Pretty much all of us hang around too long, if we can get away with it. Getting career exits just right is a very tricky process, and so few of us manage it.

Brett Favre certainly didn’t get it right.

He should have remained retired after his tearful announcement in Green Bay a year ago. But he came back.

He isn’t the first athlete, by a mile, to prolong a career that ought to have been wrapped, and he won’t be the last.

Some who come to mind:

Willie Mays, a shadow of the player he had been, struggling to cover ground with the New York Mets. Babe Ruth. Rickey Henderson insisting he could still play, in his middle 40s. Muhammad Ali and his half-dozen comebacks, each more pathetic than the last. Evander Holyfield. (Boxers seem particularly prone to staying too long.) Well, we could go on at great length here. Roger Clemens. And those are just sports figures.

Those who went out at something resembling “the top” make for a very short list. Ted Williams. Rocky Marciano. Hmm. Well, there are two. Mia Hamm? I’m struggling here. Sandy Koufax …

We can’t say athletes are most likely to attempt to linger. The rest of us do it, too. It’s human nature. It’s self-delusion. We’re just as good as we were. We’re just as important, as pertinent, as sharp. And we so rarely are.

Getting off the stage. Timing it right requires more self-awareness and humility than nearly any of us has.

Favre should have known he was at the end after his horrible finish to the overtime NFC title game against New York, last year. When he could barely function and made a horrible decision and even worse pass that was intercepted and put the Giants in the Super Bowl.

He came back with the Jets, started well and faded in the stretch when the weather got cold. Which tends to happen to guys who are pushing 40 and still attempting to play in the NFL.

We should concede this: He made the Jets interesting, even relevant for about 12 weeks, and how often has that happened to that franchise lately? But by the end he was nicked up, and chucking the ball into coverage (his forte, the past half-dozen years).

He goes out leading the NFL in interceptions this season (22) and all-time (310). And as the focal point of a team that collapsed down the stretch to finish 9-7.

He should have stayed out a year ago, and one can make a case that he should have stopped a few years before that.

This time, at least, he goes out quietly and, we hope, for good — for the sake of his health and his legacy. He was the best, there for a bit in the middle 1990s, and he was always one of the most exciting and easiest to appreciate. And perhaps the years of greatness will leave a bigger impression on our minds than the anticlimactic end.