Hopes fly as Favre takes off in a snap- Daily News

Hopes fly as Brett Favre takes off in a snap
Monday, November 24th 2008, 8:55 PM


Fredrickson/Reuters

Brett Favre walks off the field after the Packers fall to the Giants in the NFC Championship Game ...

Sabo/News

... and now Favre might get another shot against the Giants as Jets quarterback.
Last January he was on the other side of a storybook season, for the other team at Giants Stadium. Now Brett Favre is a part of that kind of season for both teams at Giants Stadium, might even be a part of the storybook ending that football fans have imagined for 40 years, at Yankee Stadium and Giants Stadium and now off Route 3, the one where the Giants and Jets finally play each other in a Super Bowl.

Of course, the storybook season in pro football was supposed to be Favre's one year ago, when he was still No. 4 of the Packers, when he was the one who was supposed to get the shot at knocking off the 18-0 Patriots in Glendale, Ariz. But then the Giants beat him and beat the cold at Lambeau Field in the NFC Championship Game, beat Favre in overtime when he threw away his shot at the Super Bowl by throwing one to Corey Webster.

BIG APPLE FOOTBALL: WEEK 12
Now the Giants are the defending champions of the NFL. The only way Favre gets another shot at them is if the Jets get to play them in Tampa on the first day of February. The Giants are exactly what they were against Favre and everybody else in their run to Glendale, best team in the league. But on Sunday, Favre and the Jets were the next best, knocking off the unbeaten Titans in Nashville.

The Titans still have the best record in the AFC and the same record as the Giants. Still: the Jets just beat the Titans by three touchdowns, at their house. The Jets have won five in a row and beat the Patriots in Foxborough before they went to Nashville, and it hasn't been like this for both teams in the same season - at this exact point in the season - since the Giants were 9-2 after 11 weeks in 1986 and the Jets were 10-1.

But as good as the Giants are and as good as they have been all season, the hot kid right now is Favre. He was 3-3 and looked lost, looked more like a tourist than ever when the Jets lost to the Raiders. Now here he comes and here they come.

"Whatever 'it' is," Favre's agent and lawyer Bus Cook was saying Monday, "he still has 'it.'"

They have been together since Favre was at Southern Miss. Cook was a Hattiesburg, Miss., lawyer and a mutual friend introduced them. Favre told Cook he was thinking of "trying" pro football. Cook was honest, saying, "Son, I don't know anything about that."

Favre said, "Well, maybe we can try it together."

Now, nearly 20 years later, you ask Bus Cook, who keeps an office for Favre at BC Sports upstairs from his own, if he prefers being called Favre's agent or lawyer and he says, "How about his friend?"

Then he was talking about the meetings with the Packers in early August when it became official and apparent that Favre, the most compelling and exciting player of his time in pro football, would have to leave Green Bay and leave the Packers if he wanted to keep playing. Favre had flown back to Green Bay before the Packers' annual intra-squad game, more like a spring game in college than anything in the pros, had his meetings with Packers coach Mike McCarthy and general manager Ted Thompson and team president Mark Murphy, came away with the understanding that there would be no do-over on his retirement. Not there, anyway.

"I still want to play," he said to Bus Cook. "It's not about the money, it's not about records. I want to keep playing because I feel like I've still got something to give."

Then Brett Favre said, "I want one more year and one more shot at the title."

Now he gets it with the Jets. They are no sure thing still to win their conference, even their division. Matt Cassel seems to play better every Sunday for the Patriots. Peyton Manning and the Colts hang around. The Titans aren't going anywhere. But for the last two games especially, there has been a magic to what Favre has done with the Jets. It is why this has become one of the best times - in what is supposed to be a time for the Giants around here - Jets fans have ever had.

"We had a pretty rainy summer," Bus Cook was saying Monday, in an accent that tells you everything about where he and Favre are from. "But lately I feel like I'm seeing a rainbow."

Cook said that when it all began to fall apart in Green Bay, when it became apparent that Favre's only two options were the Bucs and the Jets, that the Bucs might have an edge for two reasons. One was that Favre knew Jon Gruden. The other, much more important, was that if he signed with the Bucs he would get a shot at the Packers, who didn't want him, in the fourth game of the season.

A deal was made with the Jets instead. Favre struggled for nearly two months, with a new team, a new system. There was that loss to the Raiders and then the Jets were lucky to beat the Chiefs. Now Favre takes them down the field twice against the Patriots when he has to. Beats the Titans the way he does. It is why for this week anyway it looks as if the two best teams are here.

"He feels like he was the outsider at first," Bus Cook said, "even if he was Brett Favre, but that now they believe in him as much as he believes in them."

The ones who believe, big, over the past month are Jets fans. It starts with their new, old quarterback. Whatever "it" is, he still has it.
__________________