Back on the ground in Minnesota, Favre is relieved it's over

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NEW YORK -- I remember the first time Brett Favre mentioned the V word in the summer of 2008. Favre was officially retired but making noise about playing again. The Packers were on record as moving on with Aaron Rodgers, and now Favre wanted to play for the Vikings or Bears, with Minnesota his first choice because he knew their coaches and the offense well.

"You realize that half the kids in Wisconsin will rip the Favre posters off their walls and burn 'em in their fireplaces if you play for the Vikings,'' I said.

"I don't think it'll be that bad,'' he said.

Sixteen months later, it was. And Favre shrugged, basically.

I don't think there's been a game with a dramatic tinge to it in recent history like Favre's return to Lambeau on Sunday. Think of, say, the top 50 players ever -- Favre fits in there somewhere -- and think of how many of them played against their longtime team as an in-the-twilight player for another team. Jerry Rice played at San Francisco as a 42-year-old marginal Seahawk; that doesn't count. Joe Montana, dealt to Kansas City, played the Niners, but the game was in Kansas City. Green Bay's Reggie White played at Philadelphia, but the fans blamed Eagles management for losing White as much as anything and so White wasn't abused overwhelmingly on his trip back. Emmitt Smith got booed in Dallas on his return as a Cardinal in 2003, but the Cowboys were happy to let him go anywhere when he was in full decline.

Favre got the full-throated version from the time he walked out of the tunnel. "I had it at 80 percent boos,'' said Ross Tucker, your faithful SI.com correspondent who was in Lambeau doing color for the game on SportsUSA Radio. At least. Then Favre went out and basically duplicated what he'd done four weeks ago at the Metrodome -- which is to say he played near-flawless football (17 of 28, 244 yards, four touchdowns, no picks) in a pivotal Minnesota win. And I asked him if it was worth it.

"Yeah, it's worth it,'' he said over the phone late Sunday night, back in Minnesota, driving home from the airport. "Now people can see why I came back, and why I came back to this team. But I will say I'm relieved it's over.''

He's relieved in many ways, as it turns out. Favre told me he pulled or strained his groin in practice on Wednesday and took it easy in practice for the rest of the week. There was never any question he'd play, he said. But about an hour before the game, during pregame warmups at Lambeau with the groin wrapped tightly, he aggravated the muscle on the field. "I told T-Jack [backup Tarvaris Jackson] and [offensive coordinator] Darrell Bevell I may not be able to do it,'' he said. "I didn't know if I'd be able to drop back very well. After I aggravated it, there was no way I was going to be able to move around in the pocket very much. We never called one bootleg the whole game. But we made it through OK.''

And now, I wondered, how was the groin four hours and a lot of lost adrenalin later?