Brett Favre

Grandpa Brett

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Brett Favre is officially a grandpa. No, I don’t just mean he’s really old, I mean that literally.

Congratulations to Brittany Favre and little Parker Brett who weighed in at seven pounds seven ounces.

No word on whether the Packers have drafted him yet or not. I have to wonder if there has ever been another player in the history of the NFL who was currently active and a grandfather at the same time. If not, another Brett Favre record ladies and gents!

Boy, as if he wasn’t getting enough grief about being old in the first place.

Brett Favre vs. the Green Bay Packers

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I think I do a pretty good job about not talking about football on this blog, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention the big game last night. Of course I am referring to Brett Favre playing against the team he played for for 15 years.

I think I’ve made my feelings on the whole Favre thing pretty well known, so I won’t go into all that again. But I sure was excited about this game. I was listening to some of the pre-game coverage on the radio in the morning and I literally got chills. I even bumped all of our Monday night shows off the TiVo in anticipation.

In regards to all the hype, I’ve noticed that some people seem to have their facts a little mixed up. I kind of think they know that and did it on purpose to make it a better story. But let’s be quite clear – the Packers did not run Brett Favre out of town. The Packers begged him to come back. The disagreement was over when exactly Favre was going to decide if he was going to play or retire. Remember every football fan in the universe? You were all pretty annoyed with that too. I’ve even heard McCarthy’s now famous “that train has left the station” quote used out of context to imply that he was referring to Favre’s ability. So it’s a good story to pretend like the Packers told Favre, “You’re washed up, we don’t want you anymore!” but that’s not really how it went down.

So the actual game began and I was very excited. Everything quickly went downhill. The Packers put the “offensive” in “offensive line”, taking 8 sacks. They had many, many opportunities in the red zone that they didn’t convert. Overall, however, with the exception of the o-line, they played pretty well. They contained the best RB in the NFL. They moved the ball fairly easily. In fact, between the two, I think Rodgers might have played better than Favre, considering he was scrambling for his life the entire night. At the end of the day, Minnesota was just clearly the better team in almost every aspect, so the fact that they managed to pull within a touchdown at the end was quite impressive.

Watching Favre play against the Packers was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. In fact, I felt really good for him when they pointed out that Favre became the first person to beat every team in the NFL (obviously he had never beaten the Packers before). I felt good about that, the same way I felt when he got most wins, most yards, and most touchdowns. Like somehow I was a part of that. And quite frankly, I think I am! I might not have caught any passes, but don’t tell me all the positive vibes I’ve sent his way for 15 years didn’t amount to something cosmically.

But man-oh-man did I want the Packers to beat him! Still, everyone is saying, “Oh, Favre really showed them!” I don’t see it that way. The only thing you can compare Favre to is Aaron Rodgers, because that is the only consideration you have if you’re thinking about whether you need to appease Favre or not. And I think anybody watching that game could see that Rodgers is a pretty good QB. The Vikings’ o-line being better than the Packer’s o-line has nothing to do with it.

Every great football unit needs a great nickname. So, in the spirit of the “Gang Green” of the late 80’s Eagles, the “Steel Curtain” of the 70’s Steelers, or the “Purple People Eaters” of the 70’s Vikings, I am now nicknaming the Packer’s offensive line the “Wet Napkins“. Hopefully this new nickname will give them something to aspire to.

And now Favre is a Viking

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I thought this would have been the last time I had to make such an announcement.

After publicly declaring several times that he was retired, wanted to stay retired, and would in no way be joining specifically the Vikings, Favre surprised no one by signing with said Vikings.

Despite what many people would have you believe, I don’t much care about Favre signing where ever he wants. And if the Vikes want to have the drama that will be surrounding this whole thing, more power to them. In fact, that’s really the tragedy about this whole thing…my apathy. This was a guy who was a god, and now I hardly even care, other than to say, “Ha, good luck with that you idiots.” How the mighty have fallen.

Oh well, at least this will distract some of the media from the Michael Vick thing in Philly.

Wait, so are you saying Brett Favre isn’t God?

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Musings on Favre

/ Shane / 2 Comments

As a Packers’ fan and specifically a Brett Favre fan, many people have come to me for my reaction about all the things going on lately.  I don’t claim to represent every Packers’ fan, and in fact I assumed that most of them would disagree with me.  But the more I talk to them and the more informal polling I do, I find out that in fact many of them do agree with me.

