When Green Bay Packers legend Brett Favre stepped onto the stage at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2016, his speech wasn’t just about his incredible career; it was a heartfelt tribute to family, especially his late father, Irvin Favre. This powerful moment connected back to one of football’s most unforgettable nights: the 2003 Oakland Raiders game, where Favre, just hours after his father’s passing, delivered a record-setting performance that stunned the nation. It was a display of raw emotion and unparalleled grit that cemented his legacy as a true American football legend.
Irvin Favre instilled a relentless spirit and tough love in his son, teaching lessons of resilience and teamwork that would define Brett’s entire career. In the depths of his grief on that plane ride home from the Raiders game, Brett heard something that sparked a new, personal mission: a desire to reach the Pro Football Hall of Fame not for personal glory, but to publicly honor the man who shaped him. Join us as Brett Favre shares the deeply personal story of his unbreakable father-son bond and the powerful determination that drove a football Hall of Famer to achieve greatness in his father’s memory.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: And we continue with Our American Stories, and up next. Brett Favre, back in twenty sixteen, gave a Hall of Fame speech that anyone who’d seen it, well, couldn’t forget it. He spent his time thanking his entire family: his wife, Deanna; his mother-in-law. But the ex-Packer saved his most passionate words for his father, Irvin, who died on December two thousand and three, a day the Green Bay quarterback threw for three hundred and ninety-nine yards and four touchdown passes in an unforgettable win over the Oakland Raiders, which was broadcast live and nationally. We like to thank the folks of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, for generously allowing Our American Stories to use their footage.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: Let’s take a listen to Brett.
00:01:00
Speaker 3: I’m not surprised one bit at the Packer fans here. This is incredible, incredible! So, I thank you. Thank you, Canton. Thank you, Hall of Fame. Thank you, Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.
00:01:22
Speaker 2: Believe me, I’m blessed.
00:01:24
Speaker 3: I’m an extremely blessed man.
00:01:26
Speaker 2: I look at my family.
00:01:30
Speaker 3: What a lucky man to play a game that I love so much for twenty years! To have all the wonderful things happen! What a blessing to share and that joy with you guys here tonight! What an incredible night, what an incredible week! I’ll tell you a story. My father would have introduced me here tonight. And Deanna and I had, after the game in Oakland, had chartered a plane. Our two daughters had went to Mississippi. She flew out late Saturday night and was there throughout.
00:02:10
Speaker 2: We had chartered a…
00:02:11
Speaker 3: Playing back from Oakland to get Christmas gifts back in Green Bay, take a brief nap, and go to the service and Christmas back in Mississippi, and on the… And let me say this first about NFL fans: Oakland Raider fans, in particular, that night.
00:02:29
Speaker 3: And I have played in Oakland before, and I think everyone here who has played in Oakland, either as the home team or the away team, will all agree: they can be downright nasty. I’ve seen it; I’ve witnessed it. But I’ll say this: that night, the tremendous respect and honor that was shown to me and my family from the Oakland Raider fans…
00:02:49
Speaker 2: With spectaclear, and although we didn’t ask for it…
00:02:57
Speaker 3: Deanna and I got a police escort to the airport that I could promise you would have made any president problem.
00:03:03
Speaker 2: So I say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
00:03:07
Speaker 3: But our on our flight back, it was a long flight, and as you can imagine, there was a lot of emotions, as we had just won the game, and it was probably the best game that I had ever played in, but that really didn’t matter at that point. And we laughed, we cried, and we tried to sleep. We laughed and we cried. And one time in particular, Deanna says to me—and you’d had to know my father—
00:03:39
Speaker 3: My father was short on praise and along on tough love. If he was ever to praise me, I was not to hear it. It was always, ‘You can do better.’ He was always pushing me to be better. That was okay. Never did I hear him say, ‘Son, you’ve arrived. You’re the best. That was awesome. Great game.’ It was always, ‘Yeah, but.’ So, Deanna says to me on the plane, ‘You know, your dad had said to me that he had hoped—or could not wait—for the day that you were inducted to the Hall of…’
00:04:14
Speaker 2: ‘Fame, so he could introduce you.’”
