The Quiet Afternoons Of Ray And Brett

They say Brett Favre has retired. Even as a lifelong Packers fan, I'll play along. At least, I'll play along as far as Ray Lewis getting paid is concerned.

I'm sure sports blogfrica just like mainstream media is rife with leery-eyed doubt around Favre's retirement. And who could blame them? Certainly, not me.

For the the past couple years, I figured the man needed his time. He earned it to a certain degree... maybe not as much as he was alloted or believed he deserved. But contemplating throwing a body into another sixteen week grinder when that body is a late 30's edition, well, that's a temple buster.

The story now is about the damage to his throwing arm, one that caused his passes late in the season to take strange detours in the swirling Meadowlands winds. As many ugly Brett Favre interceptions as I've seen in my life – and, good Lord, there have been many – Favre's late season collapse this year did look particularly inept.

Sure balls were forced into coverage, that's a given. But there was a distinct lack of drama, maybe a theater of confusion, around his nine picks in the final five games. The confusion in this late season breakdown appeared from an outsider’s perspective to stem at least in part from a systematic miscommunication between Favre and the rest of the Jets. Laveranues Coles would never be Donald Driver-Antonio Freeman-Robert Brooks-Sterling Sharpe.

But now the bitter end is blamed on a bum throwing shoulder. On the surface, a surprisingly mundane reason for the exiting of a legend… never mind Achilles felled by an arrow shot behind cowardly fortifications landing not in his heart or between the eyes, rather his exposed heel.

Criticisms of Favre are career long and ever evolving (and not without merit). Perhaps initially they sprung from jealous opponents befuddled at his charmed play. Eventually when his reputation outpaced his onfield accomplishments, the claims of detractors gained more traction. He threw too many picks. He didn’t win enough championships. And, perhaps, worst, he put himself above the team.

Favre was folksy enough even in his primadonna vacillations. A reveller in his own mythology, that folksiness transmuted into folk heroism, as much as football with its ever replaceable cogs can support a folk hero. When football wasn’t enough, a stunning string of personal tragedy wrote the remaining tale.

For the critical fan of the game, the mythology bordering on hagiography could rightly chafe and disgust. There’s something romantic about clinging desperately to the spotlight, being peeled off the field as Matt Birk once said. Something romantic in the idea, something ugly in its operation.

Even as he leaves a wake of destruction in his off stage shuffling path, he’s given credit for loving the game. And I don’t doubt that he does. But we as fans were always buying his play on the field, not necessarily his leadership qualities, leadership that was called into question late this season by teammates Thomas Jones and Kerry Rhodes.

In last year’s tense standoff between Favre and the Packers, few were lacking for an opinion. The greatest icon of a franchise (if not exactly its greatest player) and his itch versus a young team’s future. Two camps, more or less, arrayed on either side and hurled pointed words at each other until Favre was finally shipped off to New York, safely sheltered from Minnesota or Chicago.

Compare and contrast this with Ray Lewis’s situation in Baltimore. Lewis is the Baltimore Ravens even if he is no longer its greatest player. And he might be facing the end of the his time with the franchise that gave him his first shot and stuck by him through the considerable, and occassionally frightening, drama of his career.

Beyond their outsized love for the game, the comparisons between Favre and Lewis stop there. For Lewis, there is no question about his fire to play. There is no exhaustion followed by itching regret. There is no question about Lewis’s leadership. You can hear it in Ed Reed’s voice when he talks about Lewis and his total absorption into the game.

That absorption makes his leadership undeniable, perhaps even a little overbearing at times as he stumbles upon teammates playing cards in the lockerroom and ruining the banter with his need to talk blitz schemes or coverage technique.

But that leadership is essential nonetheless.

Ray’s situation this year is also contrastingly free from outsized drama. Despite coming up through the 90s and being essentially a star of yesterday on a downward trend, exactly like Favre, the play between Baltimore and Lewis simply boils down to money. While there must be deeper feelings, both sides acknowledge the business side of the game. It’s all professionalism.

So here’s Baltimore contemplating life without its signature star. With a player that has something left in the tank. A player who if is his body keeps changing as it has over the course of his career might end up looking like a defensive tackle. Body aside, Lewis is always a middle linebacker.

Another contrasting point between Favre and Lewis, I'm not so sure a record has ever been sacred to Ray Lewis. He's been injured, missed large chunks of seasons. Plus, he’s also rested for playoffs push, not caring about how his team wins, just that his team wins. Favre can say he doesn’t do it for the records, but there’s a showmanship to it. It feeds his bumpkin routine. The records, well I didn’t mean to break it, sir, honestly…

I'm not going to tell the Baltimore front office what to do. General Manager Ozzie Newsome has constructed a consistent winner, not to mention the league’s most fearsome defenses perennially, by knowing when to pay up and when to let walk. Adalius Thomas? A nice player. But nowhere near the terror at New England he was in Baltimore.

I don’t know how it will play out between the Ravens and Ray. I don’t know if Lewis is serious about not taking a hometown discount. I don’t know if Baltimore is honestly considering not making a serious run at the team’s signature player.

I just know it will feel a little weird to see Ray in anything but the gaudy purple and black doing his ritualistic pregame haka.

While we all imagine the quiet afternoons of retired Brett spent toiling on his tractor, we cannot imagine Ray ever anything but arm’s length from a football. If there’s ever a star at his twilight that deserves a king’s ransom, it’s Lewis.