Brats & Beer

Why You Should Support Ted Thompson

After a couple glasses of scotch, some good Italian red wine, and several beers last night, I hoped that I would wake up today to find some glimmer of hope in today’s news that the Packers would be able to resolve this situation with Brett Favre in an amicable way. Lori Nickle at the Journal Sentinel, though, can only offer that the two sides are headed for “a bitter, messy divorce.” Oh joy.

What’s most important, of course, is that the Green Bay Packers continue to improve as a football team and be positioned for a successful 2008 campaign. And here is where Packer Nation is divided between those who think the team is better off with Favre back in uniform and those who think it is time to move on. Our loyalties should be squarely behind the Green & Gold, but that is easier said than done when it involves heartfelt emotion for a legendary player.

No one wants to see Brett Favre playing for another team and everyone was hoping that he’d get another shot at winning a second Super Bowl. Maybe the Packers could do it this year with No. 4 back under center, but there are some serious questions to be answered: Can he play through another season without serious injury? Can he perform at a high enough level to lead the team to victory? How many more seasons can he play?

Over the years I have been an unabashed Favre supporter and apologist, but I have to say that I personally put the blame for this whole fiasco at his feet. He stood up and told everyone he was retired from football. He denied rumors of a comback after Sam Farmer of the LA Times ran his story back in April, and more recently he denied the rumors being reported by ESPN last week. If his committment to return was so strong, he should have just announced it instead of letting this media circus get out of hand.

And speaking of committment, if FOX Sports is to be believed, then he’s already jerked the front office around once or twice since his retirement. Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy were ready to let him come back in March but then he changed his mind. That put the team in a position to go forward with Aaron Rodgers and select two more quarterbacks in the draft. With that already in motion, it would have been very difficult if not impossible to then switch course again and insert Favre into the starting lineup.

All of this, I’m sad to say, is the sort of “I before team” behavior that Favre used to stand in opposition to. The Rogue Hour makes the salient point that over the years Favre has become the point man in the NFL for team loyalty and honesty, but this whole episode has run counter to those ideals.

As for Ted Thompson’s role in all this, it seems to me that he has done what has needed to be done to make sure the Packers field a competitive team this year and in the future, and done so under difficult circumstances. There are some TT haters out there who will continue to hate, who will use this as a sounding board to say he pushed Favre out of the organization, but the fact is he is trying to move the team forward and create a winning franchise. I don’t think it is the job of the general manager to beg a player to come out of retirement, and it sounds like he afforded Favre every opportunity to make a decision — and even reverse that decision — until it was no longer possible without hurting the team’s chances for success this year.

All that said, no matter how this all goes down, Brett Favre will always represent something special for Packer fans and Wisconsin. None of this changes the past, and it was a great run of 16 seasons. This move to unretire and get released from the team might leave a nasty taste in our mouths for a while, and it’ll be hard as hell to accept the idea that he’s in another team’s uniform, but he’ll always be a Green Bay Packer, he’ll always be No. 4.