For most of his career, Favre was very good, but not spectacular. What's spectacular is just how many of those "very good" seasons Favre had. Of course, Favre set all of the all-time passing records over the past two seasons, but what is impressive is that he didn't set those records by sticking around as a mediocre quarterback long after his time had passed. Based on our numbers, Favre had more value in his final season than every quarterback in the league except for Tom Brady and Manning.

At Football Outsiders, we use our complex DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) metric to break down every single play of the season and figure out how good each player is compared to the average player at his position. Our play-by-play database goes back to 1995, so it includes most of Favre's career. Only once, in 1999, does Favre come out as a below-average quarterback -- and just barely.

In 2005, Favre threw a league-leading 29 interceptions, and most observers believed he had hit the end of the line. Yet even that year, Favre was an above-average quarterback when you consider his team's schedule. Green Bay played six games that season against the four defenses with the most interceptions -- Cincinnati, Chicago, Minnesota and Carolina -- and another two games against Detroit, which ranked seventh.