Favre Angst: Apparently the Rubicon Has a Two-Way Bridge

Flush the bombers, get the subs in launch mode. We are at DEFCON 1.

Yes, Brett Favre has asked the New York Jets to release him from the reserve/retired list, effectively making him a 40-year old free agent.

Let’s face reality: some things just don’t change.

Favre loves keeping his options open, doesn’t mind stirring the hornets nest a little bit, and may not be ready to give up on the game (despite many signals that he probably should).

The media still loves to overblow anything that Favre does, even non-stories such as this. Why not? It’s the slow season and if there’s nothing else to print, why not embellish stories with hyberbole and innuendo.

And finally, Packers fans still love to knee-jerk react emotionally to any bit of non-news that comes out about ol’ #4.

From Bart Winkler at The Bucky Channel

I'm sure many of you that hated Favre last summer have already forgiven him, or have already moved on, but I haven't. Favre's theatrics last summer exposed his true self, and destroyed the image of a man I spent my childhood worshipping. If it was a guy of lesser importance, I'm probably over it by now, but this was Brett Favre were talking about here. This was the guy who, outside of my parents, was my hero.

Now? He's just a washed up quarterback doing anything to remain in the spotlight, no matter what the cost.

From PocketDoppler

While this is all speculation, rumor and hubris right now, what re-built respect and liking for Favre that I have would diminish in a heartbeat were I to see him wearing purple. Favre joining the Vikings would not be for his love of the game, his desire to compete or the want to try and go out on top. Rather it would be for vindictive and selfish reasons. Let’s hope none of this comes to pass, because the alternative to me is unfathomable.

And of course, Florio can't resist...

Our guess? Once Cook sufficiently and successfully pestered the Broncos to trade quarterback Jay Cutler to the Bears, Cook embarked on an effort to pester Tannenbaum to release Favre, if for no reason other than to clear out any potential impediments to the wild gray hair that might crawl up Brett’s butt in the next month or two.

The next step for Cook? He’ll start pestering Bevell and Childress to start pestering Brett to provide the final piece for one of the most talented teams in NFL history at every position except the one that counts the most.

My take on the whole drama? Who cares.

Maybe Favre is an attention seeker who can’t stand going a month without getting a headline. Maybe he really is so emotionally damaged that he just wants to keep himself in the public eye as long as he can.

So what? If it is true, why do we keep reacting to it? Why do we keep overblowing it and allowing the news outlets to get ratings for reporting it?

Maybe Favre is considering another return to the NFL, just to prove he can still do it.

Who cares? He’s not coming to Green Bay. He’s not threatening Aaron Rodgers ego or Ted Thompson’s master plan anymore. Any man has a right to earn a living, and suffer the consequences that might come with it. Who are we to pass judgment and tell him another human being isn’t allowed to work anymore, simply because it bothers us?

Maybe Favre is angry, and still wants to “stick it” to Ted Thompson somehow.

So what? We’ve all given up a long time ago believing that Brett Favre will be the one to take the high road. It isn’t in his nature. He’s a man, not a messiah. If Favre is a bad man for wanting to stick it to his old team, I assume Jay Cutler should retire also, right? You don’t think Gilbert Brown wanted to stick it to the Vikings, or Darren Sharper to the Packers? You don’t think any player who felt jilted by his old team didn’t take some extra pride in wanting to settle it like a man on the field, rather than in interviews on television?

Maybe Favre will join the Vikings!!!!

Who really cares? Seriously. I thought he should have just been allowed to join them last year. You honestly think the way he played with the Jets that he would have been the difference between a mediocre team (that went 10-6 with two gimme wins against the Lions) and a Super Bowl win? Do you honestly think Bear fans think Jim McMahon is no longer a Bear because he played a season or two as a backup for the Packers? Favre wasn't wanted, and he wanted to play.

Heck, let him go. Let him line up against the Packers on October 5 and see how excited this team is to beat him. Let the Vikings find out that getting Favre wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Or, in the event that the Vikings win and Favre gets his “revenge”, we can rest easy that Favre will soon be out of the league and the Packers have a franchise quarterback that will still be playing when Favre is eligible for AARP.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player in which every fan appears to have some sort of delusion of ownership over what he should do with his life, judgmental of every move he makes, word he says, and thoughts he thinks.

