Tom Curran • E-mail

A little more than a month ago, the last of Brett Favre’s 9,749 career passes in the NFL turned into the 316th interception of his career.

It killed the Packers wondrous 2007 season. It was a throw that never should have been made. A stupid play that would, very soon after, exact the ultimate toll – a playoff loss to the Giants in the NFC Championship.

And somehow, it was a wholly appropriate play on which to end a career as uniquely brilliant as Favre’s.

Those Packers had no business being in that NFC Championship game. They weren’t good enough. Favre himself voiced suspicions about his team even as the weeks and the wins piled up underneath them. That day in Minnesota, when Favre broke Dan Marino’s record for career touchdown passes, Favre spent a chunk of his post-game press conference trying to figure out just what kind of wave the Packers were riding.

Then, suddenly, they were good enough. Favre, at 38, had gotten religion – buying into his raw teammates, taking precious care of the ball, letting his defense do some damage for him. A lot of people share credit for the success of last year’s Packers but nobody deserves a bigger slice of the credit than Favre.

And, when Favre got picked by Corey Webster on the second play of overtime in the NFC Championship, nobody deserved more blame.

The football critic in you probably felt disgust at the mistake, bewilderment that a 38-year-old, three-time MVP could be so careless when caution was Job One.

The football fan in you probably felt that this was the order of things – Favre giveth and Favre taketh away.

And the human side? You felt Favre’s pain. You knew the ache and nausea that hit Favre in a wave when it sank in that he’d screwed up and you watched for it to register on his face. You knew the feeling of having flushed everyone else’s work down the crapper because of a bad decision and how you would feel. You knew the resignation that hits like an anvil when it comes clear that you have to start all … over … again.

It was that last – the human side – that made the legend, wasn’t it?

He was Huck Finn in shoulder pads, rasslin’ with his brothers down in Kiln, Mississippi, guzzling more beer than he should and playing heroically with vicious hangovers down at Southern Miss. Getting in a near-fatal car wreck that cost him more than two feet of intestine and performing with barely containable glee when he won the Packers starting job.

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“That’s how I’d do it.” How many times did those words pass through the minds of men harboring dreams of playing in the NFL but not the ability as they watched Favre?

Favre got hooked on the painkiller Vicodin from late 1994 into 1996. He beat it by going to rehab and then he manned up and shared his story in all it’s gory details in the book, “Favre: For the Record.”

He said he’d go into the bathroom, take a handful of pills and a gulp of water and try to keep them down. If he failed, he’d pick the pills out of his vomit and take them again.

Why so graphic?

“I don't know, if you're going to tell your story, don't go halfway,” he explained when the book came out. “I'm tired of people asking me questions over the last two or three years about what went on. So... buy the book and read it if you want to know."

If you ask me, it takes more guts to share that and hope good comes from it than it does to stand in against a 320-pound defensive tackle on a Sunday in September.

The preternatural coolness of the great quarterbacks wasn’t Favre’s thing.

He wasn’t like Montana, Unitas or Brady – face placid with a season on the line. He felt the crucial moments and they registered on his face. He cried. He skipped. He jumped.

Maybe that prevented him from being as great a quarterback as those three but it made him more revered. He was the most human of the great quarterbacks, a graying buzzcut and the trace of a wise grin on his face by the time he was done.

A couple of months ago, Favre was honored by the Wisconsin Make-A-Wish Foundation for all the time he’s given them. Somewhere, someone linked to the press conference where he was honored.

I watched it and within six minutes was choking back tears. That’s the essence of Brett Favre.

His career didn’t end with one last shining moment like those of Michael Jordan or John Elway or Ted Williams.

It ended with an interception and the very human fallout of the failure that brought. And while it would have been a lot more romantic for it to end differently, no loose ends and a neat little bow on a Hall of Fame career, the finish to Brett Favre’s moving football career hit just the right tone for me.

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