FanHouse DeannaFavre

The holiday season doesn't bring good tidings for everybody. Just ask those head coaches who are spending the New Year cleaning out their offices.

Seeing as how the whole Bill Cowher-to-the-Jets rumor train has seen more ups and downs than the first six years of my college transcript, it's kind of nice to know that not only was Scoop dead wrong, but that Cowher will not be teasing us with the possibility of joining the Jets organization any longer.

At least according to the New York Post, who says that Cowher is out, and there's a good possibility that the sticking point was Brett Favre at quarterback.

After reaching out to Coach Cowher's representatives, we were informed tonight that he is not a candidate for the position," Jet spokesman Bruce Speight said in an e-mail.

While the Jets hoped to woo Cowher with a boatload of money, the marriage appeared to be unlikely from the outset. Sources close to Cowher said he did not want to have Favre as his quarterback, and that he also wanted to bring in people he was familiar with to handle personnel.

The idea that Cowher would leave his cushy studio job for long hours as a highly scrutinized coach seemed far-fetched enough, especially after Mort's report, but I suppose at this point, we'll never really know if Favre actually forced Cowher away from the Jets job.

But if it is true, my God, people in charge of football teams: do the smart thing and just don't let this guy near your company. Look at what he did to Green Bay, scope out the Jets in 2008 and then glance at Chad Pennington's success in Miami. If Aaron Rodgers had led the Packers to more than six wins, even Deanna would be begging him to call it off.

If there's one thing we never need to see, it's Rachael Nichols interviewing Deanna Favre about football. But it's happening anyway, and it's going down (or went down -- I don't watch) on E:60. Hard. Hitting. Pop-rox. Journalism.

And as PFT points out, the most "intriguing" (or "ridiculous," if you're like me) part of the interview is that Deanna claims she gives Brett Favre -- the gunslinger -- pointers on how to play quarterback. Peter King just exploded in a burst of soy milk brought on by a fit of jealous rage.

She claimed partial credit (and we don't think she was joking) for the career-high six touchdown passes he threw against Arizona earlier this year.

"Sometimes I watch film with him," Deanna Favre said, "[and] he's like, 'You know, I really – I just didn't make good decisions in this game and I missed a lot of plays,' and I'm like, 'You know what, sit in the pocket [and] watch the play happen.' He is so used to getting rid of the ball quick.

"It really helped. The next week, he threw six touchdowns."

I don't want to cynically mock the relationship that Deanna and Brett have; clearly it's a marriage that works pretty well. However, let's be a little realistic, shall we?

"Sit in the pocket and watch the play" is about as an accurate and informative nugget of wisdom for an NFL quarterback as "you would get more women if you wore pants" is to a blogger. Or, to be more relevant, "Try to run through the holes and not get tackled" is to a running back.

The Jets offense is not very good. Sure, they hung 56 points on the Cardinals earlier this year, but in back-to-back weeks, they have lost to the Raiders and should've lost to the Chiefs.

Brett Favre -- the sensitive, emotional, loving father and husband, not the vindictive, hateful monster created by the media (hi, Sal Paolantonio!) -- has been especially atrocious, heaving a league-leading 11 interceptions (a league, by the way, that includes J.T. O'SmellingSalts), and playing about like you might expect a 39-year-old would after sorta coming out of retirement on three different occasions.

Things were so bad yesterday that Jets fans booed Favre, which, if we're being honest, was about a month overdue. Even the famous supporters got in on the act.

Brett Favre is done playing for the Green Bay Packers, but he will make one last appearance at Lambeau Field, during the Packers' regular-season opener, to have his number retired.

And since that opener is on Monday Night Football, you can bet that ESPN is going to be a wall-to-wall Favre fest that day. Bob Wolfley of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports:

ESPN plans to send the entire crew of "Monday Night Countdown" to Lambeau for the game. ...

So in addition to the crew there covering the Packers-Vikings game, with Mike Tirico, Ron Jaworski and TonyKornheiser in the booth, the "Countdown" collection of Chris Berman, Stuart Scott, Tom Jackson, Keyshawn Johnson, Steve Young, Emmitt Smith and Chris Mortensen is scheduled to be on site as well.

Favre's wife, Deanna, was described by ESPN's ombudsman as the first Monday Night Football booth guest whom the viewers approved of. I have a feeling Brett will be the second.

ESPN's ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, is back with her latest column, and it's probably her most ambitious effort yet because it seeks to tackle Monday Night Football, the Worldwide Leader's most expensive, most watched, most important and, according to Schreiber, most criticized property.

The harshest criticism Monday Night Football receives is for its booth guests, but according to Schreiber, there was one exception, Brett Favre's wife:

The only booth guest who drew positive mail last season was Deanna Favre. She kept her eyes glued on the field, on her husband, Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, even, she said, after the ball left his hands, because there was still a risk of injury. For a few minutes, we watched a spot on the field through her eyes, riveted to the game by a guest.

Few would criticize Deanna Favre's appearance in the MNF booth because she was there to discuss her own fight against breast cancer and the NFL's efforts to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research. But at the same time, I wouldn't exactly say I was "riveted to the game by" Deanna's presence in the booth. Ultimately, I'm riveted to a good football game because it's a good football game, and what I want from the booth is information that enhances the game. It sounds like most of the e-mail Schreiber receives is from fans who say the same thing.

You likely didn't notice it since the publicity has been pretty quiet lately, but Brett Favre's wife, Deanna, has written a book. Shocking, right? Well, if you were so bold as to purchase this classic, you might find out that Deanna almost divorced Favre because of his alcohol abuse, as she said on ABC's Good Morning America today. Asked why she put something so personal in the book, Deanna replied:

"I struggled with that, with adding that in the book, and he -- it was Brett -- who said 'Put it in there,'" Favre told [Robin] Roberts.

"Because we also have friends who are going through addiction, who always are asking, you know, advice, and he said 'I think you should leave it in there.' I think, you know, people need to realize that sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. And you can pick yourself up, no matter where you are, um, no matter how low you are in your life, you know, you can always turn things around. So I left it in there."

Brett also dealt with an addiction to painkillers and spent some time in rehab in 1996. Now, if Brett had only gone the Tony Gonzalez route, he wouldn't have needed to worry about this issue to begin with.