Who cares?

We celebrate the fact that Ted Thompson keeps to his plan, regardless of criticism or complaining from the rabble. We may not like every decision, but we can respect the fact that he is going to live or die by them.

Favre is going to do the same thing. He’s going to make decisions that are in the best interest of what he controls…his own career and life, just like we all do. It’s time that we stop rewarding the people who enjoy throwing us raw meat and watching us savagely devour it…whether it be Favre himself or the media looking to sell NFL news in a slow time of year.

It’s like that crazy friend that has a crisis every couple of days, and expects everyone to drop what they are doing and overreact with them.

Who’s crazier: the crazy friend or the people that continue to feed into the friend’s neuroses?

The friend is whoever you want it to be. Maybe you think it is Favre demanding the attention, or maybe it is the media, who love to overblow anything to do with Favre. My opinion? It’s a good share of both, as they have developed a pretty symbiotic relationship over the past several years (with Favre getting his own heading on the ESPN Bottom Line Ticker). But that relationship formed for one reason: because All Things Favre always…always….gets the reaction from us that they want. More papers sold, more hits on websites, more angst and squabbling.

They have Packer fans pretty well trained, don’t they?

I thought it was last year we were supposed to cross the Rubicon, and move on because “that train has left the station”.

That’s the Packers’ line…how about we follow suit?

Is It Time To Give Mike Sherman His Due?

The past few months I've been watching some of the big events at Lambeau Field...Fan Fest, the Draft Party. And they always have dignitaries at these things..Packers past and present. And for some reason, I had to wonder: you never see Mike Sherman at any of these things. And it made me ask a rather stark question.

Will Mike Sherman ever be invited (or welcomed) back at Lambeau Field?

I remember last year that Sherman came back into Green Bay for a lecture at his daughter's college, and even then I wondered if someone would find their way into the auditorium just to catcall him about BJ Sander. There were so many people who ran him out of town on a rail, that you expect him to never be able to come back.

Yet, there's Mark Chmura at the Atrium, drawing laughs and requests for autographs during the draft.

Mike Sherman didn't sit in any hot tubs with teenage girls. He didn't assault a gal in the stairwell at the Top Shelf. He didn't take steroids, hold the team hostage, or hold out for a better salary the day before training camp.

He just came to work and did the best job he knew how to do. For many of us, that wasn't enough. And in the end, he left Green Bay chased by torches and pitchforks, his tenure to be ridiculed for years.

Now, before you jump all over me, I am the farthest thing from some Sherman Defender. I was probably one of his biggest critics for failing to make halftime adjustments, for believing too much in his gameplan and schemes, and for standing back and letting Brett Favre win or lose the game with risky plays.

There was no one decrying the 2004 draft louder than I, and no one insisting louder that he have the GM role removed from his job title.

That was then, an emotional time marked with fans who had grown used to deep playoff runs, for whom division titles, winning seasons, and just making the playoffs was not enough.

And Sherman took the fall for it. But you know what? There's a place in this world to respect a guy for just being a good guy. Mike Sherman, for all his faults, was a good guy.

Another good guy was Lindy Infante. When 1991 finished up, there were few people clamoring for his return. But even then, I appreciated that great 1989 season he brought us. And, I really respected that the day after he was fired, he showed up to do the last "Lindy Infante Show", bringing his wife as his special guest to say goodbye to the fans.

Class act. I'd love to see Lindy at Fan Fest, ask for his autograph, and thank him for the season of the Cardiac Pack.

I wonder when Sherman would be welcomed back in the same way. Let's dismiss his tenure as general manager. That horse been beaten to death, ad nauseum. How good of a coach was Mike Sherman...especially if he hadn't been foolishly burdened with the dual role of GM/HC by Bob Harlan?

In his first season, he turned around a country club atmosphere created by Ray Rhodes and finished with four straight wins to end up 9-7 (sounds eerily familiar to another Mike we know, doesn't it?).

He then followed that up in 2001 with the first of two 12-4 seasons and four division titles. Over those next four years he would compile a regular season record of 44-20.