Let me start by saying I think Brett Favre is absolutely qualified right now to be a starter on an NFL team.  Probably his best years are behind him, but that being said, he’s easily in the top 5 of current QBs.  Even if you only put him in the top 10, that is still better then about 2/3rds of the starting QBs.  So I was not a person that was saying he was washed up and needed to go, even before last season’s renaissance.  I am also very protective of his legacy and I sort of breathed a sigh of relief when he went out on top.

I honestly believe the Packers’ organization (or at least McCarthy) when they say that they didn’t want him to retire and that they flew down to his home after the season to try to convince him to come back and he said no.  I honestly believe that they made the best choice available to them at each juncture and tried to do the best thing they could not just for the franchise but for the fans and for Brett.  Brett says that they forced him to retire.  I don’t think that is true.  They may have forced him to make a decision, but not that decision.  And quite frankly, he’s the one who put the idea in thier heads in the first place with his talk of retiring at the end of every season for the last 4 years.  Every year the drama gets dragged out longer and longer and you just can’t wait until a week before the season starts to find out who your QB is going to be.  So yes, they forced him to make a decision one way or the other and he went with the other.

I don’t blame him for wanting to come back.  I think there are very few of us who can put ourselves in his shoes, but I’m sure everybody who retires misses it.  And they aren’t super famous with thousands of fans screaming for them every week.  I’m sure when you retire it is hard to imagine your life without something that you feel defines you as a person.  So I don’t blame him for that.  But I just can’t figure out why he can’t understand where the Packers are coming from.  They had to have a decision from him and then having that decision they made all the necessary arrangements to carry on without him.  He doesn’t seem to remember that he works for them, not the other way around.

When he announced that he was coming back, it seemed like a nightmare scenario.  There was no good way out of it for the Packers.  He set himself up so he couldn’t back down, which meant he was definitely going to play somewhere.  It would have been hard for them to welcome him back as the starter and throw away all of the preparations and plans and commitments they had made while he was away.  It would have been bad to pay him $12 million to sit the bench, although maybe they should have out of spite.  It would have set up a terrible situation for Aaron Rodgers (whom I like and think will do quite well) to be second guessed to the point that he would be unable to perform.  It would have been hard to trade Favre away because you couldn’t hope to get much for him considering the other team could only really count on one year out of him at the most, after which he may retire again.  So do you want to be the guy who traded away a superstar for a 4th rounder?  No, there really wasn’t any easy way out of the situation.

I think the Packers’ organization handled it about as well as it could possibly have been handled.  First off, they ran the risk of the fans being pissed that they traded away an icon, but they let it go on long enough and they were (at least on the surface) nice enough that all the fans are just fed up with Brett.  Second off, they got a 4th rounder that could hypothetically go all the way up to a 1st rounder based on the Jets going to the superbowl.  So it’s probably not going to be much but it’s something and it will be something even better if Favre ends up being good.  But really the main thing is that they traded him to a really sucky team!  They have practically guaranteed that Favre will look worse than Rodgers, which was really the danger of the whole situation.  Even on the Bucs (and certainly on the Vikings), Favre could have potentially shown up Rodgers.  The Packers have a really good team and especially really good receivers that will tend to make a QB look even better than he really is.  Also, everybody and his mother knows that Favre didn’t want to go to the Jets which means a) everybody knows the Packers forced him to go, meaning he lost that round and b) another thing stacked against his success since his teammates and the fans all know he didn’t want to go there.  And something tells me a New York media storm isn’t exactly like a Green Bay media storm, so he’ll have that to deal with.  So maybe the Packers did find a way to salvage the situation after all.  And to top it all off, you’ve subtly sent the message to Rodgers that you have so much confidence in him you sent BRETT FAVRE packing.  That’s got to feel pretty good.

So, to summarize, I wish it had never happened but I put most of the blame on Brett.  I think the Packers never wanted to upset him but really tried to make the best possible decisions at the time.  I think Brett has put them in a tough spot time and time again and yet they have never bad mouthed him.  Although I understand why he wants to come back and I empathize with him, I think he has lost a lot of respect and gained very little.

That is all.