New York Brett: The darling of the jets has the Super Bowl in his sights

Like the Mounties, the Big Apple sooner or later gets its man. Once upon a time, back in 1991 when another Bush was President and the Soviet Union still existed, the New York Jets tried to enlist Brett Favre but lost out in the NFL draft to the Atlanta Falcons. Three months ago they finally got him.

Except this was not a promising kid out of the University of Southern Mississippi with an undisciplined style but a phenomenal arm. Favre had never lost his easy southern drawl. But now he was a sporting legend in the twilight of his career – who had chosen the brashest, cruellest sporting stage on earth to disprove F. Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that there are no second acts in American lives.

From Atlanta, Favre was traded a year later to the Green Bay Packers, where he would spend 16 seasons and shatter a host of NFL records. But divine status in a remote city of 100,000 people, reared on the legend of Vince Lombardi but still far and away the smallest population to support an NFL franchise, is one thing. Going to New York, the place that famously chews up sporting megastars and spits them out, is quite another.

At the venerable age of 38, Favre had to bond with a new coach who was 15 months younger, not to mention a new set of team-mates. But his underlying mission was even more daunting: to revive a languishing franchise that had never quite been the same since Joe Namath left for the Los Angeles Rams in 1976, and to generate a buzz for the new $1.4bn (£950m) stadium due to open in 2010 – and all of this at an age when the average pro football player has been retired for eight years.

But Brett Favre, of course, is not an average football player. On every list of great quarterbacks of the modern era, his name is near the top. Maybe not if measured by Super Bowl rings alone: he won just one with the Green Bay Packers, in 1997, compared to the four Joe Montana collected with the San Francisco 49ers, and Tom Brady's three with the New England Patriots. But it is Favre who holds the all-time NFL records for passing yards, touchdown throws and games won as a starting quarterback, as well as three Most Valuable Player awards, more than any other player in history.

Favre is not a quarterback content to merely "manage" a game. He wants to take them by the scruff of the neck. Every NFL fan has an image of Favre etched in his mind: the figure in the No 4 jersey wheeling out of the pocket behind the scrimmage, with a lightning eye and an arm like a rocket launcher. Critics complain that as well as the touchdowns, he throws more than his share of interceptions as well. But Favre's readiness to take a chance, to make things happen, is one reason he is such an exciting player. Whatever else, he said recently, "I'm going to go down swinging."

For the sportswriters, he is the living definition of the "gunslinger" quarterback, capable of shooting up any opposing defence, whatever the odds. But a metaphor two millennia earlier than the Old West may be even more fitting. Favre is the gladiator who never misses a combat.

These days his cropped hair is more grey than brown, complemented by a whiter shade of designer stubble. But he is still as tough and brave as they come. No quarterback playing today comes close to Favre's 263 consecutive starts. That alone certifies him as an immortal in a fierce and brutal sport, where a 300lb defensive linebacker and a potentially season-ending hit are rarely more than a few steps away.

The Jets knew they were taking a chance when they recruited Favre. He could have been a bust, one more of the countless great players from every sport who stick around too long. On the other hand, his new team did not have much further to fall. In 2007 the New York Giants – with whom his new franchise shares the Meadowlands stadium across the Hudson river in northern New Jersey – carried off Super Bowl XLII, while the Jets finished with a dismal 4 and 12 record in the regular season.

The 2008 season got off to an iffy start, too. But as Favre bedded down with new colleagues, and a revamped offensive line gelled, he and the team started to deliver. In a 56-35 win over the Arizona Cardinals he threw six touchdowns, one less than the NFL record. Last month, on successive weekends on the road, the Jets beat an admittedly Brady-less New England before taking the previously unbeaten Tennessee Titans apart, to build a five-game winning streak and lead the AFC East division. But just as the hype was building about a "Subway Super Bowl" with the NFC Giants, the Jets were crushed last Sunday 34-17 by the unfancied Denver Broncos, in their sloppiest performance of the season.

