Starting this blog – and not updating it, as you can probably tell – has shown me something: I suck at blogging. It’s not for lack of trying; I’ve actually sat down to write something at least five or six times since I first posted. It’s that I really can’t keep a serious train of thought for more than a few hundred words.
But I’m going to try here, so let’s talk about something comforting like … Brett Favre!
OK, that’s not comforting in the slightest, but it is something I think I can go on for ages about.
If you haven’t heard, Mr. Favre (I feel I owe him this title, because anyone who’s old enough to retire three times surely commands a great amount of respect.) has decided to return to the NFL. Again. For the third time.
He said he’s “doing it for the guys.” He’s doing them a favor. Not because he gets $16.5 million and continues a record starting streak that could eclipse 300 this year. It’s really not about him, or so he says.
I think we can all say back to Favre, in unison, that that’s just bull. I truly believe Favre meant it the first time he retired. I also think he realized what kind of gold mine he had stumbled upon when he stirred up rumors that he wanted to return and realized that people would pay him millions both to go away and to play for an opposing team.
Now? Well, now he’s just milking it until he’s too banged up and sore to milk anymore. And right now, his particular Heifer of choice is Brad Childress. If it’s not bad enough that Favre is taking advantage of the fans, the media and his teammates, he’s taking advantage of one of his best friends.
I don’t pretend to like Childress, and I honestly think he’s the reason that Adrian Peterson hasn’t yet eclipsed 2,000 yards, but I will admit he is a truly stand-up guy. And Favre is taking him for a ride. Childress isn’t going to put his foot down on the situation because Favre is a close friend, he will win you games that Sage Rosenfels and Tavaris Jackson cannot and because he’s not going to do that to a guy he knows.
Favre knows this, just as surely as he knew he could use the Jets’ turmoil last year to come out, if not squeaky clean, at least avoiding looking like a BP oil spill and still being able to sign with another team.
For those of you that don’t remember, it was leaked – more likely quietly whispered by Favre himself – that No. 4 played with an injured throwing arm for most of the second half of the Jets’ 2008 season. Looking at the performance of the team, it’s really not surprising at all. Favre has since stated, though, that he would have been more than willing to go injured reserve, but Eric Mangini refused to place him on IR.
Favre said this, of course, after Mangini had been fired, after the Jets were embroiled in numerous other issues and after his shoulder had completely healed. Favre, go on IR and risk snapping his consecutive starts streak? I was, and still am, extremely disappointed with the number of media outlets who bought this. That’s baloney. Favre knows it, I know it and you should too.
Now, he’s coming out with the whole I-was-really-going-to-retire-but-I-owe-these-guys-a-favor story. Again, I have to call bull. The man had the best statistical season of his career last year. His team was a shoo-in for the Super Bowl until his costly game-losing error. He was offered $16.5 million, with the acceptance that he was going to miss all of the spring and summer and probably much of the preseason. Of course he was coming back; now he just has a story to spin so he doesn’t seem quite so dastardly (Sorry, I’ve always really wanted to use that word in a sentence.).
I used to love Favre. The first NFL game I can remember watching in its entirety was Green Bay against Carolina in the 1997 NFC Championship Game. His I’m-going-to-fit-it-through-that-hole-and-logic-be-d***ed mentality helped me fall in love with the game.
But what’s left of the formerly glorious green-and-yellow No. 4 is a bloated and now-purple-and-yellow No. 4 that’s either too prideful or too selfish to realize what he’s doing to everyone else around him. Either way, it’s childish and it doesn’t befit a man that holds a legitimate claim as the greatest quarterback of all time.
I, along with millions of other NFL fans, grew up with Brett Favre. It’s just a shame that, during that time, he didn’t grow up with us.
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