Look closely at the life and times of the hard-living Southern quarterback, and you can get all your labels out: redneck, hillbilly, hell-raiser. Brett Favre wore them all like officer's stripes, and tried his damnedest to live up to them. He did his part to feed the beast. After all, why fight fate? The lineage -- extending to Favre via Bobby Layne, Ken Stabler and Terry Bradshaw -- is almost too storied to oppose. Besides, there are worse ways to carve out a legend.

Favre considered it his duty to live on the edge. He would run to it, dare it, find it and jump without looking. The edge provided something to separate him from the ordinary souls who couldn't do what he could: throw the ball 40 yards downfield on a dead run after a 10-second scramble. Stick a finger in the face of an angry defensive lineman. Drink all afternoon with his friends, then bring the party back home. The middle of the road was for losers. The edge was where Super Bowls were won and MVPs were awarded.

The old Brett Favre lived his whole life outside the pocket, off the wrong foot, on the move, off-balance. He drove authority figures -- notably Mike Holmgren -- crazy with his unpredictability. "Don't draw it up in the dirt," was Holmgren's ongoing plea. But he could drink hard with his buddies several nights during the week, then throw for 300 yards and five TDs on Sunday afternoon. In some parts, that's considered the truest measure of a man.

The story of the new Brett Favre is really the story of the old Favre navigating his way to a new edge. It's the story of a man who, at age 30, manages to change everything, without really changing anything at all. But mostly, it's the story of a man who set out to answer one question: Can a clean-living family man still find it within himself to go out and raise holy hell in front of 60,000 people every Sunday?

***

For a long time, Favre saw himself as a reflection of what everybody else saw in him. "I thought it was cool to be the rambunctious Southerner," he says. "I was more interested in an image than in just being me." But this past off-season, when he saw that same reflection in the eyes of his pregnant wife and 10-year-old daughter, it wasn't coated with that same harmless shell. It had picked up something else, something darker. When his wife, Deanna, decided he had to choose his family or his image ... well, Brett Favre found out he no longer liked the face of that redneck, hell-raiser legend, not one bit. He looked at himself through the prism of the legend and thought, This isn't who I am. He looked at his children and thought, This isn't who they'd want their father to be. "I had to think about some things," he says. "Twenty or 30 years from now, when nobody's clapping anymore, what is there going to be? Who's going to be there?

"I thought, You know what? Your daughter's going to be at school someday and somebody's going to say, 'Your daddy's a hillbilly.' Well, that's bull. But I have to realize I haven't done anything to make people think otherwise. I'm able to control that now, but if I let it get out of control, it will. Now I have a chance to let people know who I am. I'm still like Swiss cheese -- there's holes everywhere -- but I'm trying. I promise, I'm trying."

***

It started with a baby, or the idea of a baby. Midway through last season, Deanna and Brett began the process leading to in-vitro fertilization. They had to drive to Milwaukee from Green Bay once a week for Deanna to receive painful injections in her stomach.

The doctor moved the shots around every week to distribute the bruises. And as the couple traveled back and forth, there was something in the air between them. "All this going on, and it was still all about me," Favre says. "It was, 'What does Brett want? What is Brett feeling?' Even then." He shakes his head. "I could have easily lost my family over the past five years just by being selfish."

He went out. He played golf. He drank. It continued into the offseason, when the Favres returned home to Hattiesburg, Miss. One day, Deanna confronted her husband. "We don't need this," she told him. "You don't need this." Give up the booze for the baby, she said. Give it up for 10-year-old Brittany. Give it up for all of us.

"I didn't want to stop," Favre says. "It was all I knew. It was a big part of who I was -- at least that's what I believed." Deep down, he really believed his wild side was more than ornamental; it was essential, the conduit through which everything flowed -- the touchdown passes and the adulation and the crazy risks that he alone could turn into precious rewards. You never know if there's a delicate chemical balance at work; remove one atom, change the composition forever. For him, the rules had always been simple: You live hard, you play hard and everything that bobs in your wake is nothing more than the necessary residue of your success.

But he was tugged by the odd feeling that he was living his life as a composite character, a legend constructed from clichés. And even when the legend didn't square with reality, he played along. "If the fish was this big" -- he holds his huge hands about 10 inches apart -- "well, I let them believe that fish was really this big."

His hands are way out now, measuring his whole wingspan. "I mean, what could it hurt, right? I let it go. I let the legend grow."

Football celebrates -- even exalts -- its hell-raisers, and hell-raising seemed woven directly into Favre's double helix, as surely and indelibly as a fingerprint. Football demands behavior that doesn't translate outside its insular orbit. Favre had been told his whole life that he made it by being tougher, meaner and more stubborn than anyone else. The football left his hand and traveled downfield with a poetic certainty, as if it could sense his will being imposed upon it. He never gave up. He played hurt. There would be no QB-in-a-skirt talk about him. Boy's got moxie, they said when Favre left Southern Miss for the NFL. You can't measure heart, they said when he won three MVPs and a Super Bowl for the Packers.

How much courage would it take to give that up? Favre was one of the guys -- he, tight end Mark Chmura and center Frank Winters even had a nickname: "The Three Amigos." How could he be one of the guys with a mineral water in his hand?

