Brats & Beer

Gabbing With Greta

Judging from Brett Favre’s interview with Greta Van Susteren tonight, Copernicus had it all wrong: The sun isn’t the center of the solar system, the moons and planets all revolve around the gravitational pull of No. 4’s ego.

Harsh? I agree, and it’s not something I really want to be saying about such a great player that I’ve followed all these years, but that’s mostly what I got from watching Favre on FOX News. (If you missed it, the Press-Gazette has the transcript here.) He honestly seems to think that the Packers were supposed to wait around for him to finally make up his mind two weeks before training camp, or they should just turn on a dime and reverse everything they’d been working on since March.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around this — and it doesn’t help that On The Record only showed part of the interview (tune in again tomorrow!) — but the crux of the matter seems to be that we don’t understand Favre “the artist.” Apparently his retirement speech and press conference was just performance art expressing his emotions at the time, but we all should have known it was just a show. Shame on Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy — and us fans — for taking it so literally.

I’m also amazed at Favre’s incredulous reaction to the fact that the Packers would actually move forward with plans to make Aaron Rodgers the starter (despite repeated claims that “them moving on does not bother me”) and his headstrong belief that the team should just grant him an unconditional release. He’s played the NFL for 17 years, he must know how these things work, right? He retires, the team finds a replacement; he changes his mind, the team is going to deal with it in a way that is most beneficial to the long-term success of the franchise.

I have to agree with Aaron at Cheesehead TV that it was shocking how easily and flipantly Favre threw MM under the bus. We’ll have to wait for the team’s reaction to his claim that McCartly told him in June “playing here is not an option,” though to be fair MM might have been projecting into the future because that does seem like an accurate depiction of the situation at this point. Clearly now Favre’s relationship with both MM and TT appears beyond repair.

There will be I’m sure more fallout tomorrow and then the next day after we see the final episode of the Greta tapes; unfortunately this carnival ride is just getting started.