00:04:18
Speaker 3: And up until that moment, I had never thought about the Hall of Fame. And I mean no disrespect to the Hall of Fame. I say this with the utmost respect for all of you guys. I had dreamed of playing the NFL. Believe me, way more than I thought about my schoolwork. I thought about being Archie Manning, running around throwing underhand passes. I thought about being my childhood favorite Roger Staubach, throwing it to Preston Pearson or Drew Pearson, handing it off to Tony Dorsett, being Kenny Stabler coming out of the tunnel. I had thought of those things so many times, but I never thought of the Hall of Fame.
00:04:58
Speaker 2: Until that moment. And so, a new goal had entered my mind.
00:05:04
Speaker 3: Then in there, and I said to myself, ‘I will make it to the Hall of Fame. That I would make it to the Hall of Fame so I could acknowledge the fact of how important he was.’
00:05:34
Speaker 2: This is tougher than any third and fifteen, I can assure you.
00:05:40
Speaker 4: So I could not acknowledge the importance of him in my career, in my life, which he was a tremendous part of my life.
00:05:52
Speaker 2: He taught me toughness. Boy, did he teach me toughness!
00:05:55
Speaker 3: Trust me, there was no room for crybabies in our house. He taught me teamwork, and by all means, no player was ever more important than a team. And my father, for those who don’t know, chose to run the Wishbone, which some of you younger generation people do not even know what that is.
00:06:17
Speaker 2: But it never entailed throwing.
00:06:21
Speaker 3: But that was the type of coach he was, and that was the type of dad he was.
00:06:24
Speaker 2: He would never showcase his…
00:06:27
Speaker 3: son’s talents or anyone else’s talents for their…
00:06:30
Speaker 2: good, rather than the team’s good. And so…
00:06:38
Speaker 3: Then in there, in that moment, on that plane, I was determined for selfish reasons to get to this point: to acknowledge how important he was. I would not be here before you today without my father.
00:06:52
Speaker 2: There’s no doubt whatsoever.
00:07:01
Speaker 3: And one more thing about my father—and this is something I’ve never told anyone, including Deanna. My dad was my high school football coach. He was the head football coach. He coached me and my two brothers. But I never had a car growing up. I always rode to and from school with my father in his truck, and so he was always the last to leave the building because he had to turn the lights off, lock up, and then we made our way home. So it was the last high school football game of my high school career. And although I don’t remember how I played before, and I don’t remember how I played in the last game, what I do remember is sitting outside the coach’s office, stay on a Wednesday, waiting for my father to come out so we could leave. It was dark, and I overheard my father talking to the three other coaches and hurting. And I assume I didn’t play as well the previous week, only because of what he said. And he said, ‘I can assure you one thing about my son: He will play better. He will redeem himself. I know my son; he has it any.’ And I never let him know that I heard that. I never said that to anyone else, but I thought to myself, ‘That’s a pretty good compliment.’
00:08:22
Speaker 2: You know, my chest kind of swoll up.
00:08:26
Speaker 3: And again, I never told anyone, but I never forgot that statement, that comment that he made to those other coaches. And I want you to know, Dad, I spent the rest of my career trying to redeem myself.
00:08:40
Speaker 2: And make him proud.
00:08:40
Speaker 3: I hope I succeeded. Thank you. Thank you. So, never discount importance…
00:09:00
Speaker 3: of being a father and statements that you make, whether you thank your kids here, just you’re very important to your children. And the lesson is: we come and go very quickly. So, love them, meeting every day.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: And thanks to Greg Hengler for securing this material for us. And my goodness, Brett Favre—well, he was just so… he was so emotional, and he tried so hard to keep it together. This is the first time he’d talked publicly about his dad, and in front of this large football audience.
00:09:38
Speaker 2: This was a beauty.
00:09:39
Speaker 1: Brett Favre’s tribute to his father, Irvin, at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in twenty sixteen. Here on Our American Stories.
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