Except here, despite Wojciechowski's fanboy lament, Green Bay's management is actually doing what it's supposed to do -- look after the short- and long-term interests of the team. This is a very real concern for them; with the collective bargaining agreement being abandoned, and 2010 being a cap-free year, small-market teams such as Green Bay are going to be hit hard. I don't know what percentage of the town's revenue comes from all the ancillary perks of having an NFL franchise, but come on -- it's a frozen hole in Wisconsin. How much else is going on?
Favre wants to unretire. And yeah, it's a bit of a diva-ish thing to do. Tears in March. Text messages in July.
But Favre has earned his share of diva currency, enough for one Get Out Of Retirement card. He's played hurt. He's played with his heart heavy with grief. And he's played for the moment, not the money. There are bits and pieces of his body all over Lambeau Field.
Oh, boo-fuckin'-hoo. Favre has owned that town for well over a decade, and been well compensated for it. Football is his life because he's made it his life. And this is not a one-time deal; he's been pulling this will-he-or-won't-he shit for at least four years now. He said this time it's for real, they gave him a couple opportunities to reconsider, and they took him at his word. They went and drafted two more quarterbacks to back up Rodgers.
Packers management wants it both ways. It says it wants to protect Favre from himself, but mostly it wants to protect Favre from becoming a free agent, signing with the Minnesota Vikings and possibly kicking the Packers' butts twice in the regular season. That's the reason behind not granting Favre his release -- nothing else.
Well, no shit. That too is part of protecting a team's legacy. Ask Al Davis how he feels now about letting Marcus Allen slide to the Chefs. Better yet, don't -- Davis is incapable of admitting fault, no matter how monumental the screwup.
Favre has made several indications that he wants to go to Minnesota. His former position coach is now the OC there, so he knows the system; they desperately need a competent starter to complement an excellent running game and what may be the best defensive line in the league; and Zygi Wilf can no doubt throw enough money at him to make him forget about the $12 mil the Packers would have to pay him even as a backup. The team has stalled some of its talent development in catering to Favre's confounding decision-making process.
So it's a standoff -- the Packers have him under contract, and can bench him if they feel like burning eight figures, or they can cut him loose, but can get nothing more binding than a handshake agreement for Favre not to go to a division rival. And Favre is cynically using the fans' admiration for him to clown the Packers' management, at the expense of the rest of the team. Rodgers has indicated that he will ask to be traded -- and rightly so -- should Miss Thang change her mind and decide she's entitled to one more go-round.
It's understandable why Favre can't quite face up to things just yet. He's not well-suited to the usual post-career broadcast stint, and he's never done anything else. And he had one of the best years of his career last year, at least until his final pass went to the other team.
But Dan Marino, several of whose seemingly unbreakable records were passed by Favre last year, went out bad also. Marino set single-season passing yardage and touchdown records (the first of which still holds) and got to the Super Bowl in his second season. But he spent the rest of his career struggling to get back, and never did. And his final game was a 62-7 playoff blowout at the hands of a still-young Jacksonville Jaguars team; the game was so lopsided it was 38-0 in the second quarter before Miami could even get on the scoreboard. That's a crummy way to end a great career, and considering that one wild wobble of Favre's came in overtime of the NFC championship game, he has to be thinking that he missed his chance to retire on a Super Bowl by the thinnest of hairs.
Packers fans deserve to not have their team yanked around by a mercurial superstar who feels entitled to change his mind back and forth about a victory lap; Rodgers is a good player who's only going to get better if people (and Favre was notoriously aloof and prickly toward Rodgers) stop fucking with his ability to do his job. And maybe Favre has earned the right to go out in whatever way he sees fit, but he is under contract to the Packers, and pitting the fans against management is going to reverberate long after he finally decides to retire for real. Both sides would be better served if Green Bay just cut him loose already, take their chances on him playing one year tops wherever he lands, and moving on from there. He's always had trouble winning in the Metrodome anyway.
Update: Some clown from the Mistake By The Lake draws what has to be the lamest conceivable parallel, between Favre's relationship with Packers management, and how the Cleveland Browns dismissed center LeCharles Bentley.
To some, the Brett Favre saga unfolding in Green Bay is as perplexing as the LeCharles Bentley drama in Cleveland.
There are major differences, but first consider the general similarity -- both are popular players essentially unwanted by their teams.
Um, no, dude. The two situations have almost zero in common. Popular players are shunted aside all the time, if the team's management determines that the player is past their prime and that it just isn't cost-effective to keep them around. That's universal to the business of sports.
Look, I goof on the Packers and Favre, but let's face it -- in a town that practically embodies American football, the guy is a veritable icon. It has to be excruciating for diehard Packer fans to watch this nonsense, and most other fans, regardless of team affiliation, at least respect what Favre brought to the game. Many of them grew up watching him play. The guy's going out like a thorn in the side, but for nearly two decades, he was the real muthafuckin' deal. It's not an easy decision either way. It's silly and it's just a sport, but it also plays into the self-identification of the town and the team's fans, who do not have much else happening because they live on a frozen prairie pancake.
Bentley, on the other hand, was a very good center who was poached from the Saints for too much money (6-yr./$36 mil), an indication that the team planned to build around him. He torqued his knee on the very first play of training camp, which at least suggests some issues with conditioning.
Bentley claims that a subsequent staph infection nearly killed him and nearly cost him the leg. That may be perfectly accurate, and that's a raw deal for him, but we're talking about a free agent who never played a down for the team, and in fact tied up a significant amount of money and time for them while everyone tried to figure out whether he'd play again. (He probably won't.) Unless Bentley is willing to seriously renegotiate his contract, it's a pretty clear-cut business decision, one that needs no consultation with fans. This isn't even apples and oranges, more like apples and crescent wrenches.
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