I’m a fan of Brett Favre.
There, I said it. I’m a Bears fan and I like Brett Favre. If he had played for any other team besides the Packers, I would argue until I’m blue in the face that the debate for greatest quarterback ever consists of Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, and Brett Favre. That’s it, that’s the list. But he did play for the Packers and so I never allowed myself to root for him. I respected him, but I always wanted him to fail in the end because he was a Packer and I hate the Packers.
Finally, he gave me my wish and retired. I could finally allow myself to embrace my forbidden respect/love for Favre and move on with my life…or so I thought.
As you probably know, Brett now says he wants to play again. Not terribly shocking. Most athletes find it really difficult to let go that first year of retirement. Their body gets amped up like it has done for the last however many years they played their sport and it’s really hard to turn it off. But that’s not what’s going on here, at least not according to Brett. Oh no, Brett has “the itch” again and he wants to play, but he doesn’t want to play for the Packers. He says he doesn’t “feel welcome” so he asked for his release. As Brett must surely know, it won’t happen. The Packers cannot, I repeat CANNOT, release a Hall of Fame QB that was the face of their franchise for like 17 years or something. It’s a horrible P.R. move for the team. They can trade him, but that doesn’t look great either and they might not get back the value he’s worth. So how do we find our way out of this?
Simple. Brett stays retired. The truth is, that’s what he should do anyways. He walked away for a reason and whatever that reason was, I assume it’s still there. If he retired because he “didn’t feel welcome” then he should have known that’s not a valid reason to retire. Simply put, Brett is now only doing damage to his legacy. People are damn tired of hearing about Brett and will he/won’t he play again and if he does end up getting his wish of either being traded or released, he’ll join the ranks of Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, and Joe Namath who finished their careers with Kansas City, San Diego, and the L.A. Rams respectively (did you know that by the way?). Do you really want to see Favre wearing a Tampa Bay jersey, or a Minnesota jersey, or a Baltimore jersey, or a Dolphins jersey? Of course not. The final image most of us have now of Michael Jordan is the shot he made to win the sixth and final championship for the Bulls. We either block out or ignore the Washington days because it really didn’t do anything to enhance his legend and we don’t want to think about Jordan basically failing because Washington wasn’t exactly good while he played for them. We do the same when we block out those other quarterbacks I listed and the jerseys they actually retired in. The best thing for Favre is to just walk away. Ride off in to the sunset as the old gunslinger who finally hung ‘em up with his legend in tact. He’s got his ring, he’s on the short list of best ever, and he holds almost every major record for a quarterback. What’s left to prove?
Maybe that Brett’s truly as classy as we’ve been told and will do one last great thing for Green Bay. Walk away with dignity. Or is it too late for that now?
