IN MY OPINION

The gunslinger finally hangs it up

Brett Favre, flawed but fantastic, will be remembered for his heroics, antics and most of all as a guy who simply loved playing football.

By ARMANDO SALGUERO

asalguero@MiamiHerald.com

Only a few days before Brett Favre's defining NFL afternoon in Super Bowl XXXI, the Favre family opened their modest wood frame home in Kiln, Miss., to me and other reporters covering the title game an hour away in New Orleans.

In that dimly lit house, in that tiny, dusty hell hole of a town, I came to understood the fundamental reason Favre played football, and in the midst of winning three consecutive MVP awards, did it so well.

''Brett really has fun playing, sometimes too much fun,'' Irvin Favre said that day in January of 1997. ``He'd rather have fun playing football than breathe. Having fun is that important to him.''

The prospect of continuing his amazing career apparently isn't fun to Favre anymore. He has told the Green Bay Packers he's retiring and, in conversations with various reporters Tuesday, explained the weight of getting back to the Super Bowl after last season's 13-3 record was too much to bear.

The pressure of piling success atop success has stolen the fun from the game. So Favre will stop playing.

And now the NFL is lessened.

Favre's bust will be in the Hall of Fame the first year he's eligible. Last season he snatched away Dan Marino's litany of passing records -- most touchdowns, most attempts, most completions, most yards -- so his likeness immediately joins Marino's on the Mount Rushmore of greatest all-time quarterbacks.

And yet for all his exploits and statistics, it is the fun Favre had playing the game that we will remember most. And miss most.

We will miss his gleeful post-touchdown sprints, helmet carried aloft, hair flapping wildly, joy spreading throughout the Green Bay sideline.

We will miss his completions thrown into double coverage.

We will miss his stumbling, bumbling underhanded tosses that one of his unsuspecting teammates seemingly always caught.

We will miss him jawing facemask to facemask with Warren Sapp. And Robert Porcher.

We will miss his emotion-revving walk-off touchdown passes. And yes, we will miss his inexplicable throw-caution-to-the-wind game-killers, too.

We will miss the unpredictability of Brett Favre. He surprised an official last season when he low-fived him after a completion. He surprised a couple of teammates by starting a snowball fight before the NFC Championship Game.

He also surprised the Atlanta Falcons by having the career he did.

The Falcons drafted Favre out of Southern Mississippi in 1991. Then-coach Jerry Glanville didn't know Favre's name. So he called him Mississippi.

Mississippi didn't play much his rookie year, throwing just four forgettable passes. His first pass was intercepted and returned for a touchdown and he didn't complete any of the other three, either.

His biggest contribution to the team was slinging the ball (Favre has always been good at that) into the second deck of visiting stadiums as teammates, and Glanville, gambled on whether he could do it or not.

Nothing about Favre said he'd become a legend. Everything suggested he'd be a legendary partier.

He's not in the 1991 Falcons team picture because he missed the early-morning shoot. He was hung over from the night before. Teammates called him Buckhead Brett, tying him inexorably to Atlanta's club and bar district.

Out of this inauspicious start, then-Green Bay general manager Ron Wolf still saw greatness in Brett Favre and gave up a first-round pick for him in 1992. It was not an A.J. Feeley moment. It was sheer genius, or luck, or both.

Within two seasons Green Bay coach Mike Holmgren, frustrated by Favre's antics, began to go gray. Within three seasons, Favre was a star. Within four seasons, he won his first MVP award.

And in that fateful fifth year, Favre took the Packers to the Super Bowl.

''I don't know what he's going to do in this game,'' Irvin Favre told me during my visit, days before the game. ``He might go out and throw four touchdown passes. He might go out and throw three interceptions. But he's going to give everything he's got -- blood, guts, tears and sweat.

``And he's going to go out there to have fun.''

Irvin Favre died of a heart attack in December of 2003. Three days later, his son threw four touchdown passes in a 41-7 nationally telecast victory against Oakland.

It was a time dedicated to the man who was both Favre's father and coach. It was a time for reflection rather than celebration or joy.

It was, from his days in high school until he decided to retire Monday, the only other time Brett Favre didn't equate football with fun.