Walter Payton was tough as nails too. You won’t hear me trying to piss on his accomplsihments.
Any conspiracy theories about this being some backroom deal between Favre and the NFL over the sex photos? Favre ends the streak, perhaps the Vikings put him on IR, and Favre goes away and gets this story off of sports talk radio and the web.
I keep waiting to hear someone propose that. It’s no dumber than the Michael Jordan retirement/secret suspension theory - which is to say it’s incredibly dumb but a few people manage to believe it somehow, so I guess someone might believe something like that about this Favre thing, too.
Some people want everything to be a conspiracy.
Who are these people and what are they up to? I WANT ANSWERS!
Actually, a part of that was mentioned on the broadcast tonight. Not the part about the pictures, but Favre going on IR. I filled in the rest of the conspiracy myself 
But it certainly makes sense. Favre has been both a bonanza and a curse for the NFL, especially the last 3 years or so. I think if the boys in the NFL offices could see him tune out before the end of the season, disappear, go back to Mississippi and not come back next year, that would be a good thing. Rachel Nichols will be out of a job (camping out in front of Brett’s house is kind of pathetic).
The only thing that ruins this for Brett and the NFL is the sex scandal. I’m very curious to see if this thing fades away with a big settlement in the next few months. If it does, Brett may be off the hook and his legacy would still be somewhat intact. As the years pass, fewer and fewer people will remember the sex scandal (see Kobe Bryant)
As for the idea the record is unbreakable, I don’t know. Manning is only 6 seasons or so behind. I had no idea he was that close until tonight.
To Dio,
Ripken’s streak may not be impressive to you, but it should be. Have you ever played baseball? Not t-ball or little league. I’m talking at least college level. Competitive baseball. Now, think about playing every day and every night in almost every inning and you will appreciate the streak. Unlike Gehrig, who would actually bow out after his first at bat if he was injured to keep the streak alive, Ripken never did that. I believe he played in over 97% of possible innings during that streak, an amazing statistic.
Try playing softball every day next year in the dead of summer. Let’s say 6 games a week in June, July and August. Play shortstop, a demanding defensive position. Tell us how you feel after the first week. You’ll be sapped of energy and dead on your feet.
Ripken was also amazingly lucky. Not one inside pitch broke the bones in his wrist. He was never taken out of a double play by high spikes that took him out for a week. He never slipped in the bathtub, or cut his hand carving a pumpkin for his kids. Life has a way of bringing injury to these players also.
If you are impressed by longevity streaks, Ripken’s is just as impressive, if not more, than Favre’s.
As for Favre. Yes, I agree he’s one tough SOB. However, as many have mentioned, he has been ***extremely ***lucky throughout his career. Think about how many shots he’s taken and been able to get up from. He’s never been blindsided and ripped an ACL or rolled an ankle to the point of breaking. QB’s go down weekly in the NFL, and he continued to stand until tonight. That’s impressive, but it is also about a tremendous amount of luck as it is his toughness. When Favre was on the bench in GB, he might not ever had a chance to play if Majkowski didn’t go down, I think Don was a pro bowler before being injured. Favre could have wasted away on the bench if Majkowski didn’t get hurt. Lots of luck, both good and bad, play roles in the longevity streaks.
Football is a little bit harder than hitting a ball with a stick and skipping around some bases. Baseball is not anything close to as demanding as football, especially over the long term. Let’s see Cal Ripken take a hit from Clay Matthews and even stand back up, much less keep playing.
So far, here isn’t any sex scandal, by the way. Sterger has made no complaint and filed no suit, so I don’t know why you think there would be any need for a settlement.
I don’t think anyone is saying baseball is more demanding that football, which is why were talking about a 2600 game streak vs a 300 game one.
And the lack of legal action doesn’t mean that the scandal doesn’t exist.
I think you at least need an accusation, and Sterger has not made any.
Have you played both sports? I have. I was also fortunate enough to play QB and shortstop, so I think I can compare the two streaks.
I never got hit in a football game that knocked me out of a game. What cost me half a season was smacking my throwing hand on the helmet of a defensive lineman coming to kill be. Broken bones, broken thumb. That hurt like a mother, and if Favre played a full season with a broken thumb on his throwing hand, I bow to the man. I don’t see how he could even take a snap. I will concede that his painkilling cabinet had more interesting choices than mine did.
Understand this, though. There is a lot of downtime in football. More time than you can imagine. A QB is not going to get hit on every play, either. Handoffs take a good percentage, short passes and good blocking take a number of other plays off the table. That still leaves about 10 or so plays a game you can get popped. I’m not minimizing it at all. But it’s not as bad as you think.
