Brett Favre: Free Agent

Really. To me, the amount of invective being thrown at Favre over this is way over the top. I mean, we can all agree that he's played this very badly over the past few years by being a dick, but the fact is, he's like a lot of other great pros in every major sport who have a hard time with the end of their careers. They have trouble letting it go, and, to be honest, the fact that Favre still has enough left at almost-40 to at least keep some interest alive speaks loudly about his ability as a QB.

Now, assuming he's finally once-and-for-all done with football, five years from now he'll be in Canton getting his bust added to the Hall of Fame, he'll be doing it as a Packer and all of this business at the end of his career will barely be a footnote.

 

I hope he's serious this time .. and I hope he doesn't decide to dick around some other team later this season.

Now maybe he can ride his tractor and think about how he's going to mend his fences with the Packers and their fans so he can have his number retired and wait for the call from Canton.

 

As a Packer fan, I wish that were true, but it's not. The end of his career does not diminish all of the good he did in a Packer uniform, but it left a very bad taste and it's a major part of his legacy whether he or his band of blindly loyal fans in Wisconsin and elsewhere like it or not.

The whole thing was unnecessary, utterly self-serving (Boo hoo! Mike Sherman isn't here to enable me anymore!), and his vendetta against a team (to the point of dialing up the Lions to feed them playbook info) that not only benefited from his presence, but was also patient to a fault with his foibles, would be unforgivable for pretty much any other player I can think of who wore the Packer uniform.

Think about it. The entire "point" of going to the Vikings was as a big eff you to the Packers.

Fuck that, Brett. While many Packer fans loved you as a player, some to the point of loving you more than the Packers themselves, many, many other Packer fans, including this one, were Packers fans first, Favre fans second.

Packer fans like me loved how you repaid our loyalty during the David Whitehurst and Lynn Dickey days with winning teams, a gunslinger style, and championship contention. But I was there before you were and I'll be there when you're gone. When he began to act bigger than franchise, like he was the franchise, well, go fuck yourself.

The pissing away of his Fort Knox-sized wealth of goodwill takes a special kind of selfish stupidity. For some, especially those who aren't Packers fans, he pissed it away entirely. For others, time will put the money back in the bank, and that alone says a lot considering what his rep was just two short years ago.

Not only was his act selfish, it was stupid. The drama queen act made a lot more people take a critical, instead of worshipful, eye to his career. You see as much footage of his uber-dopey 2003 OT lob pass in Philly or the 2007 OT interception against the Giants at Lambeau than you do his pull-out-of-his ass swashbuckling plays that made him so beloved to begin with.

You rarely hear Favre mentioned as "the" greatest QB anymore, where it was heard a lot as recently as 2007.

The only reason I haven't totally thrown Favre under my mind's bus is because he made the Packers a powerhouse franchise again. His leadership of that team was inspiring until about 2002-03 or so, when he began to buy too much into his own legend.

No amount of worshipful NFL Films footage or fond memories is going to wipe out his self-aggrandizing end. I wish it could, but it won't.

 

As one who covered much of Favre's final dozen years in Green Bay.. you pretty much hit it right on.

What many GB fans don't realize is that, in nearly every other market, the media would have probably pressured the team to move on from Favre after that Philly OT pass for the 2003 season. By that point, it had been six years since the last SB. He caught a 'free ride' for years in the relatively soft WI media. Only once the Jets teammates started ripping Favre at the end of last year was it safe for WI columnists to really rip Favre.

Even by Favre walking away from the NFL -- which I will NOT believe until I see T-Jack, and not Favre, throwing his bounce passes to open receivers by Thanksgiving -- it will take time for Packer Nation to heal off this. Favre became a distraction of unthinkable levels his final few years in GB, to the resentment of a new generation of teammates.

 

I covered Favre for a very short sampling ... in 2002 and 2003.

I'll never forget how shocked my colleagues were when he didn't talk to the media after the playoff loss to the Falcons. Exmediahack would know far better, but while I don't think that was the first sign he was on the path to self-worship, it was one of them.

I don't know if I'm right about this, just my opinion, but I always sensed a a strong undercurrent of resentment in the Mike Sherman-coached locker room.

Being the GM and coach was the biggest part of the problem, those are two jobs with roles that run counter to one another for any person, but especially for an emotional cold fish like Sherman. He was a good-to-excellent coordinator who advanced to both jobs probably too fast, too soon, especially the GM job, as the Packers overreacted in the wake of losing Mike Holmgren a few years earlier for not letting him GM/coach. I sensed the players thought he was in over his head.

That resentment I sensed was nearly team-wide, except the one player that Sherman allowed to do whatever he pleased ... Favre.

 

The other undercurrent that I strongly felt in GB...

Sherman had less-than-strong credibility with his players, especially those of a different 'background' than me. He let "Two Sets of Rules" permeate the locker room, one for Favre/one for everyone else. It was like the NFL version of Barry Bonds -- with his own locker, his own little room on the side.

Ultimately, Sherman's inability to get along with 20-year-old players will spell his end at A&M. I was shocked when they hired him. Sure he had a winning record in GB, but, if you throw out the NFC North games (Vikings/Bears/Lions were, for the most part, awful from 2000 to 2005), he was a .500 coach.

More than a few losses at Lambeau ended with Favre pulling the 'high tail' and getting out. 1998 home loss vs Vikes/Moss coming out party, 1999 Holmgren MNF return with Seattle, the Vick playoff loss, Playoff loss to the Vikings (Moss Moon Game). Could you imagine Brady or P. Manning not facing the fire after a loss? No... they understand their role and the accountability.

With Favre, there was an element of "you can all be replaced...except for the quarterback, regardless of how many playoff-killing picks he throws". That just breeds resentment.

 

Judd does a great job.

 

Judd does do a great job. Has for a long time.

Maybe what happened yesterday was Favre's first act as part of that reported $20 million "retirement/PR" deal from Ted Thompson last year to walk away...

Time to pay a "B. Favre" a cool $500,000 for screwing with the Vikings this off-season. Maybe he already got $150,000 from the Packers last year for giving the Lions misinformation about the Packers' tendencies before Week 2.

 

As someone who covered Favre in college, I'm amazed that it took anyone that long to figure out that he was/is a self-centered prick. But... Nothing he did was criminal. Aggravating as hell, yes. Criminal, no. Just Brett being Brett, same as always.

 

If the Packers give him one cent after the things he has said about them in recent months, it would be a travesty.

 

Brett Favre has been the biggest prima donna in sports for quite some time. It's just been the last year or so for most people to pick up on it.

 

I'm kind of happy that once again ESPN got hosed on this breaking news.