Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Dean Juipe: Humm marvels at Favre as others marvel at him

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.

David Humm has been in football all his life and seen most everything. But what happened Monday night in Green Bay's 41-7 victory against Oakland was, to him, almost incomprehensible.

And we're not talking about the Raiders, the team he covers as a pre- and postgame radio broadcaster, falling to 4-11 just a year after reaching the Super Bowl.

No, the most noteworthy element of the nationally televised game was the unbelievable performance of Packers quarterback Brett Favre.

"I've dreamed of playing great games, but I never dreamed of anything of that magnitude," Humm said of Favre's brilliant performance, which included four touchdown passes in the first half and 399 total passing yards less than 24 hours after his father, Irvin, suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 58. "To have a game like that, on Monday Night Football, a day after his father died leaves me in absolute awe.

"The emotions he had to be going through ... the Raiders flying his family to the game ... you talk about distractions. But those throws of his were absolutely perfect, time after time, with two and three guys covering the receivers.

"Seeing someone do that under those conditions, well, I guess that's why we all love sports so much."

Humm does love sports and is appreciative of still being a part of the game he especially cherishes. It hasn't always been easy, afflicted as he has been with multiple sclerosis for almost a decade, but he carries on with an easy smile, a warm handshake and the benefit of having always been a cerebral performer.

Humm, 51, remains the single greatest football player ever produced in Las Vegas. The inaugural inductee in the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame, the Bishop Gorman product was the starting quarterback at Nebraska for three seasons before playing 10 years in the National Football League.

He led the Cornhuskers to victories in the 1972 Orange Bowl, 1973 Cotton Bowl and 1974 Sugar Bowl, gaining All-America status along the way. In the pros he bracketed stays with the Raiders with stops in Buffalo and Baltimore, his stock always greater than his 6-foot-2, 185-pound size for the simple reason that he could outthink his adversaries.

That clever, analytical mind is still at work even if his aching body confines him to a wheelchair and he can no longer travel to see his beloved Raiders play.

"I've lived an incredible life," he said Tuesday. "Sometimes I'm actually embarrassed by my good fortune."

He said his bond with Raiders owner Al Davis is one of those embarrassingly pleasant realities.

"The Raiders, because of Mr. Davis, are the most loyal organization I have ever seen," Humm said. "He takes care of everybody who is part of the Raiders family, sometimes going to extremes."

But loyalty or not, Humm expects Davis to rework the Raiders' roster before next season.

"It's probably going to be the biggest turnover in the history of the team," he predicted. "The Raiders seemed to slip in a hurry, but in this day of free agency if you can manage the salary cap you can come back real fast, too."

Humm can rattle off the lengthy list of injuries that befell Oakland this season -- only left tackle Barry Simms has started every game on offense -- and checks off the names as he chronicles the team's 12 players on injured reserve.

Those injuries, plus the aging process and a general malaise that sometimes overtakes a team coming off a Super Bowl appearance, have made the Raiders this season's most disappointing team. They were, after all, the betting favorite in Las Vegas to win this season's Super Bowl back in August when the futures lines were posted.

Humm said he could see a decline coming not so much during Oakland 1-3 preseason but on opening day when it was beaten at Tennessee.

"We had 17 or 18 penalties in that game, which was a five-point loss, and after that the mistakes just kept adding up," he said. "Then the injuries set in and we were depending on reserves so much that the team couldn't find its identity or develop any chemistry."

Asked about head coach Bill Callahan's midseason comment that he had the "dumbest team in America" playing for him, Humm had a quick-witted response.

"What took him so long?" he said. "He should have said it six weeks earlier.

"The Raiders have always been a team that's penalized a lot, but the penalties we saw this season were just plain dumb and the players were doing them over and over. Everything snowballed."

Callahan later apologized for his remark but he was likely speaking the truth. Nonetheless, fans in the Bay Area have been calling for the coach's ouster after only two seasons, the first of which led to a Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay.

"Callers on our show want Callahan to go," said Humm, who works for KNBR in Oakland and is part of a crew that handles a two-hour pregame show and a postgame show that includes listeners' calls. "There's some frustration there."

But there's no frustration, outwardly at least, on the part of the vivacious Humm.

"This was my ninth year doing radio work for the team and it's still a lot of fun," he said. "The game days can be long, but I'm still in the game and that feels good to me."

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