Brett Favre was the person with the golden arm – a three-time NFL MVP who revived the Inexperienced Bay Packers whereas setting the league report for consecutive begins and all-time yardage, elevating the usual for toughness and productiveness at quarterback. It’s his thumbs that allow him down ultimately. He might play by the thumb accidents – however allegedly not the urge to ship lewd textual content messages to a workers member on the New York Jets, or the digital impulses that might tie him to allegations over a $94m welfare scandal in his residence state of Mississippi.
“Are folks in these positions above the regulation?” Rebecca Gitlitz wonders. “Have they been instructed so many instances that no matter they do they’ll get away with it? Stuff like that, the place historical past repeats itself, I wished to see how that occurs.”
Gitlitz is the director of The Fall of Favre, the most recent in Netflix’s sequence of sports activities documentaries, Untold. The episode retraces the good-time gunslinger’s arc from humble Mississippi beginnings to his NFL peak to the texting scandal that tarnished his repute. Suffice to say: this isn’t a type of NFL Movies-grade hagiographies that covers Favre in glory, or paints him as a God-fearing daddy’s boy with the Dixie drawl who was firmly at his spouse’s aspect for her much-publicized most cancers combat. Nor does it linger on his retirement fickleness or his debatable affect on former understudy Aaron Rodgers, the NFL’s present drama king gunslinger.
Absent are the usually effusive witnesses to the Favre mythos reminiscent of Mike Holmgren, the coach who gained a Tremendous Bowl with Favre in Inexperienced Bay. As a substitute, there’s Ron Wolf, the Packers GM who landed Favre in a landmark commerce with Atlanta in 1992. (The Falcons buried Favre on the depth chart after drafting him within the second spherical in 1991.) Tellingly, Wolf characterizes Favre as his best scouting discover, however is so solemn whereas reflecting on that profession achievement that you could’t assist questioning if some a part of him regrets his position in creating what Favre would change into.
Peter King, the retired Sports activities Illustrated soccer author who was achingly near Favre in his heyday, additionally seems within the movie and appears genuinely upset by the quarterback’s legacy. The Inexperienced Bay space journalists who noticed the extra unsavory sides of Favre frequently, nevertheless, are extra cynical. “There’s no [Packers] staff proprietor, nobody to reply to,” Gitlitz says of Favre’s entitlement in Inexperienced Bay. “There’s small city media. What the Packers expertise did for him as an individual is a seminal piece of this storytelling.”
A hanging look within the documentary is made by one other NFL star quarterback, Michael Vick. Each males are flawed – Vick, who’s Black, went to jail for his half in a dogfighting ring – however the distinction in the way in which America reacted to their respective rise and falls says quite a bit about who’s forgiven in the USA.
However the star interview is Jenn Sterger, the Jets presenter who claims the staff terminated her after Favre – a splashy free-agent acquisition approaching the top of his profession – allegedly despatched her a flurry of unsolicited textual content messages, together with just a few that purported to point out his penis. (Favre was discovered to not be in violation of the NFL’s private conduct coverage, however fined $50,000 anyway for not cooperating with the league’s investigation.) Shockingly, Sterger reveals within the doc that she has by no means met Favre. “If that single assertion was alarming to me, I felt like there’s bought to be an terrible lot right here,” Gitlitz says. “So we went digging, and it was plentiful.”
The director is at pains to solid Sterger as collateral injury within the Favre legend. Although she first rose to fame for carrying skimpy garments to varsity video games, Sterger, who bears a hanging resemblance to Favre’s spouse, describes herself as a clumsy theater nerd who had aspired to a profession as a sideline reporter. (Hauntingly, her position mannequin was Erin Andrews, the veteran sportscaster who was covertly videotaped in her resort room.)
Sterger says her connection to Favre possible would have by no means come to gentle if she hadn’t made offhandedly talked about the textual content allegations to former Deadspin editor AJ Daulerio years later. Daulerio, a doubtful determine in his personal proper, swiftly betrayed her confidence for what turned out to be the inside track of the 12 months. Sterger believes somebody within the Jets entrance workplace handed Favre her quantity, and is satisfied that’s against the law. However as a result of this all went down within the early-2010s, nicely earlier than #MeToo, Sterger was pilloried within the tabloids and conventional media as a jezebel who sought to convey down the NFL’s golden boy. She was successfully blackballed from the career. Within the doc, she says Favre “destroyed my life”.
Two Jets therapeutic massage therapists suing Favre for sexual harassment after the allegations of inappropriate messages to Sterger emerged didn’t a lot transfer the general public. Tim Andre, the Jets intern supervisor inexplicably tapped to function Sterger’s bodyguard, spends a lot of the doc lamenting his incapability to guard her. “I simply felt like Jen deserved for her story to be instructed in an trustworthy manner,” Gitlitz says. “That was our objective for the movie, to inform the trustworthy story and let folks determine for themselves how they wish to really feel about anyone factor.”
Sterger would possibly by no means have reemerged to handle her chapter with Favre if it hadn’t been for a 2022 Mississippi welfare audit that alleged the quarterback had diverted $8m in funds to himself or to causes he championed – most notably the development of a volleyball facility on the College of Southern Mississippi, the place his daughter was taking part in on the time. (Favre additionally performed faculty soccer there.) In a single textual content message that was revealed by Mississippi Immediately, he requested former governor Phil Bryant “if you happen to have been to pay me is there anyway [sic] the media can discover out the place it got here from and the way a lot?” It’s price highlighting that Mississippi is the poorest state within the US.
Though the welfare scandal wound up costing Favre profitable endorsements, broadcast work and normal credibility, he has by no means been charged with any wrongdoing over the allegations. What’s extra, he has denied any wrongdoing all through, suing anybody who would even counsel he had damaged the regulation – not least the auditor who carried out the welfare investigation for the state of Mississippi. (In the meantime, Bryant pressured Mississippi Immediately to disclose its sources in a defamation lawsuit that was in the end dismissed.)
For Sterger although, the welfare scandal is a vindicating second years within the making. “She mentioned, ‘I instructed you all, and no one listened to me,’” Gitlitz says. “She spent a variety of time speaking to me in regards to the folks of Mississippi that had actually suffered by the hands of the scandal. She felt like there have been an terrible lot of people that weren’t getting their tales instructed, and she or he felt solidarity with that.”
Favre declined an invite to take part within the documentary and even wrote again himself to say no – a growth that’s each stunning and never given his feeble resistance to keyboards. “He mentioned, ‘Why are you making this? If I wished to make a documentary myself, I might have,’” Gitlitz says. However even Favre must concede her documentary isn’t an all-out character assassination. Notably, it skips the chapters on the quarterback’s substance addictions and shut associations with Mark Chmura, Darren Sharper and different controversial characters. However these omissions don’t forestall the movie from making the important level: the Favre identify nonetheless means one thing, no matter his troubles off the sphere.
Gitlitz’s movie closes with a scene from Favre’s look at a congressional committee listening to on welfare reform – the place he unexpectedly revealed that he had been recognized with Parkinson’s illness, dramatically shifting the main target from the fraud in Mississippi. One of many lawmakers on the dais nods at Favre’s gridiron greatness, and autograph seekers method him afterward. It’s an ideal illustration of Favre’s inherent complexity, and why he endures as a basic protagonist. “It’s actually fascinating how folks mythologize their sports activities heroes,” Gitlitz says. “Folks tie these nice reminiscences to their sports activities heroes, and it’s so onerous to disentangle the 2.”