Some people chose to diminish those results by stating that he had simply taken the reins of the 1998 team that Holmgren brought to the playoffs just two years earlier. But only a fraction of the active players actually remained on the roster after just two years, and many stalwarts of the Holmgren era (Reggie White, Gilbert Brown, George Koonce, Mark Chmura, Robert Brooks) were gone. Others, such as Gilbert Brown, LeRoy Butler, Frank Winters, and Dorsey Levens, were only shadows of their former selves.

Sherman built a new foundation that year with a new young running back named Ahman Green, started two rookie offensive tackles named Clifton and Taucher, and put together a mismash of defensive players that managed to rank in the middle of the NFL. By the next season, the defense was 5th in the NFL in points allowed.

We all can sit around the bar table and tell stories of what happened from 4th-and-26 on. But until that time, Sherman did a lot of things that even Mike Holmgren did not accomplish.

For one, he established perhaps the finest offensive line the Packers had seen since the days of Lombardi. Certainly, the five-some of Tauscher, Rivera, Flanagan, Wahle, and Clifton had all been drafted by Ron Wolf, but Sherman was able to put that talent together on the field and had them producing at a dominating level. There's a reason Sherman was an offensive line coach. He knew what he was doing with the talent he had.

He was able to establish a dominating ground game with Ahman Green. Even when Holmgren had Edgar Bennett and Dorsey Levens, they really gained the majority of their yards in the second half of games, eating up minutes to protect a lead that was achieved primarily through the passing game. The running game under Sherman in those years was the only time in Brett Favre's lengthy career that the offense didn't seemingly rest completely on his arm. Green set a Packer record for most rushing yards in 2003.

And, he managed to assemble perhaps the most talented receiving corps that Favre had been able to work with up until that time. Again, Wolf brought in the talent, but Sherman finally got it together by 2004: the tandem of Javon Walker, Donald Driver, and Robert Ferguson was perhaps the best in the NFL.

Sherman developed some of the best players still on the Packer roster today: Aaron Kampman, Nick Barnett, Al Harris, Cullen Jenkins, and Donald Driver.

He was the first coach in Green Bay to surprise his players during training camp with a trip to a local bowling alley or paintball course instead of a second practice that day. He knew how important camaraderie was.

And, as stated before, he added four division titles to the rafters of Lambeau Field. Some will diminish that achievement by stating it was only because we were in the weakest division in the NFL. Yet, what does that say about a 6-10 team that competing in the same division as the only winless team in NFL history?

We all know that what came after these achievements, though. A series of one-and-done playoff visits culminating in a heartbreaking failure against Philadelphia in 2003. From that point on, it seemed like the GM portion of Sherman's dual role overshadowed anything else he did, and certainly, the decisions he made as GM were worthy of criticism.

The dual role gives absolute power to the man in that role, and there are precious few that can handle it successfully. Sherman seemed to listen less to his scouting department, starting to micromanage his assistants, and had favorites he protected on the roster and on his staff. He put more and more pressure on himself to do it all himself in face of mounting criticism. He seemed to border on paranoia at times, because the dual role brought all the blame back to one guy.

When Thompson finally fired Sherman in January of 2006, it seemed that much of Packer Nation celebrated spitefully. Sherman the GM certainly had deserved some of the criticism, but did Sherman the coach?

I don't bring this up in any way to make any comparisons, positive or negative, to today's GM and head coach, just for Sherman to be judged on his own merits.

No one is asking for a street to be named in Sherman's honor. No one is asking for him to be rubber-stamped into the Ring of Honor or the Hall of Fame. And no one is erecting a statue of him next to Curly and Vince outside the Atrium doors.

But for all his warts and flaws and perceived crimes against the Packers, doesn't he deserve to be welcomed back by Packer fans as one of the many honored greats of the past: a coach who did nothing less than string together four consecutive division titles, a feat only surpassed by Mike Holmgren? Isn't it time he can sit at a table for hours on end while green-and-gold-clad fans wait hours in line for his autograph, just to reminisce with him about the time he stood up to Warren Sapp or the "He did WHAT?!" Minnesota Viking game in 2001?

There are times that I wonder what Sherman's legacy would have been if he had declined that dual role offered to him by Bob Harlan. I'm guessing that, sometimes, Mike Sherman wonders about that, too.

Here's hoping that time heals all wounds.

"What Are The Thompson Haters Going To Do?"

