Broadway Brett beats retirement!

[Guest The Elements of Style]

VX's post, #112 to be exact, is fascinating to me, the way he is displaying so much antipathy toward Favre and Wisconsinites. It'll be interesting to see if a pro-/anti-Favre schism develops in Packer Nation, wherein the out-of-staters push for progress while the cheeseheads continue to worship at the Church of Favre. This is counterintuitive to how such a schism should work out, though: it seems like most of the out-of-staters, like our VX and Matt Young, for example, latched on to Favre's nuts because of how awe-inspiring he was at the time, whereas the Green Bay Packers, as a team, are such an institution of Wisconsin culture, right up there with Friday Fish Fry, Summerfest, Lutheranism, and failing to correctly pronounce the vowel in the word "bag." You would think that the Favre fans across America would be the ones clinging to their fading icon, while the cheeseheads would be more concerned with organizational health. I think the VX scenario is how it's ultimately going to shake out. I didn't think it would end this way. Then again, I'm sure Republicans didn't think they'd be the party of toothless trailer trash, either. The battle lines change, I guess.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I don't know how you could count Matt Young so much in the out-of-stater Packer fan group- maybe Kahran Ramsus is a better example, or Kotz?- since Matt grew up in Southern Illinois which I believe would be Bear territory, or possibly even Rams. I think he's also a White Sox fan though, which would also place him outside of Cardinal territory, so I'm just confused with that guy.

 

But I've mentioned I develop my fandom for the Packers out of living in Los Angeles, and watching the NFL at the time which included more national coverage of teams like the Cowboys, Packers, Steelers and whatnot than many other teams, and the Rams and Raiders were abysmal teams. There's actually quite a big amount of Packer fans out on the West Coast in general, actually, as I remember seeing a good number of Favre jerseys out and about here in Portland as well. Is a big part of that fandom Favre? Oh ya, you betcha. But I think what ends up happening here is that since the cheeseheads in Wisconsin are so much more attached to their team than the out of staters are, they are much more likely to idolize Favre than the out of staters, who look at the situation from a more objective perspective, at what's best for the franchise. I think more rational Wisconsinites are going to be turning on Favre as well, especially if he goes to another team, and especially if he goes to the Vikings or Bears.

[Guest The Elements of Style]

As I recall, Matt Young, living in at-that-time solidly Bears country, attached himself to the Packers because Favre amazed him. I don't think his family has any Wisconsin ties. (I don't get the White Sox thing either.)

 

I think what ends up happening here is that since the cheeseheads in Wisconsin are so much more attached to their team than the out of staters are, they are much more likely to idolize Favre than the out of staters, who look at the situation from a more objective perspective, at what's best for the franchise.

That is what's happening, but I still thought it would wind up being the other way around. What I didn't take into consideration is that the people whom I thought would have the best perspective, i.e. cheeseheads, tend to wear camouflage pants, so to ascribe superior judgment to them is ill-advised.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

There are a lot of Packers fans here in Ontario too. They are probably the second most popular team here after Buffalo. The big thing here I believe is more of a casual fan/serious fan divide. Casual fans tend to latch on to stars, whereas those of us who pay closer attention to the game realize that the Packers are definitely justified here. Had Favre done this even two months ago things would have been different. And despite my initial reaction to this, I'm not as anti-Favre as I sound. He is clearly wrong here, but it doesn't make me any less of a fan. The drama will probably ruin this year for the Packers, much like the issues with Ben Roethlisberger destroyed the Steelers a couple of years back and I won't be happy about that, but I will forget about this pretty quickly. Going to the Vikings, Bears or Lions though would be incredibly hard to take.

 

The ideal place would be Tampa. They are considered the local team down in Ocala, FL where I've spent a lot of time, and my mother is a fan of them so I have a soft spot for them.

 

I became a Packers fan because they are a community-run team in the smallest market in professional sports, and when I started watching NFL full-time during the 1994 MLB Strike they were a breath of fresh air compared to what I was used to dealing with in that sport.

