Mike Celizic

What John Wayne was to cowboys, Brett Favre was to quarterbacks. He was the tough guy who said only what needed to be said, the grizzled hombre who took a bullet and kept on shooting until the bad guys were gone, and he brought to the game that cock-sure swagger and the rugged looks that took over whatever stage he was standing on, making other men shrink into the background and women’s hearts beat faster.

He’s the man every quarterback wanted to look like, the teammate every football player wanted to have leading his team, the hero every kid wanted to imitate, the role model the NFL wanted all of its players to be.

He even played on the perfect team for him — the storied Packers, the he-man denizens of the very real — if also very clichéd – frozen tundra in the archetypal, lunch-bucket football town of Green Bay, Wisc.

Lambeau Field won’t be the same without him, nor will the National Football League. He’ll be desperately missed.

At the same time, it’s the right time for him to ride off into the sunset, now, coming off one of his greatest seasons and when he can still play the game. As he leaves, you can imagine little kids and grown men and women running after him like that tow-headed boy in “Shane,” yelling plaintively, “Come back, Brett! Come back!”

Better that than hanging on another year or two or more and having the kids and the grown-ups running after him with rakes and torches and pitch forks advising him to get out and stay out. Better that than watching him deteriorate and finally and inevitably take the hit that even this iron man of the most brutal of sports could not get up from.

He’s 38 years old and will be 39 in October, and he’s survived 17 seasons in the NFL. He came in off the bench in the second game of the 1992 season to take over for an ineffective Don Majkowski for Green Bay, and, like Lou Gehrig, who stepped in for an injured Wally Pipp for the long-ago Yankees, he never came out.

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Favre was the NFL’s MVP for three consecutive years, which pretty much says everything you need to know about his talent and impact on a team that had gone through decades of drought since its glory years of the 1960s, waiting for the savior who would take the green and gold back to the top. He did that, too, winning one Super Bowl, losing another, and coming within a whisker of getting back to the big game this year.

So throw as much praise at Brett Favre as you can muster. Break out the thesaurus to find new superlatives to apply to him. Celebrate the way he embodied what the NFL – what any league – wants its players to be: strong, enduring, indomitable, humble, brave, daring. Treasure the memories of his triumphs, his ability to improvise, his willingness to take risks, his desire to win.

But just don’t make the mistake of looking at the pack of records he holds and conclude those made him the best quarterback ever. There’s a difference between being the image of the best and actually being that.

What made him great also made him dangerous – to both the opponents and his own team. That’s something that can’t be overlooked. Joe Montana could only dream of having Favre’s arm and body, but Favre has to continue to dream of having Montana’s judgment. You could say the same of Tom Brady and even of Peyton Manning.

The one place where Favre fell short was in that judgment. He never saw a throw he didn’t think he could make, and for all the games he won with his arm, he also lost a bunch of big ones the same way. A horrible interception against the Eagles in the playoffs. Another one against the Giants in this year’s NFC Championship Game. And a lot of others over the year.

He loved being a gunslinger, and sometimes it got in the way of what was best for the team. A lot of times, the bad throws were desperation heaves when there was no other alternatives. But the ones that stand out are the ones that were just dumb, the ones that didn’t have to be made.

For that reason, I’ll never think of him as the greatest quarterback ever, regardless of the records. The stat book doesn’t define greatness; championships do. He threw too many balls that at the end of the day, he wanted back.

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But for all that, he’ll always be the picture of what a quarterback should look like, how a quarterback should carry himself, how a quarterback should talk, what a quarterback should be. He got knocked down and he picked himself up, both in life and in football. He endured the death of his father, the death of a family member, his wife’s cancer and played on. He faced a rising tide of abuse in the national media when a lot of us thought the game had passed him by, and he forged one of his greatest years.

Favre wouldn’t let us define him, and for that he stands as tall as anyone has ever stood in this or any game. He played the game on his terms and he leaves it the same way.

In the process he made the NFL better, he made football better, and he made all of us better.

There’s nothing left to say except, “Thanks, pardner. We’ll miss you.”

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