I've heard this a couple times today..."What are the TT Haters going to do now???", I guess in response to what appears to be the "anti-TT" draft that the "Haters" have been apparent whining for.

It kind of hits me weird, because I've been pretty happy with this year's draft--I would honestly say it is the best feeling I've had coming out of a draft since the Wolf regime in the 90's. But, it is coming with some sort of childish "in your face" from folks who have been defending Thompson for years, while in the same breath admitting that this doesn't appear to be Thompson running this particular draft.

Now, I am no Thompson Hater, but will easily admit to being a critic. I point out his positive points, have never worn a Hater T-shirt or signed a petition against him, and have never called for him to be fired.

But I do disagree with his approach at times, including how he has approached the draft in the past. And, I've been called a Thompson Hater before, by nothing less than those crazy "Thompson Acolytes" or the "Thompson Worshippers".

That was just for dramatic effect, folks. Of course, that is just that natural polarization that happens in today's political world. If you disagree with me, you must be an "extremist".

Now, getting to the point. I am happy with this draft, because I think Thompson did some things we haven't seen him do before. He took some risks...his first two picks, BJ Raji and Clay Matthews, have some warts, but he was willing to pay a high price for each other them. There's no guarantee they will work out, and TT could have traded back from #9 or not traded up to get Matthews.

But these were not only stud picks, but also "need" picks. After 2007, when he reached for an injured DT, and 2008, when he traded back to take a WR at an already loaded position, this was a welcome change for many. It's not simply drafting for need, it's taking the Best Player Available at a Position of Need. And notice the cheers in the Atrium.

So, now, Thompson Critics/Haters should "shut up" and never complain again, because Thompson finally did "what we wanted" after four years? Does this mean that we had the "right", then, to complain the previous four years? Or does it mean that Thompson simply did this to placate us and we should feel guilty for making him do so?

The next catcall is then that this is all a carefully formulated plan, that Thompson has intended to trade down for quantity for all these years, so that now, suddenly, he can trade up and draft for need.

It's a great thought, but not one that I particularly like or buy into.

Like McCarthy, Thompson is under fire for one of the biggest "penthouse to outhouse" declines in record in franchise history. McCarthy responded by firing nearly his entire defensive and special teams coaching staff. Thompson may be responding by changing his M.O. to something that addresses getting this team back to 2007 expectations.

That collapse last year doesn't close off Thompson to any criticism. Everyone is open to criticism, and if it handled maturely and intelligently, its valid even in the face of success.

And I'm happy to give Thompson his due: great draft. Super draft. No true skill positions drafted and yet I am really excited about it.

Does it mean I can never criticize him again? Please.

Ted has eschewed free agency almost exclusively since making a small splash in 2006. As the Packers go into 2009, they stand to lose Mark Tauscher, and even Chad Clifton's production is in doubt. So much so, that OT was one of the biggest "needs" the Packers had in this draft....a "need" after drafting six players in the last three years.

And what has Thompson done with it? Drafted two more mid-round guys that seem interchangeable with the talent we already have. Not bad talent, but talent that appears to be more versitile than solid at any one position. I like the guys we picked, don't get me wrong. They look to be tremendous value for where they were taken. But I can't exect either of them to step in and take over the production we expected from Tauscher and Clifton this year, much less improve on it.

And all this could have been solved by drafting for need years ago, or dipping into the free agent pool and having the heir apparent ready to go.

Valid criticism? Absolutely. Just because Thompson has had a good draft, doesn't mean that everything he does is as pure as the driven snow. This might be a position that Thompson may want to invest some coin in a second- or third-tier tackle, if one were available, instead of drafting players that won't really full blossom for another couple of seasons.

Look...we are all Packer fans here. Nothing irritates me more than seeing Packers fans beating up on fellow Packer fans. We're on the same team. If we have vitriol to send someone's way, well, this is why God created Viking fans.

In some ways, and perhaps indirectly connected, the "Thompson Debate" has divided Packer fans the way that the "Favre Debate" once did. The funny thing is, I never remember Ron Wolf dividing the fan base the way Mike Sherman and Ted Thompson did/do. It's time to put away these divisive labels of "Haters" and "Lovers" and start allowing for open criticism and praise, the way we used to back in the day.

Good conversation, discussion, and debate can come out of that. Name-calling and polarized stances rarely ever do.