[snuffbox 0]

As an in-stater, I don't think Favre could have handled this any worse. I was never bothered by the 'retirement soap opera' of the past few offseasons as it was clearly an espn creation anyway. I was a bit saddened, and confused, when he retired so early in the offseason when he clearly had another good year or three left in the tank (and both Thompson and McCarthy made it vey clear they wanted him back). In light of the previous offseasons' media circus as to his retirement I felt that all rumors of his iminent return were just that, a creation to draw television interest, and defended them as such. To find out that he really did decide to return early in the retirement, the Packers bent over backwards to bring him back, and he changed his mind last-second is really irksome. The retirement was depressing but I (and most others) had gotten over it and are ready to watch football with a different quarterback after a decade and a half. To decide, again, to return after the team and the fanbase had clearly moved on is lame. Favre can bitch all he wants about getting released but he signed the contract, he retired too soon, he fucked the team over on a false return, and he made it official this late in the offseason. I don't see any reasonable way to defend him, nor any reason to.

 

Also, how am I supposed to pronounce "bag"?

[Guest The Elements of Style]

With a short A rather than long A, I guess would be the term. Eggs and legs also tend to become aigs and laigs, it seems. There's no good way to render that Upper Midwestern O in text, though. If other posters don't know to what I'm referring, I guess you either rent Fargo or forever remain in the dark.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Oh yeah, like how they say "Minnie-sooh-dah!"

[snuffbox 0]

I've been getting it right then.

 

At least we can say 'tour', too-ur, right up here. 'Tore'? Fuck that.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Right, and you're not from shi-CAH-go.

 

Point in case: It's an accent. Whatevs. A friend of mine from Illinois named Don says I pronounce his name like a girl's name (Dawn, presumably).

[RonL21 0]

C'mon Brett!!

Tell them to trade you to my Niners!

Join Mike Martz and take Them back to Glory!!!

[Prophet of Mike Zagurski 0]

Trade Aaron Rodgers. The Packers fans who are for Favre coming back should choke on their tears as Rodgers becomes a great quarterback on another team.

[cabbageboy 0]

I have to admit Favre is losing me more and more as this thing unfolds. Does he think for one minute that Green Bay should simply release him and get no players in return? So he can then sign with the Vikings and stick it to them in the division? I can see him wanting a trade if they are 100% behind Rodgers, but he can't be so naive as to think he would get a release to go anywhere.

 

Rodgers may end up being a solid QB, but at this point I think it'll have to be somewhere besides Green Bay. The only way he can top Favre's last season is to go to the Super Bowl and I can't really see it happening. After a couple of frustrating seasons of being unable to live up to Favre, Rodgers will likely go elsewhere and Brian Brohm will end up as the Packers' QB.

[Open the Muggy Gate 0]

As mentioned in a post earlier... the coverage of this is just OUT OF FUCKING CONTROL. It's worse than anything I've seen in the media in a while... and we had the Patriots perfect run insanity.

 

And Greta on FoxNews? Really?

[Mike wanna be 0]

You have to stop looking at Favre as "Hall of Famer that's better than what most teams can offer at QB" and start looking at him as "Guy who's retired twice and could theoretically decide he's had enough at any point, leaving you up shit creek having given up players/draft picks to get a QB that didn't make it through training camp".

No I don't. Where is Favre's history of abandoning ship midseason? All of his hand-wringing is conducted during the offseason. Once he's on board, he's on board. I don't believe for a moment that the Bears would ever procure Brett Favre, but if they were to do so, I would be confident that he would make sixteen starts and give 100% in all sixteen starts--something no Chicago quarterback has come close to doing in my memory--because that's what he has done for more years than anybody to play the game, and he would not come back if he knew he couldn't do that. I think my assessment is closer to reality than yours, inasmuch as he has not retired twice (are we even certain he officially retired once?) and has not quit in the middle of a season or training camp. It looks like Favre is going to play somewhere in 2008, which I knew he would all along, and whichever team for which he plays is going to experience a considerable improvement over its incumbent quarterback, whether that's Rex Grossman (fingers crossed!), Tarvaris Jackson, Jon Kitna, Kyle Boller, Chad Pennington, Alex Smith, The Jon Gruden Carousel of Mediocrity, or most certainly Aaron Rodgers.

