Packers Legend Brett Favre Opens up at LR Touchdown Club

Legendary quarterback Brett Favre, who led the Green Bay Packers to its first Super Bowl championship in nearly 30 years during his 16 seasons with the team, spoke Aug. 26 at the Little Rock Touchdown Club about the highs and lows of a storied career during which he, in his words, did “pretty much everything.”

The club moved from its usual post at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Little Rock to the Wally Allen Ballroom of Little Rock’s Statehouse Convention Center to accommodate the crowd that gathered for the famed speaker. During his opening remarks, founder David Bazzel said it was the second time the Little Rock Touchdown Club sold out the Wally Allen Ballroom, the first being for NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, who played for the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos.

With an NFL record of 321 consecutive starts, Favre was the first NFL quarterback to pass for 70,000 yards, complete 6,000 passes, throw for 500 touchdowns and record wins against all 32 teams in the NFL. In addition to helping secure a Super Bowl win for the Packers, the three-time most-valuable player led the team to seven division titles and four NFC championship games.

“You can argue that our guest today is the best to ever play the game because he played it in a unique way,” Bazzel said. “He changed the way the game was played. You see some guys that are now playing the game that way, but before Brett Favre came along, you didn’t see that kind of emotion, energy, happiness and enthusiasm he played with.”

With his brother Scott in the crowd, Favre recalled his childhood in Kiln, Mississippi, as the son of a high school football coach who Favre likened to Sgt. Vince Carter in the television series “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”

A short drive from New Orleans, he grew up rooting for the Saints, particularly quarterback Archie Manning.

“Archie was my hero,” Favre said. “There was always next year. Those years with Archie were lean years, but between Archie and Roger Staubach, that was my two.”

He recalled watching Manning’s successor, Ken “the Snake” Stabler, at a Saints game as a child. Even though the Saints lost, Favre said that was the moment he knew he wanted to take football to the next level.

At the dawn of his career, Favre was a longshot. Playing both baseball and football — and believing he had a better shot at pro baseball — he received a single college offer, which came from Southern Miss. There, he led the team to landmark victories against Tulane, Florida State and, despite sustaining life-threatening injuries in a car crash weeks prior, Alabama.

“For me, I just needed an opportunity, and that’s all I wanted — just one opportunity,” Favre said. “I thought I could play. You never know, but I thought I could play, and I told myself many times, if I ever get the opportunity, I’m never giving it up.”

He was drafted to the Atlanta Falcons, where he spent a single season with little playtime before being traded to the then-struggling Packers.

“I have to be the only player in NFL history to miss the team picture,” Favre said of his time with the Falcons. “That sort of sealed my fate.”

The presentation included a video of Favre’s auspicious start with Green Bay during a fumble-laden game against the Cincinnati Bengals that Favre managed to turn around with a game-saving pass. Another video reel highlighted Favre’s goofball personality, showing clips of him joking on the sidelines.

“They can’t say we didn’t have fun,” Favre said.

After 16 seasons with the Packers, Favre spent a season with the New York Jets and two seasons with the Minnesota Vikings before retiring in 2011. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016.

“I’ve been fortunate,” he said. “I played 20 years, and I said this to someone about a year ago. They asked me if I missed the game, and really, from the time I retired, I didn’t miss the game; I missed the players.”

Despite being listed among the greatest of all time, Favre’s career was marked by addiction, and he went to rehab three times. At his worst, he said, he was taking 16 Vicodin at once every night.

“Sixteen pills is hard to swallow at one time, and I would throw up and would pick them up out of the throw-up,” he said. “That’s what addiction can do to you, and I knew at the time this ain’t good, but yet I had won three MVPs in a row, and part of me was like, I’m doing something right, but meanwhile, I was definitely heading in the wrong direction.”

This year, Favre will star in “Concussed: The American Dream,” a documentary about concussions and the NFL.

“Concussions are serious,” he said. “They’re very serious, and yeah, we look at them differently today, but the same problems still exist.”

He added that he has no regrets. Throughout his career, he said, “I never tried to be something I wasn’t.”

“You live and learn from things, but for me, it all came down to I love playing. That’s what I grew up doing,” he said. “I love my teammates and love to compete with them, compete against them, the battle part of it, but at the end of the day, I was just doing what I loved, and people appreciated it.”

Toward the beginning of the presentation, Favre was joined on stage by Cole Bright, a childhood cancer survivor who received a video from Favre while undergoing treatment.

“He’s always a person who I kind of looked up to, and to have a video, it was something that really helped me have the energy to push through and get through the tough times that I had,” Bright said.

A consistent supporter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Favre called Bright “tougher than I am.”

Although columnist Rex Nelson, who helped form the club, did not give a weekend recap because no games have yet been played, he spoke about the upcoming week, during which all four Division 1 colleges in Arkansas will play.

The Arkansas Razorbacks will take on the Pine Bluff Golden Lions at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock on Thursday, Aug. 29, and Jonesboro’s Arkansas State University Red Wolves will face off with Conway’s University of Central Arkansas Bears on Saturday, Aug. 31, in Jonesboro.

Nelson urged audience members to purchase tickets to the Razorbacks game to encourage the team to continue playing at War Memorial.

“We are the Little Rock Touchdown Club,” he said. “We want college football to stay in Little Rock, and if college football is going to stay in Little Rock, it’s largely going to be up to the people who are in this room today.”

View the entire presentation online at lrtouchdown.com/video.

Photo Credit and video: Ryan Parker