Positions are also different in football. RB’s are brutalized. So are linebackers. Guys hitting and getting hit on almost every play is not a fun way to play the game. Being a QB isn’t like being the kicker, but it’s a hell of a lot better than being the running back.
As for baseball, hitting a ball with a stick IS harder than you think. It’s also very demanding on you physically, especially at shortstop. Ever been rolled by a runner trying to break up a double play? That can hurt, and you have no padding to help ease the impact. Getting gouged with a steel spike hurts. Period. And getting hit with a 90+ mph baseball doesn’t feel very good either, especially if it hits your hand while your hand is on the bat. Or in the ribs, or the leg. Don’t forget the toe! and the ever-popular beanball. Granted, skipping around some bases doesn’t do much damage, but who skips around the bases besides some t-ball kid who doesn’t care about the game? (is that ringing any bells for you, Dio? :D)
Baseball positions are different. Let me play first base all day long. Gehrig was helped immensely by that. It’s the easiest position by far to play and the least taxing. Shortstop comes in third behind catching (ugh), and pitching, (which is not a daily thing, but that day you pitch, your arm is under constant stress).
And playing every day as compared to once a week also makes a difference. Your body doesn’t get a chance to heal. At least with football, a twisted ankle or a painful hit has a week to heal up. Try sweating your balls off in an August double header with a throbbing thumb, cut shin, or whatever, and then after a 30 minute break, coming out and playing another game.
Ripken deserves his props.
As far as the sex scandal goes, I wasn’t aware that there were no charges filed. So this is an internal NFL investigation only? Interesting. I’m guessing that she has some lawyers, and is just waiting to hear what the NFL finds. If she doesn’t sue, she’d be throwing away a nice chunk of change. But I stand corrected.
ETA, as **enalzi **says, I don’t think anyone is saying baseball is more demanding that football. I’m not. What I’m saying is that baseball is demanding in its own right, and what Ripken did cannot be lightly dismissed.
There’s not a bad QB in the top 100 on that list; you have to be good to stick around long enough to throw a lot of passes.
A more telling statistic would be career INT %, with some sort of minimum number of passes thrown to weed out folks who barely played.
Ask and you shall receive:
It’s sorted from lowest to highest, so you need to scroll to the bottom of the list to see the high-interception percentage guys. That part of the list is dominated by QBs who played in the 1970s and earlier, before the advent of the “West Coast”-style passing game. Back then, a higher interception percentage was part of the territory. Nearly all of the lowest percentages belong to currently-active QBs, or QBs who have played within the past 10 years.
Favre’s career interception percentage is 3.3%, putting him tied for 56th on the career low-interception-percentage list. Not great, but not horrible, either. There are only five Hall of Famers with a lower percentage than Favre (Joe Montana and Steve Young at 2.6%, Troy Aikman and Dan Marino at 3.0%, John Elway at 3.1%)…but, again, most of the other QBs in the HOF played in an earlier era, in which a higher interception percentage was the norm.
Also, just to tweak Dio…note who is #1 on the interception percentage list, now that he has the minimum number of attempts to qualify to be on the list. 
Surprising that even though passing yardage and touchdowns are way up the last few years, interceptions appear to be down.
If we make the argument that football is 10 times more demanding than baseball (not unreasonable, as a baseball season has 10 times as many games as a football season [for now]), then we can say this is the equivalent of a 2980-game baseball streak.
While not normally defending baseball, the dynamic of needing to play everyday does add to the difficulty of ataining the streak. A baseball player can almost literally not take a day off, while a football player gets a whole week to rest up and heal.
To be honest, the two streaks are remarkable in their own way and it doesn’t really accomplish much to try and say one is more impressive than the other.
The way that passing is used has changed so much over the past 40 years. Teams now pass on around 55% of their plays; in the early 1970s, it was more like 55% runs. Most teams now run some flavor of the West Coast offense, in which many of the passes are on patterns of less than 10 yards (often less than 5 yards), whereas the pass was more often used for medium-to-long plays several decades ago.
As a result, completion percentage went way up (in the past, you often had QBs whose completion percentage hovered around 50%; these days, under 60% starts to become suspect), and opportunities for interceptions have gone down.
So who is the next-closest QB currently and what is his streak?
Peyton Manning, who is something like 100 games behind Favre.
Manning is at 205. He’d need to keep playing for 5 and and half seasons after this one, plus one game, to pass Favre.
Thanks! I hadn’t thought of “era played”, which is obviously a factor.