It's real easy to say "I'll be on board for the whole season" when you know the only teams you'll play for are either

a) your personal choosing upon being released,

b) a town where you're so famous they're apparently willing to throw their entire future down the tubes to give you yet another "one more chance" to throw a season-ending INT, and still be willing to take you back at any point for the next season because "Hey he's better than that unproven Rodgers/Brohm/Flynn kid!", or

c) an inter-division rival with a history of god-awful quarterback play who would be so thrilled to "steal Brett Favre from Green Bay" that they'd sign and start Brett Favre if he had Alzheimer's and deliberately threw passes to people in Packer jerseys (including people in the stands!) because he thought he was still on Green Bay's roster.

 

Legends get old and they retire. If you're smart like San Francisco, you find a Steve Young and you keep right on trucking. If you aren't, you find a Jay Fiedler and have your entire franchise's respectability go down the shitter. Which way do you think Green Bay is heading? Are they prepared for life after Favre or are they stuck coasting along faux-preparing for life after Favre because they know there's no way they could live with themselves if they jump the gun on giving up on him & let Brett pull a Montana-to-KC.

[Kinetic 0]

As mentioned in a post earlier... the coverage of this is just OUT OF FUCKING CONTROL. It's worse than anything I've seen in the media in a while... and we had the Patriots perfect run insanity.

 

The coverage of this would be nuts regardless, but it's amplified due to it happening during the annual sports dead zone in between the end of the NBA season and the beginning of NFL training camps. ESPN is only going to give baseball so much time, and there's literally nothing else going on right now.

[Guest The Elements of Style]

So you're saying that his commitment to play an entire season to the best of his ability is compromised by the fact that he will choose where he plays? Why shouldn't he choose where he plays? The hell else is he supposed to do, re-enter the draft? As for "giving them one more chance to throw a season-ending INT," that's a bullshit description of their 2007 season. They don't get in the position to blow the NFC title on an overtime interception without Favre. I don't understand the argument you're trying to make. As for the genius of the San Francisco 49ers, their entire franchise's respectability has gone even further down the shitter than the Dolphins; it just took them a little longer. Favre gives the Packers--and anyone else--a better chance to win a world championship than almost anyone until he can't walk.

[KingPK 0]

You know, I'm teetering towards Czech's side of the arguement here, but with a few major caveats.

 

1) It has to be '07 Brett that shows up because he had been slipping badly the previous two years in almost every category and there's no proof that the '07 season wasn't a bit fluky and due to the fact that the Packers were damn good.

 

2) The team he goes to needs at least an above average o-line; as with most QBs, there's a correlation between sacks/pressure and INT numbers and that just gets amplified with a guy that will soon be 39 at the helm.

 

3) He needs to stay in the NFC, preferably the NFC North, West or South; if he goes anywhere in the AFC or the NFC East, the defenses there will take him apart.

[Guest Vitamin X]

In that vein, I'm totally cool with Brett coming back and playing for, oh I don't know, the Jets or Ravens.

 

Massholes like KingPK forget that the Bears, Vikings, and Packers are all among excellent defenses. The only way playing in the AFC East is any harder is if he went to play on the Dolphins, who are bereft of an offensive line and have to play the Patriots twice a year. At least the Ravens will have a good defense backing him up and an okay o-line in front of him when he has to play the Steelers twice a year.

[BruteSquad_BRODY 0]

My football fandom started the year Favre was starting out with the Packers (I think)... I love Brett in a hetro and homosexual manner... but I think its best he gets traded before this becomes Mike McKensie V. 2.0 and sinks the season

 

Johnny Jolly is the only Packer happy with this mess

[Mike wanna be 0]

So you're saying that his commitment to play an entire season to the best of his ability is compromised by the fact that he will choose where he plays? Why shouldn't he choose where he plays? The hell else is he supposed to do, re-enter the draft? As for "giving them one more chance to throw a season-ending INT," that's a bullshit description of their 2007 season. They don't get in the position to blow the NFC title on an overtime interception without Favre. I don't understand the argument you're trying to make. As for the genius of the San Francisco 49ers, their entire franchise's respectability has gone even further down the shitter than the Dolphins; it just took them a little longer. Favre gives the Packers--and anyone else--a better chance to win a world championship than almost anyone until he can't walk.

