A Different Kind of Turk.

The football life tracks down Brett Favre

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Brett Favre was a master of quarterback collisions, and when I say “master,” I mean that he played football with an almost total disregard for the damage that might be visited upon him as a result of those collisions. And when I say “collisions,” I mean helmet smashes. Brain bashes.

Concussions. You understand.

And so when Favre, while appearing before Congress this week on an entirely different matter, disclosed publicly for the first time that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the news was both deeply saddening and, although this sounds cold, unsurprising.

But don’t take it from me.

Brett knew.

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The diagnosis was a while in coming, but Favre, now age 54, had foreseen its direction. Going back about a year, he’d been experiencing moments in which his right arm would “get stuck,” as he put it, not be able to extend completely, while he was doing something. He’d push the arm back into a normal position, but minutes later it would lock again.

Eventually, Favre started having trouble using everyday tools like a screwdriver, because the arm — the right one, his QB arm — wouldn’t stay steady. He had his strength, he said, but had to use his left arm to guide his right. Over time, even putting the arm through a shirt or jacket sleeve became an ordeal.

He visited five doctors. They used different combinations of words, maybe, but each wound up in the same place.

"They all said the same thing,” Favre told TMZ Sports. “‘If it's not in your family’ — and there’s none on either side of my family — ‘then the first thing we look at is head trauma.’ Well, hell, I wrote the book on head trauma."

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Being a hard-nosed quarterback who wasn’t afraid to smash it up with onrushing defenders was a significant part of Favre’s football persona. He was a scrambling QB, often out on the run. He gambled with passes and he gambled with his legs in the open field. He’d often get up from a big hit smack-talking his opponent — or laughing with him.

But Favre for years has had a dark sense of what the future held for him. In a 2018 appearance on NBC’s “Today” show that is hard to watch now, Favre said he’d rather his grandsons not play football, that he believed he may have short-term memory loss, and that he feared what might happen to him as he ages.

One part of the interview went like this:

Question: How many concussions did you have?

Favre: That I know of, three or four maybe. But as we’re learning about concussions, there’s a term that is often used in football -- and maybe in other sports -- that I got 'dinged.' When you have ringing of the ears, seeing stars, that’s a concussion. And if that is a concussion, I’ve had hundreds, maybe thousands, throughout my career.

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This week has been touched by a few small graces. Favre actually told TMZ Sports about his condition in August, but asked that the site not write about it at that time. Rather incredibly, TMZ, which has a reputation for rip/shred journalism, agreed. It only ran the story Wednesday because Favre okayed it after his Congressional testimony, which was, also sadly, about a welfare scam in his home state of Mississippi in which he has played a prominent and unflattering role.

Favre also took to Instagram with gratitude for the fans who have wished him well since the disclosure. “Thank you for all the love,” the quarterback wrote.

He was a football lifer, a Hall of Famer. A 20-year NFL player.

Twenty years.

In the NFL, during training camp each year, teams must cut down their rosters to acceptable numbers, and it’s often a brutal, emotional process. Over the decades, the team official who goes to find a player — to tell him that Coach wants to see him, and to bring his playbook — came to be known, somewhat mysteriously, as the Turk.

Favre beat the Turk for all of his 20 years. But, you know, football.