Rams called Brett Favre, not Tim Tebow, after Sam Bradford's injury
Apparently, there weren't enough reasons for Brett Favre to return to the NFL. (Mark Cunningham/Getty Images)
After St. Louis quarterback Sam Bradfordsuffered a torn left ACL and was lost for the rest of the season in the Rams' 30-15 loss to the Panthers, the Rams considered several options. According to Mike Silver of the NFL Network, there was some thought about giving Tim Tebow a call, but that didn't happen. Instead, per Adam Schefter of ESPN.com, the Rams reached out to Bus Cook, the agent for one Brett Lorenzo Favre.
Yes, the Rams wanted to check the Ol' Gunslinger's temperature about a return to the NFL. The 44-year-old Favre (who is now a grandfather, by the way), hasn't played since December 2010, when his two-year stint with the Minnesota Vikings came to an end.
Favre, of course, spent a lot of the last few years of his career wavering between retirement and non-retirement. But in this case, it appears that the retirement is real. Through his agent, Schefter reports, Favre told the Rams that he had indeed hung 'em up for good and was heading back to the deer stand. Favre is also the quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator at Oak Grove High in Hattiesburg, Miss.
"He could play today,'' Cook was quoted as saying of his client in late September. "I saw him the other day. He's in the best shape I've ever seen him in, physically. His arms look like a blacksmith's arms. He rides a bike probably 30-50 miles a day. He runs four or five miles a day. He's coaching at the high school and they're undefeated. He loves it. His body fat is 7.5 percent and he weighs 225 pounds. He could play today, better than a lot of them out there today.''
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On Thursday morning, Favre joined Andy Pollin on Washington, D.C.'s ESPN Radio outlet to put the kibosh on all this silliness.
“It’s flattering, but there's no way in hell I'm going to do that," he said, via the Washington Post.
“I do watch games, [but] I don’t watch them a lot. I can honestly sit here and say I don’t go ‘I want to do that’ or ‘I feel like I could do that better.’ I leave that up to other people. I think if anything the last year I played was an obvious, writing-on-the-wall vision for you, if you will. It was time. When I left the NFL, it felt like I didn’t need to stick around. I didn’t need to be a part of it to feel like I had a purpose in life.”
In his 19-year NFL career with the Green Bay Packers, New York Jets and the Vikings, Favre amassed the NFL's highest marks in pass completions (6,300), pass attempts (10,169), passing yards (71,838), passing touchdowns (508) and interceptions (336).
Kellen Clemens
