Filed under: American Football | Tags: American Football, Brett Favre, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings, NFL, Sage Rosenfels, Tarvaris Jackson
Brett Favre has had a hall of fame career. He has a Super Bowl Ring (1996-7), three MVP trophies (1995-7), the most career passing yards, touchdown passes, pass completions, consecutive starts among quarterbacks and career victories as a starting quarterback. What more could this man want? Many football players suffer from all types of different body pains and it only gets worse after the NFL training room’s never ending supply of morphine and other pain killers gets cut off with retirement. The longer he delays that retirement, the worse it will be. Favre has been sacked 469 times in 273 career regular season games, he turns forty in October, and after his breakdown at the end of last year, there is no way he is worth a contract between $10 and $12 million. What are the Minnesota Vikings thinking? It is one thing to have the skill and desire to keep on playing, but no one with a straight face can tell me that only winning once in the last five games of a season when facing only one opponent that finished with a winning record shows that Favre still has what it takes to bring the Vikings to the play-offs, let alone the Super Bowl.
I have nothing against Favre; he just needs to learn when to hang up his cleats. This is not baseball which is much less taxing on the body and thus allows great pitchers like Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson to pitch into their 40s; this is football where a long career ends at age 36. Even other great quarterbacks like Dan Marino and John Elway ended their careers at 38, not playing into their 40s. Instead, Favre has chosen to jeopardize his relationship with Green Bay Packers fans (if he hasn’t already alienated them all) and organization, which is unlike Favre who many consider to be a class act (and considering he spent 17 years there). After toying with the Packers on when he was going to retire and thus severely holding back the development and career of Aaron Rodgers, to join the Vikings the biggest rivals of the Packers just doesn’t seem right. Instead, Favre is depicting himself as a bitter old man looking to make some money and compensate for something by proving he can still play. After 17 injury-free seasons, there is no way Favre lasts the whole season unscathed at such an old age.
Although the Vikings may need help at the quarterback position with Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels not the ideal as starter and back up, Jackson is only 26, is much more mobile, has shown glimmers of being a great quarterback, and is more familiar with the offense and the players on the team. Also, think about the message the Vikings are sending to Jackson, they are clearly choosing a “win now” approach with a 40 year old quarterback over a “continue winning the division and improving the young starting quarterback” approach. As there has been no talk of Favre only being brought onto the team as a mentor (in which case he should have been hired as a QB coach), no one should think he is there just to help Jackson get better. In addition to breaking down the former starting Quarterback’s confidence, the Vikings have failed to realize there is no chemistry with a prima-donna quarterback who is coming in for a year of shits and giggles and doesn’t care about his teammate’s future. The quarterback is the fearless leader who looks out for his teammates; how will Vikings’ players respond knowing that Favre will more than likely not be playing with them after this year? I realize they are all professionals, but still, the team wasn’t exactly broken so why try and fix it by only bringing in temporary help. Look for Favre to get injured and the Vikings to be thrown into partial disarray because of both the distraction of Favre and the re-adjustment to a completely different (and confidence damaged) quarterback.
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