The All-User Team: QB, TE and OL

Green Bay's Favre is the Aerosmith of the football world. Sure, he may be as popular as ever. But he's just not as good as he was back in the carefree, substance-filled days of his youth. For Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Steven Tyler, the drug of choice was heroin. Favre was never as hardcore as the "Toxic Twins," but he did voluntarily enter the NFL's substance-abuse program in May 1996.

 

After going public with an addiction to the painkiller Vicodin, Favre spent 46 days in the Menninger Clinic, a rehabilitation center in Topeka, Kansas. He later acknowledged problems with alcohol as well, admitting on ESPN's "SportsCentury" that he quit drinking when his wife Deanna gave him an ultimatum in 1999. Call it a triumph of cold turkey over Wild Turkey.

 

Favre won an unprecedented three consecutive league MVP awards from 1995 to 1997, the first two of which were at the height of his substance-abuse days – kind of like Aerosmith recording "Toys in the Attic" amid a noxious haze of smoke, pills, brown sugar and alcohol. Favre has started 205 consecutive games – an NFL record for quarterbacks – and in 2005, he will be leading the Packers for the 14th season of his 15-year career. A surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer, he is the obvious pick to command our All-User offense.

 

 

The choices for Favre's backup are limited, since the quarterback position has not been well-represented lately among the NFL's notorious users. (Where have you gone, Todd "Marijuanavich"?) As mentioned here previously, Miller was probably the best of a bad lot of recent Chicago QBs. Two years before he took the reins and led the Bears to the playoffs, however, he was suspended for the final four games of 1999. He claimed that he hadn't read the label on a dietary supplement that he used before working out. It was found to contain the banned substance nandrolone.

 

The only heavy lifting that Miller has done lately was picking up a Super Bowl ring as the third-string QB for last season's champs, the Patriots. He hasn't played in an actual football game in two years. After signing with the Giants in March, he hurt his hip and was waived under an injury settlement. His 11-year career is now in limbo...another game he is unlikely to be playing any time soon.

 

 

Chamberlain was a Pro Bowl tight end for Minnesota in 2001, posting career highs in receptions, yards and touchdowns. Two years later, he tested positive for the banned substance ephedra and was suspended for the first four games of the 2003 season. He evidently should have been banning other substances from his body, since he was as overweight as the average CHFF "troll" when he reported a month later. The Vikings promptly cut him, and Chamberlain has managed just four catches since. Having subsequently been released by the Redskins and the team with which he spent his first six seasons, the Broncos, the only thing that appears slim is his chance to resume playing.

 

 

Offensive linemen generally don't receive enough attention, and the hogs on our Dope Squad likewise get limited coverage. Steussie and Mitchell were starters for the Panthers team that reached Super Bowl XXXVIII. A March 2005 report on "60 Minutes" revealed that a South Carolina pharmacy had repeatedly filled steroids prescriptions for both of them. Minus a positive result in the NFL's random testing, however, neither will be disciplined by the league. The juicy Steussie is a two-time Pro Bowl tackle entering his 12th NFL season, second with Tampa Bay. Mitchell, who as a center is used to having other men touch his backside (syringe optional), will be returning for his ninth year and fifth with Carolina.

 

Our two guards, Garcia and Graham, have toiled in the trenches for a number of seasons. Garcia tested positive for ephedra and blamed it on his wife's herbal allergy remedy. He was suspended for Arizona's first four games in 2003. Graham blamed his positive test on a "refresher drink" given to him by a Texans teammate. His suspension was enforced during the final two games of 2002 and the first two of '03. Although neither man took any responsibility, they do get credit for not implicating an unspecified "cousin." Both Garcia and Graham were cut in training camp a year ago, likely signaling the end to their careers.

 

Terry, the last offensive lineman on the All-User Team, is also the fourth of the five to have played for the Panthers. Through his first four years in the league, he had started 62 games at tackle for Carolina and Seattle. In 2003, he became a double threat – both to himself and his family. He was suspended for four games at the start of the season for violating the substance-abuse policy and was also fined an additional five game checks for knocking his wife around. Terry was released by the Seahawks after last season, his sixth in the league, and for some reason, this upstanding citizen has yet to be scooped up by another team.