his back-to-back-to-back Most Valuable Player seasons.

But if you did, you'd forget how much fun we had watching him make plays:

Favre pin-balling around in the pocket, scrambling toward one sideline, half-circling back toward the other – then arching a pass across his body and into the arms of a receiver on the opposite side of the field.

Throwing off his back foot, underhanded, side-arm, left-handed.

Scanning the field for what seems like forever, spotting an opening the size of a football, firing a pass that seems sure to be intercepted – but instead goes for a touchdown.

Favre never conceded an inch, never doubted his arm, never gave up on a play.

"He just will not let the team lose," Packers head coach Mike Holmgren put it simply.

In winning three consecutive MVPs -- no one else in NFL history has won three, period -- Favre posted otherworldly numbers. During the 1995, '96 and '97 seasons, he threw for 12,000 yards and 112 touchdowns; he completed an average of 60 percent of his passes; he even ran for six scores.

Still, on an individual level, Favre's trademark skill was making plays -- improvising and innovating when all seemed lost.

Having a cannon for a right arm helped, of course. Linemen said they could hear Favre's passes. Announcers insisted there were vapor trails behind them. And receivers broke fingers trying to catch them.

How strong was his arm?

Favre "could throw a football through a car wash without it getting wet," wrote Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer,

There were hundreds of those car-wash throws. In a '95 game against the Cincinnati Bengals, the Packers were trailing, 10-3, with six seconds left in the first half "when Favre gets desperate at the Bengal 13-yard line," according to this account by Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times:

"No receivers are open. A field goal will allow the Bengals to maintain momentum. Favre needs a touchdown. But how to get it? Then he sees Mark Ingram standing in the end zone, sandwiched by Bengal safeties Bracey Walker and Darryl Williams. None of them are expecting the ball because no right-minded quarterback would ever try to thread that sort of . ..The ball flies into the crowd, so quick and hard and accurate that the safeties' outstretched hands can't get it and the surprised Ingram can't miss it. It hits him in the belly. The Packers tie the game and never trail again. "A miracle," Packer coach Mike Holmgren says."

Favre was much more, however, than a quarterback with a gun. His determination is what carried him. You don't make the kind of plays he did without a boatload of confidence that you can pull them off.

That fire was stoked long before Favre was anybody in the NFL, as Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Bob McGinn could attest. In one of Favre's first sit-down interviews shortly after he arrived in Green Bay in 1992, the 22-year-old, second-year player was asked to consider some of the greats of the game: Elway, Dan Marino, Troy Aikman.

"I can do anything they can do," Favre told his stunned interviewer. "There's nobody in the league that I look at in awe. I just haven't proven it yet."

In less than five months, Favre proved himself right into the Pro Bowl, alongside Aikman. And within three years, he was on his way to his first MVP award.

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Posted by OMCreader on Oct. 24, 2006 at 11:28 a.m. (report)

Finch said: Lord Favre will live forever.