If you know the term “nickel defense,” congratulations. You know more about football than Brett Favre did when he first became the Packers’ starting quarterback.
The stories of Favre not caring much about the mental side of the game early in his career are legion, and Favre admitted in a speech at LSU on Friday that he simply didn’t know much of anything about football terminology in his first few years in the league.
“I think it was my second year in Green Bay and we’d drafted Ty Detmer, a good friend of mine,” Favre said, via Katherine Terrell of NOLA.com. “Now if you don’t know what’s going on, the trick is to act like you do. I’m the starting quarterback and [Mike] Holmgren would be up there and . . . he’s writing “nickel defense is in.” . . . I’m sitting there and thinking ‘I hear this nickel defense all the time and I’m not sure what it is.’”
That wasn’t the only common football term Favre didn’t know.
“Then I’m thrown for a loop when he says ‘Long yardage situation, dime comes in.’ And I’m thinking ‘what the hell is dime?’ . . . but I was afraid to ask, because I’m the starter. So after about our second year, finally I said ‘Ty, I have to ask you a question.’ I said, ‘Ty, what’s a nickel defense?’ He gets real quiet and says, ‘Are you serious?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m serious.’ He says, ‘Well, basically they take out a linebacker and bring in a DB.’ I said, ‘That’s it?’ He said, ‘That’s it.’ I said ‘Who gives a sh--?’”
And with that, Favre learned a valuable lesson: If you act like you know what’s going on for long enough, eventually someone will clue you in.
