The Flight To Pick Up Favre: Jared Allen Abandoned The Mission’s Objective

It feels like forever ago that I was scouring the internet for Brett Favre rumors involving his return, I was working for Vikings Gab at the time and disliked Favre plenty, but I do remember clearly that “this isn’t ordinary” feeling when news broke that Zygi Wilf enlisted Jared Allen, Ryan Longwell, Steve Hutchinson, and his private jet to convince Favre to give it one more shot.

We now know that Favre did indeed return for a 2010 season that should easily be in the running for one of the most embarrassing of all time. Favre’s consecutive games streak ended, a roof caved in, Randy Moss returned and then was booted, a caterer and a Jets sideline reporter publicly exposed two Vikings greats as very questionable humans, and… well, they weren’t a very good football team and their coach was fired.

Recently, Jared Allen was a guest on A.J. Hawk’s podcast (oh, by the way, A.J. Hawk has a podcast) and he opened up a bit about the events that unfolded resulting in Favre’s return to Minnesota. His recollections have gathered headlines mostly because his statements weren’t exactly what you would expect them to be.

“I was the one guy who told him, ‘Stay retired,'” Allen told Hawk in Episode 69 (of course) of the pod.

“Hutch and Longwell put the pressure on him,” Allen continues on in the interview you can listen to above. “I was like, ‘Listen, dude. It looks like you got it pretty good down here.’ His place is amazing. I’m like, ‘I’m going to be real honest with ya. If I’m you, I stay retired.’ But I’m like, ‘Don’t come back thinking you gotta prove something. If you want to come back and have fun with us and try to win some football games, do it. If not, I might retire and move down here.'”

Previously, the players involved in that flight have said they were not necessarily sent to Favre’s home to do any convincing and that they were instead sent to just get an official answer out of him. Earlier this year, guard Steve Hutchinson alluded to the fact that Favre initially did not want to return to football.

It’s true, he did not want to come back at first,” remembered Hutchinson. “And when he did, typical Brett fashion. ‘Ah, all right. Let’s go.’ Like you just talked a kid into, like, throwing rocks off a bridge or something.”

Hutchinson also said in that same 1500 ESPN interview that the plan was initially for him and coach Brad Childress to go talk to Favre. He told Childress that it was a better idea to send Allen and Longwell.

“It was pretty funny, we were laughing the whole time,” Hutchinson said of the covert nature of the flight and the media circus that ensued. “We got him back. But we basically kidnapped him.”

While the end result was dismal, the story is surely going to go down as one of the most notable in franchise history, as well as in local sports media history. It is also sort of surreal to have been so wrapped up myself in chasing any little bit of information that I could at that time, but now the truth and the details about that period are coming out in such a casual manner.

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