The streak started on September 27, 1992, as summarized in this YouTube video, with Favre a member of the Green Bay Packers. He started Green Bay's final 13 games of the '92 season. Favre then started all 16 games for the next 17 seasons, with the Packers (1993-2007), New York Jets (2008), and Vikings (2009). This season, he was Minnesota's starter for 12 straight games (see Favre's career statistics).
If you're doing the math, it's: 13 + (17 X 16) + 12, which equals 13 + 272 + 12, which yields 297.
Not surprisingly, given the nature of the game, Favre experienced many injuries during the streak, but always managed to make it for the opening snap. Just this past October, it looked like two fractures in his left ankle might end the streak, but they didn't.
2 comments:
Do they really count him just taking the first snap as a start? Surely they wouldn't count that as consecutive starts. They are complaing about a guy on the sidelines, yet allow people to manipulate staistics.
I doubt Favre or anyone associated with the Vikings seriously considered putting him in for just the first snap the other night, merely to keep his consecutive-starts streak alive.
Such a move would have had "gimmick" written all over it and would almost certainly have been received very poorly by fans and the media. Those who follow women's basketball may remember the controversy that ensued several years ago when an injured player was allowed by the other team to score an uncontested lay-up, so she could set a new scoring record.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/feb/27/sports/sp-23531
On the other hand, NBA player A.C. Green, who had a long "iron-man" consecutive-games streak going (which ultimately broke the old record), had at least one game in which he appeared only briefly to keep the streak alive, after being elbowed in the mouth and losing some teeth.
http://amarillo.com/stories/112097/green.shtml
I remember Green's coach at the time saying that, had the injury occurred as part of the natural flow of play, he wouldn't have let Green play with his injury. Only because the coach felt the streak should not be ruined by an (apparent) cheap shot did he let Green keep the streak alive via brief stints.
Post a Comment