Jerry Glanville Opens Up On Brett Favre's Drinking As a Rookie

Jerry Glanville gets credit for helping to turn around the fortunes of the Atlanta Falcons in the early '90s (all right, he did get them to the playoffs only once, but it was their first trip in over a decade) but he also takes flak for dealing a future Hall of Fame quarterback in Brett Favre to the Packers for a draft pick.

Of course, in retrospect it looks like an obviously bad move by the Falcons, but in his stay in Atlanta, Favre hardly showed flashes of future greatness, throwing two interceptions in four pass attempts. Not to mention that the Packers offered up a first-round pick for him, when Atlanta had acquired him the previous year with a second-round selection.

Turns out, there was more reason for Glanville to sign off on the deal: he was concerned with Favre's drinking habits. In a rather candid interview with a radio station in Nashville, the former coach

"I had to get him out of Atlanta ... I could not sober him up," Glanville said. "I sent him to a city where at 9:00 at night the only thing that's open is Chili Joes. You can get it two ways, with or without onions. And that's what made Brett Favre make a comeback was going to a town that closed down. If I would have traded him to New York, nobody to this day would have known who Brett Favre ever was."

That Favre struggled with drinking and taking pain killers early in his career isn't news, but it's rare to hear about it from anyone other than Favre himself, especially in such detail. Not every troubled player is fortunate enough to find a delicate situation that best helps them succeed, but whether it was going to a town where the bars closed early or even finding a club that showed definite signs of interest in his talent, Favre found it in Green Bay.

(Original audio can be found here.)

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