Favre finds brief escape from grief on field of play

America At Large: Brett Favre never set out to be the NFL's living embodiment of the Book of Job, though it seems to have worked out that way. Last Thursday, while his Green Bay team-mates were engaging in their final practice session before heading off to Chicago for the regular-season finale against the Bears, Favre was in North Carolina, serving as a pallbearer for his late friend and team-mate Reggie White, who had died at the age of 43.

On Sunday afternoon the 35-year-old took the field in a Green Bay uniform for the 205th consecutive time. That streak would be remarkable for any football player; it is unprecedented for quarterbacks, and represents a record for durability that may never be matched.

Mississippi-born Favre may be the toughest man in the NFL, not just because he has started and played those 205 games despite a frightening litany of injuries - ankle fractures, concussions, dislocated shoulders, and, last season, a broken thumb on his throwing hand - but because, particularly of late, he has played in so many of them with a heavy heart as well.

On a December Sunday over a year ago Irvin Favre, the quarterback's father, best friend, and high school coach, died of a heart attack at the wheel of his car. The next night Favre not only insisted on playing but, despite his grief, had one of the best games of his illustrious career, throwing for 399 yards and four touchdowns as the Packers beat the Oakland Raiders 41-7 in a Monday night game. "I knew my dad would have wanted me to play," Favre said that night. "I love him so much, and I love this game. It's meant a great deal to me, to my dad, to my family, and I didn't expect this kind of performance. But I know he was watching tonight."

In October his 24-year-old brother-in-law Casey Tynes, whom he was extremely close to, was killed when he crashed an all-terrain vehicle while driving on Favre's property in Mississippi. A week after that his wife, Deanna, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and has been undergoing chemotherapy since. "People say to me, 'It's got to be difficult to play with what you've been through,'" reflected Favre. "But under those circumstances, it sure beats sitting at home and dwelling on it. I enjoy playing the game. It's a way to take my mind off of, at least for a brief moment, some of the things in my personal life."

Three days after he buried Reggie White, Favre completed nine of 13 passes for two touchdowns in Sunday's game at Soldier Field. Once the 31-14 victory had been assured he took a seat on the bench and let the scrubs mop up. Start number 206 is on Sunday, when the Packers host Minnesota Vikings in a wild-card play-off game.

Favre was drafted by the Atlanta Falcons 14 years ago when he came out of southern Mississippi and traded to the Packers a year later. Despite his football pedigree, he came perilously close to avoiding a major college programme altogether.

"We ran the Wing-T (a system which does not, to say the least, emphasise the passing game) in high school," Favre once recalled. A Southern Miss coach who had come to scout Favre fils told his father, "You want us to sign your son, he's got to throw the ball." Irvin Favre refused to change his game plan for the edification of the college scout, suggesting the visitor watch Brett throw in pre-game warm-ups, which he did. Even so, said Brett, Southern Miss already had three high school quarterbacks committed. One of them dropped out, opening up a scholarship for him.

"If I hadn't gone there I probably would have gone to a junior college or played baseball," said Favre. "Who knows what would have happened if that kid hadn't pulled out of Southern Miss?"

With each game he plays he adds to his iron-man legend. Over the past 13 years he has become a veritable Pro Bowl fixture, and would have played in even more if he hadn't had to report for surgery immediately following several seasons. He has been named the NFL's Most Valuable Player three times, has taken his team to two Super Bowls, and one World Championship.

In addition to the injuries, Favre has had to overcome an addiction to painkillers. After the 1995 season he was scheduled for ankle surgery and suffered a seizure in the operating room. The situation was dire enough that the doctors managed to pry the truth out of him: He was consuming as many as 12 Vicodin tablets a day, usually washed down by a six-pack or two of beer.

Even after he went through rehab and kicked the drug dependency, he was still pounding the beers, and didn't stop until Deanna threatened to leave him. She probably saved his career.

"I was still drinking and was not the husband, not the father, I needed to be," he recalled. "And I was getting older, too. And it wasn't as much fun. If I quit drinking, what do I do? I was scared of that. My wife said, 'Either you quit drinking, or we're gone.' And I said, 'Okay, I'm going to quit.' I honestly don't believe I'd be here today as a player, and maybe not even alive, without her. I would have given up on me a long time ago."

Small wonder, then, Favre was at her side when his wife checked into Sloan-Kittering Memorial Hospital in New York, where she underwent a lumpectomy this fall, or that he has been there for virtually all of her chemo treatments. And in between, he still hasn't missed a start. "She just told me 'Go do your thing'," he recalled.

It is difficult to even imagine how a man could function at such a high level in the face of the grief that has beset Favre over the past year, but football appears to be a form of catharsis for him.

"Professional athletes are not immune from tragic circumstances - including cancer," Favre recently noted. "Although as athletes we sometimes think we are. I've never found myself saying, 'Why me?' or 'Why us?' It takes too much time, and in the end it doesn't matter anyway. It is what it is, and you deal with it the best way possible. That's all we're trying to do."