The forlorn and rain-swept evening at the Meadowlands belonged not to Favre but to Jay Cutler, his 25-year-old opposite number on the Broncos who is hailed by many as "the next Brett Favre". Afterwards Eric Mangini, the normally placid Jets head coach, was visibly furious. A no less disappointed Favre however put the disaster in better context. Like Mangini, he denied the team had started to believe it was as good as the tabloid headlines were screaming. But, he added: "Maybe this was a wake-up call. Tonight might have seemed the worst game ever. But things are never quite as good as they seem, and never quite as bad." Such is the wisdom that only the years can bring. And, he added, in a wry aside about his triumphs in the frozen north, "I'd rather play in snow."

Indisputably, the Jets' road to Super Bowl XLIII is a good deal bumpier than it was a week ago. Nonetheless, they enter tomorrow's game in San Francisco with the 49ers still leading their division by a game, with just four left in the regular season. Barring total collapse, the team will make the playoffs. At which point anything is possible – even a 1 February match up in Tampa with the Giants, defending champions and by common consent the best team in the NFL this year as well.

If so, it would cap the most astonishing year even in Brett Favre's astonishing career. Rejuvenated after what by his elevated standards had been a poor spell, he had led the Packers to a 13-3 regular season in 2007, and fell just an overtime field-goal loss to the Giants short of the Super Bowl. But at a tearful press conference on 9 March, he announced his retirement. "I know I can play," he said, his voice cracking, "but I don't think I want to."

What followed was a real life American summer sports soap. The Packers in truth were less than heartbroken at the departure of their iconic quarterback, who had made freezing play-off games in Green Bay (where the average January high is minus 5 degrees Celsius) a fixture of the pro football calendar. Every team must move on, and the Packers quickly committed to the young Aaron Rodgers as their new quarterback. But within three months Favre had changed his mind.

He was, he said, "guilty of retiring early," and accused the Packers of pushing him out of the door. By 4 August, he was formally reinstated as an active player, only for Green Bay to make clear he could be no more than a back-up to Rodgers. That was too much for Favre, whose pride is no less than his ability. A parting of the ways was inevitable, and three days later the stunning news broke. The gunslinger was going to the Jets. He was the man who would be the new Joe Namath.

Outwardly the pair could not be more different. Namath the Manhattan slicker did for pro football what Arnold Palmer had done for golf a decade earlier. He was his sport's first true media superstar. He put his money into an Upper East side bar called Bachelors III, and famously declared he liked his Scotch red label and his women blonde. Along the way, and before his knees gave out for good, "Broadway Joe" led the Jets to their lone Super Bowl, an upset win against the overwhelmingly favoured Baltimore Colts of the NFC in 1969.

Favre too has hard partying on his resumé. During his brief spell as a Falcon, he boasted of being "the man who drank up Atlanta". In Green Bay he overcame a painkiller addiction, before giving up alcohol as well. But today, he's the down-home family boy (albeit one with a 2008 salary of $12m, or £8.2m), who loafs around the locker room in old jeans and sweatshirt, and longs for nothing more than to get back to his Mississippi farm. But the weight of expectation on him is no less for that.

On 9 August, the Promised One arrived in the Big Apple. Within 48 hours the Jets had jettisoned their popular starting quarterback Chad Pennington and sold 6,500 green jerseys with the trademark 4 on the back. Mayor Michael Bloomberg hosted a reception in Favre's honour at City Hall, promising him the keys to New York if the Jets won the Super Bowl.

Favre was plainly excited by the challenge, even though his deal with the Jets, as realistically it must be, is on a year-by-year basis; even his extraordinary arm will lose its potency. "The future is now," he said that August afternoon, "I don't have 17 more years to play. I just want to give the Jets and the people of this city the best year possible." And so far, that mini-disaster against the Broncos excepted, he has.

Sky Sports is showing over 125 live NFL matches this season, including high definition coverage of every playoff game and the Super Bowl.

Favre in numbers

3 The number of times Favre has been voted the Associated Press' Most Valuable Player in the NFL – the only three-time MVP in the award's 51-year history.

457 The number of touchdown passes (and counting) Favre has thrown in his 17-year career, putting him top of the NFL all-time charts.

63,266 The number of passing yards (and counting) Favre has thrown in his 17-year career, which is an NFL record, 1,905 ahead of Dan Marino in second.