Except it's not just about the arms, said the quarterback who beat Favre and the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXII.
"I’m sure Brett’s in good shape, I’m sure he could probably go out and play a couple series and throw the ball as well as he ever has," John Elway told FOX Sports 1 in a sit-down interview this week. "But I’m very doubtful that he could make it through a 16-game schedule."
Favre seems to agree. He turned down inquiries from the St. Louis Rams into possibly returning to the league as a replacement for the injured Sam Bradford and told a Washington, D.C. radio station this morning, "there's no way in hell I'm going to do that."
Nevertheless, Cook stated last month Favre could play better than many of the 32 quarterbacks currently starting for NFL teams. Favre threw for 4,202 yards and 33 touchdowns while leading the Minnesota Vikings to the NFC Championship in 2009. But one year later - in his final NFL season - he threw 19 interceptions to only 11 touchdowns and his body finally broke down. After 297 straight games played, a shoulder injury knocked him out of action.
It's the pounding that would stop Favre from even thinking of a return. Heck, even the 53-year-old Elway believes he could come back if not for the way his body would feel.
I can sling it, I just can’t get hit," said Elway, now the Denver Broncos' executive vice president of football operations. "That’s the hard thing about playing in this league when you play for a long, long time is the body goes before the mind. And I think that the older you get when you’re playing, you feel like you get better because the fact that the experience helps you so much and the knowledge of the game helps you so much.
"What we don’t realize is that the body doesn’t go along with the mind. The body goes in the other direction."