My argument centers around the team's future:

Which way do you think Green Bay is heading? Are they prepared for life after Favre, or are they stuck coasting along faux-preparing for life after Favre because they know there's no way they could live with themselves if they jump the gun on giving up on him & let Brett pull a Montana-to-KC?

I think they go down the shitter if Favre comes back, as they'll be obligated to keep him and obligated to start him, so Aaron Rodgers doesn't stay, which means that in 2009 when he retires again Green Bay's quarterbacking options will consist of a lame-duck first round pick who will most likely still have less than 75 NFL pass attempts to his name, a third-stringer from Louisville who threw away a #1 overall pick in the 2007 draft to go back to college and have his coach bail for Atlanta so he could bail to Arkansas (leading to a 6-6 record on Louisville's season) and a practice squad seventh-round LSU quarterback.

 

Saying "Favre gives them the best chance to win" is equally bullshit, because since 1992 he's the only one who's remotely had a chance to. Did he deserve it all those years, of course he did, is he a Hall of Famer, of course he is. But how do you know Rodgers wouldn't have had as good a year, Green Bay was a damn good team last year and had a lot of success in all aspects of the game, it wasn't like Brett took a bunch of scrubs and gunslinged them to 13-3. Does Rodgers compare to Favre, of course he doesn't, but the Packers do not NEED Brett Favre to make the playoffs or win the Super Bowl, they NEED a good to great quarterback and there is no indication one way or the other as to whether or not Rodgers is good/great/HoF caliber because he never sees the field.

 

How many years can Green Bay keep spending high draft picks on "The next Green Bay quarterback"? How can they lure a veteran free agent for, say, the 2009 season, when they know the team already has first & second round picks who've spent (in Rodgers' case several) years on the bench because of Brett's comebacks?

 

The team is arguably just one or two pieces away from a Super Bowl run, and if Brett had been completely honest about his retirement status then they probably draft one of those missing pieces with #24 in 2005 or #56/#209 in the 2008 draft, instead of taking three quarterbacks. Instead, he pulled these "I'm done, wait no maybe not, ok yeah I'm not coming back sorry to call you out here hey wait come back I have big news I'm not retired, starting job still open yeah thought so" shenanigans and leaves the team up shit creek for the future.

[Kinetic 0]

It appears (and I guess it's easy for teams to say this when it's been made clear that he's not on the trading block) that none of the AFC teams that have been suggested as potential destinations for Favre are actually interested in acquiring him. My bold prediction, based on nothing, is that the Packers are eventually going to bite the bullet and trade him within the conference, most likely to an NFC South team. There's just too much bridge-burning and public airing of grievances going on for him to ever suit up for Green Bay again and not be an enormous distraction.

[Lt. Al Giardello 0]

If Favre comes back and stinks it up... I blame the Madden Curse!

[snuffbox 0]

Sorry, Czech, but he's under contract with Green Bay for three more years. He signed the contract himself. He can't just decide that now he wants to pick and choose where he'll play.

[Guest The Elements of Style]

He could if the Packers released him, which, if that's what he wants, would be the right thing to do after his years of service to the team.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Haha. You just want a Brett Favre to call your own.

[Guest The Elements of Style]

Poppycock. I'm happy with Captain Neckbeard.

[Hawk 34 0]

I don't believe that a single AFC team wouldn't take Favre. Aside from 3 or 4 teams, what AFC franchise can honestly say they have a better alternative at QB then Brett Favre? Just trade him to Buffalo and end this bullshit charade.

[snuffbox 0]

Yeah, Favre for a 7th round pick.

[Lt. Al Giardello 0]

I have to say though The Packers are making this worse on themselves by dragging this out... They need to just release him, so they can move on and concentrate on the upcoming football season. The more this drags on, the more of a distraction for the team it's going to be.

[Prophet of Mike Zagurski 0]

I don't believe that a single AFC team wouldn't take Favre. Aside from 3 or 4 teams, what AFC franchise can honestly say they have a better alternative at QB then Brett Favre? Just trade him to Buffalo and end this bullshit charade.

The Colts, Chargers, Patriots, and Pittsburgh can off the top of my head.