The kid’s time had finally come.
Matt Hasselbeck, better known by Green Bay fans as Mr. August because of his preseason heroics, was going to get his chance after all.
Better be ready, they told him. The coaches, the trainers, his teammates – they all said the same thing.
The time had arrived, had finally reached out and touched him, and Hasselbeck definitely felt ready.
He was running the first-team offense at Green Bay Packers practices all week. He was studying the Indianapolis Colts’ defense like he’d never studied any defense before. He was paying special attention in meetings, his eyes occasionally drifting to the crutches and cumbersome boot that were protecting Brett Favre’s sprained foot.
Everywhere Hasselbeck looked, the signs were pointing toward his first NFL start.
Except it didn’t happen. Hasselbeck would have to wait a couple more years, after he’d been traded to the Seattle Seahawks.
Favre played in that game in Nov. 2000, just like he played in the previous 135, and just like he’s played in the 95 games since that day.
“He had a size-13 shoe on his left foot by game time, a size-15 on his right foot, and he got out there and played and was unbelievable,” Hasselbeck recalled last week from his new workplace at the Seattle Seahawks’ practice facility. “He threw a touchdown underhand. It was just typical Brett Favre stuff.”
“Typical” for Brett Favre is much different than it is for any other human. Anyone who’s been around him over the years recalls a story of the future Hall of Famer defying the odds, not to mention the advice of team trainers. Favre has started every one of his team’s 231 games over 15 years, a streak that former Packers and current Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren recently called, “one of the more remarkable things in sports history.”
Asked for examples of Favre’s toughness, Holmgren vividly recalled two particular occasions during his seven years coaching the 6-foot-2, 220-pound quarterback.
There was the time that Favre suffered a separated shoulder in the first quarter of a game against the Philadelphia Eagles, only to finish the game and also play through the pain the following week.
There was another time when an ankle injury was so severe that Holmgren told Favre to take the week off and concentrated on getting his backup ready to start the upcoming game against Chicago. On Saturday, the day before the Bears game, trainers cleared Favre to throw some passes. The quarterback backpedaled gingerly on the ankle, then convinced Holmgren to let him start the game.
“I said, ‘If I’m looking out there, and you’re at risk or something, then I’m taking you out,’” Holmgren recalled last week as his Seahawks prepared for tomorrow’s game against Favre’s Packers. “We started him in the game, and he ended up throwing five touchdown passes.
“I mean, really, he couldn’t move. We were lucky he was in the pocket. And he played as fine a football game as he has.”
Favre’s current head coach, Mike McCarthy, remembers another time when he was the Packers’ quarterbacks coach and the indestructible player from Kiln, Miss., suffered a broken thumb and two other injuries to the same hand during the course of the 1999 season.
“I can recall up in Detroit, when he hit it (again), he was holding the ball the whole time that he was (on the sideline),” McCarthy said, “because the swelling was increasing, and he was concerned about being able to grip the football.”
Of course, Favre finished that game and started the following week.
Feet, ankles, knees, groin muscles, hands, elbows, shoulders, concussions. The energizer quarterback has kept going and going and going through it all.
“It’s probably one of the most impressive streaks in sports,” said Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon, who is certain to be joined by Favre in Canton one day. “It even surpasses Cal Ripken (Jr., who played in 2,632 consecutive baseball games), only because of the physicality of football. You’d think somewhere along the line someone would roll into his knee, or roll into his ankle, and he’d get hurt, where he couldn’t play in a game. But nothing like that has happened yet.”
Seahawks defensive end Grant Wistrom is impressed that any football player, at any position, can play for so long without suffering a major injury.
“It’s like getting into your car and driving into a wall at 20 miles an hour 60 times on a Sunday afternoon,” Wistrom said last week when asked to describe the physical nature of football. “Then you go out the next week, practice a few more times, and go back and do it all over again the next Sunday – for about five months.”
Favre has been through his share of car-accident-like collisions, and yet his streak keeps on going.
He broke the original record – 116 regular-season starts, by former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski – in 1999 and will double that when he starts Monday’s game against the Seahawks. He’s also played in 20 playoff games during the streak.
Just to put Favre’s 231-game streak in perspective, last week Washington’s Jason Campbell became the 199th NFL quarterback to start a game during the period of time that Green Bay’s durable signal-caller has been running the Packers’ offense. The Seahawks have started 12 different quarterbacks in that time, while the Chicago Bears have gone through a league-high 20.
Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts has played an incredible 138 consecutive games, but he’d still need almost six full seasons to match Favre’s current record.
“Amazing,” Seattle’s Hasselbeck said of the streak. “It blows your mind. You think of Cal Ripken Jr., and what he did, and this is beyond that.
“I mean, the guy hasn’t missed a game – ever. And he’s been hurt, playing through injuries that normal people don’t get through.”
No one would ever describe Favre as a normal person. Maybe that’s why, despite an elbow injury that kept him from finishing last Sunday’s game for only the sixth time in his NFL career, nobody thought much of the “questionable” next to Favre’s name on the injury report this week.
“I don’t think a little elbow (injury) is going to stop him,” Seahawks cornerback Jimmy Williams said. “He’s been around too long to let that stop him.
“He likes the prime-time games, so he’ll be ready.”
Of course he will. Football’s iron man wouldn’t know any other way.
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