American Football: The quarterbacks in question

The play-callers in this year's Super Bowl have followed very different routes to the top, but both could win or lose the game; BRETT FAVRE of the Green Bay Packers By Matt Tench

In 1991, his first year as a professional, Brett Favre was late for the team photograph. Fearing a hefty fine, he told his head coach he had been delayed by a car wreck. "You are a car wreck," came the reply.

Few in Atlanta that day could have predicted that the camera-shy country boy would transform himself into the best player in the league. At that time, even in a sport not famous for attracting well-adjusted citizens, he was a notorious wild man, more likely to set records with his bar bill than on the football field. His career in Georgia lasted less than a year before his employers opted for the NFL equivalent of running him out of town - they traded him to another team.

Yet at the age of 27, Favre goes into Sunday's Super Bowl in New Orleans as its most significant performer, the trigger-man for the most potent offense around. If he plays anywhere close to his recent form, the Green Bay Packers should win, and win easily. For Favre, it will be the sweetest of moments in a career that has generated more than its share of turbulence. Fittingly, it will also be something of a homecoming.

Favre is from Kiln, Mississippi, a tiny community an hour's drive from the Big Easy, and for all his accomplishments he remains at heart the Cajun Kid. He frequently returns to his family on Rotton Bayou, where his grandmother Mee-Maw lives in the trailer next door, his aunt Kay- Kay in the house next to that. There he can be his normal self - a bawdy prankster - without having to worry what the neighbours think. Or, as he puts it, "It's all people who don't give a shit. It keeps me sane. I can go back and no one could care less. It's like, hey, you're just one of us. I get called 'slack dick' just like they call everyone else."

For if Brett Favre's life has shown anything, it is that you may be able to take the boy out of the country, but you cannot take the country out of the boy. What you can do is adapt to him.

While Favre languished in Atlanta six years ago, Ron Wolf, the general manager of the Green Bay Packers, sensed an opportunity. Favre's nocturnal reputation went before him, but in college he had also shown talent and spirit, and the Packers could not resist taking a gamble. It was a big one, for Favre's gifts as a quarterback at that time reflected his personality: a gung-ho passer, fond of challenging the odds, who relied on his instincts to get out of trouble. The West Coast offense, on the other hand, which the recently appointed Packers head coach, Mike Holmgren, was beginning to install, was founded on precision and patience.

This dynamic soon assumed a pressing importance when Don Majkowski, Green Bay's starting quarterback, was injured during the third game after Favre's arrival. The new boy stepped in and, with 13 seconds left, completed a 35-yard touchdown pass to secure a dramatic victory. Majkowski was a cult figure in Wisconsin, but he never got his place back.

Favre did encounter growing pains. He soon established himself as a daring improviser, but in his hunger for the big play would frequently force the issue and throw an interception. After two years, these matched the touchdowns at 37 apiece, a damning statistic that allowed detractors to claim the country boy would never tame his talent. Holmgren never gave up, though, and in the last two seasons Favre has been unstoppable, a clear winner of the league's Most Valuable Player award on each occasion.

If Favre's application has sometimes been doubted, his heart never has. While at Southern Mississippi University he nearly died in a spectacular car accident near his home. Barely conscious in his hospital room, he heard a TV announcer ask, "Will Brett Favre ever play again?" A month later he had 30 inches of dead intestine removed and four weeks after that, two and a half stone lighter, 80,000 normally hostile Alabama fans cheered his emotional return.

"I had chill bumps ready to break out of my skin," he recalled. "I went out there and told the guys, 'Look we're getting ready to whip Alabama's ass'. They're looking at me. Shit's falling off me. My uniform doesn't fit me. My team-mates were crying. It was unbelievable." And Southern Mississippi won.

His courage that day set the tone, and if playing through pain is the working norm in the NFL, it is one Favre has taken to extremes. In part, this is due to his fear that his absence through injury will give someone else the opportunity to oust him, just as he ousted Majkowski.

Behind the heroics, however, there has been much suffering, and it led Favre to the biggest crisis of his career. Many players take painkillers to make life between their weekly beatings bearable, but during the 1995 season, in his playing prime, Favre's appetite for Vicodin become voracious.

While undergoing routine surgery soon after the campaign, he suffered a seizure. Fearing that the painkillers may have helped cause it, Favre confessed his addiction to them, entered the NFL's substance-abuse programme and spent 45 days at a treatment centre.

He emerged looking healthier, and his play this year has been better than ever, but his rehabilitation has hardly been in the Paul Merson class. "Some of it stuck, but most of what they said went in one ear and out the other," he said of his counselling. There has been particular resentment for the two-year ban on drinking alcohol that the NFL programme automatically involves, with Favre claiming it was never a problem for him.

Not that this has prevented Favre spending much of his spare time with his two best friends on the team, Mark Chmura, the tight end he frequently throws to in clutch situations, and Frank Winters, the centre who hands him the ball on every play. ("My hands are under Frank's butt a hundred times a day. I have a unique job and so does he," Favre says, as if to explain the relationship.)

Ever the rebel, Favre has repeatedly complained about the alcohol ruling this season, and makes no promises about his future behaviour. "We're still going to have good times," Favre ("the Kid") said recently of his outings with Chmura ("Chewy") and Winters ("Porky"). "As long as I'm in this programme, I can't drink. That could be two weeks, it could be two years, I don't know. I'll tell you what, us three had some pretty good times. They're not over with, I can promise you that."