***

It took some time -- Deanna had gone so far as to consult a divorce attorney -- but Favre figured out a way it could work. And here's where Old Brett stepped in to create New Brett in the same image. Sobriety could work if he could bend it to fit his own terms, if it could be treated like football, like a challenge instead of a concession. Brett Favre could handle aggressive, rambunctious sobriety. Guerrilla sobriety -- that has a nice ring to it.

"I challenge myself in a lot of ways," he says. "I told myself, 'All right, I'll set my mind up to be in the best possible shape. I'll use it that way. Then when training camp comes, I'm going to surprise everyone.' It started as a challenge and then it snowballed."

He told his friends he quit drinking, and they laughed. Yeah, right, they said. He went to a minicamp and told his teammates, and got the same response. "I think everyone wondered at first," says Winters. "Then we realized he's just doing the same things, only without the drinking. We respect that." The results are plainly obvious. Favre is more than 20 pounds lighter. His face is chiseled and angular; his legs could pass for a cyclist's. He hasn't had a drink in more than six months. "I don't plan on drinking again," he says. "I can't think of one good thing alcohol ever did for me. Not one thing."

Asked if he considers himself an alcoholic, Favre thinks for several seconds, rubbing his bruised throwing hand with his left before saying, "I know one thing, I abused alcohol. I think if I was a legitimate alcoholic, I would have felt different these past six months. I think I would have felt like I needed it to get by. I haven't felt like that. I even listen to the guys talking about going out and I think, 'Am I supposed to be missing this?' Because I don't. Not once."

On the field, he's the same guy -- except that offensive coordinator Sherm Lewis gives him more freedom than Holmgren ever did. "He's been around long enough to be able to call more of his own shots," Lewis says. He may be right: Favre is averaging nearly 330 passing yards per game. "He rededicated himself, and I think he wanted to prove he could do it without the Holmgren thing," Winters says. With John Elway retired, Favre seems intent on taking over as the NFL's best last-drive quarterback. Three times in this season's first five weeks, Favre took the Packers down the field and into the end zone to pull out a victory in the final minute.

Favre calls most of his own plays during those late-game drives. Against Minnesota, on fourth-and-1 from the Vikings 23 with under a minute remaining, he stood at the line and signaled a route to wide receiver Bill Schroeder, then took the snap and proceeded to throw a game-winning TD pass to Corey Bradford. Favre didn't even call out a set-hut. Vikings defensive tackle John Randle yelled, "Set!" to confuse the Packers, and all of a sudden the ball was in Favre's hands. "Sherm was up in the booth," Favre says. "He was looking down, trying to call a play. By the time he looked up it was a touchdown."

Some days, Favre comes to work before 7 a.m., singing. He looks at the puffy eyes and yawning faces of his teammates and remembers when that was him. He often comes back to the team's complex to watch film late at night; Friday night's film session usually includes Brittany, who swims in the team's wading pool and then joins her dad upstairs for the movies. "He'll call me up at 8:30 and say, 'Come on, let's go watch film,'" says backup QB Matt Hasselbeck. "I say, 'Man, weren't we just there all day?' He's like a different person. He's five times more dedicated than he was last year."

Favre also says he's more alert on the field. He's definitely more emotional. He broke down crying in the interview room after coming back to beat the Raiders, and was on the brink of tears after his fallaway 21-yard TD pass to Antonio Freeman with 1:05 left finished off the Bucs. "A lot of people want to speculate on why I've been so emotional, but it's really pretty simple," he says. "I'm enjoying this game more than ever, and I'm committed to not leaving anything out on that field." Says Chmura: "Brett lives off adrenaline and pressure. Now that he's stopped going out, he gets it all out here, on the field."

He's having so much fun, his teammates have started calling him "Recess." He no longer hides the fact that he studies defenses and prepares for games. He used to see that as a sign of weakness, that his talent alone couldn't pull him through. Mike McCarthy, the Packers' new quarterbacks coach, told Favre, "When I took this job, a lot of people told me I was going to coach a dumb redneck who was lucky enough to have this great arm that allowed him to throw it through people. But that couldn't be further from the truth."

Says Favre, "I think I'm pretty smart, and I think I'm really smart when it comes to football. Some people might not agree, but there comes a time when you want to show that side. If people say, 'Damn, how did you read that coverage?', I say, 'Well, I guess I'm not the dumb redneck you think I am.' But if they want to keep thinking that way, that's fine. I'll just keep walking away with the victories."

He still manages to find his way to the edge. There was a moment against Tampa Bay when it seemed he had gone way too far. With the Packers at the Bucs' 4-yard line, leading by a field goal with less than three minutes to go, Favre took off on a wild scramble that ended with a 22-yard fling and an intentional grounding penalty. The play was shocking in its recklessness, and very nearly cost the Packers the game. Afterward, he said, "For the people who ask me if I'll still take chances, there's your answer. I'll still take 'em."

In a month, no one will remember that play -- no one except Favre, that is. He'll remember it, and you had better believe he'll remember it fondly. He views it as proof that he hasn't lost a thing.

This article appears in the November 1, 1999 issue of ESPN The Magazine.