Another Season, Another Reason To Despise Brett Favre

Oh, my, can you believe it? Brett Favre lied to everyone again when he said he was really retired for good this time. Personally, I'm shocked. My whole world is turned upside down. I don't even know...

Wait, scratch that, this is Brett Favre.

Of course he was going to sign with the Vikings this year. We've known that since right after the draft when he asked the Jets for his release and the Vikings didn't take a QB. We probably could have guessed it right after he "retired" again after last season.

Many Vikings fans are excited about this. They shouldn't be. Brett Favre is washed up. Brett Favre has been washed up for the last 6 years.

Let me once again remind everyone that before the Jets signed him last year, I was against it.

A quote:

In his prime, Brett Favre by himself wins you an extra two to four games in a season. Now? You're lucky to break even, given how many bad interceptions he throws (see: the NFC Championship game against the Giants last year.) Old QBs can get really old really fast. Does he even have one more good year in him? I'm not totally convinced.

That was before last year. Did he do anything during the Jets season to change that? Absolutely not.

He had one very good game against a good team - the Pats game. He had a couple good games against bad teams, in particular the Rams game.

He had one of the worst Decembers I've ever seen, including the Seattle game that I saw in person.

In the last four Decembers, he's been awful. 13 touchdowns, 31 interceptions over the last four Decembers.

He's old. He throws too many bad picks. He doesn't throw enough good TDs anymore to overcome them. He can't last a full year. He can't do well in the cold weather anymore.

So, first of all, he's not a particularly good QB anymore.

Second, all of that 'great leader' stuff is in the past, too. He's now seen exactly for what he is - a prima donna, a diva, someone who gets too much of the credit and not enough of the blame. A guy who gets special treatment from the coaches that no one else gets.

Jets players saw through him last year. Vikings players will see through it this year.

The national media won't. Not yet. They are still to in love with the Brett Favre of the past, the guy who 'just loves to play football' and all that nonsense.

I'm sure I'm not the only Jets fan that has this response:

I was never happy to see you come to the team. I was glad to see you retire after you fucked us the last half of the year. I am tired of your act, tired of the fawning media coverage, tired of people looking the other way while you throw bad pick after bad pick. I will be rooting for your embarrassment and failure in Minnesota, and hope both will be spectacular.

In closing, Brett Favre, the only balls you should get to play with are mine, with your tongue. May you only spend the money you earn from this contract on doctors.

Yes, Yes, A Thousand Times Yes

Let's hope this is really, truly the end of it:

Favre retires

Remember, I didn't want him in the first place. And save for three or four games this year, he played like the washed up quarterback he was. Especially in December, when it mattered most.

New coach, new era, new quarterback.

At least he spared us the interminable drama of "will he, won't he." That's the second-most boring story in sports today, behind steroids.

So, goodbye, Favre. I never want to think about you in a Jets uniform again.

Here Come The Warm Jets: Favre Clarification

For most people I associate with, I'm one of if not the only Jets fan they know.

Which means that they've all been asking lately what I think of the Brett Favre trade. So I tell them.

That, of course, gets the follow up of, "What, are you nuts? How, as a Jets fan, can you not be excited?"

Allow me to explain.

First, allow me to qualify. I fully understand that as it seems right now, 38 year old Brett Favre is better than Chad Pennington, and better than Kellen Clemens. Meaning, I fully understand that having Favre on the team makes it more likely that the team will be better this year. If the equation is "better team" = "happy fan" then I seem to be mathematically eliminated from hating this deal.

There are a few mitigating factors to it, which should make it clearer why I still stand by my initial reaction of being filled with expletive-laden frustration.

1 - He is not our guy. Brett Favre is a Packer. He is the Jesus of Green Bay. He took a dead franchise and dead fan base and revived them both. Seeing these types of athletes on other teams always feels wrong; it feels somehow fake. Sure, he'll be wearing the jersey and helmet of my favorite team, and once the games start I'll be able to push these feelings aside. But once the games are done, it'll feel like a sham, somewhat emptier than normal. And for those making the Vinny comparison, at least Vinny was a New York guy. Vinny was a Long Island paisan coming home, making the home fans proud. Favre, as well know, is from Mississippi. He's going even further from home, certainly from a cultural standpoint. Maybe if he was from Lodi I'd feel different.

2 - The team was going to be better this year without him. As I've pointed out before, last year the team had seven losses by seven points or less. So, sure, they were 4-12, but with some breaks and better line play on both sides of the ball, they could have just as easily been something like 7-9 or 8-8. They spent a lot of money in the offseason fixing the problems on the lines, so the odds were that the team was already going to be in the vicinity of 7 to 9 wins, even with Clemens or Pennington at QB. Bottom line is that no QB is good behind a crap offensive line (or even a line playing like crap for one game, just ask Tom Brady after the Super Bowl.) The line getting better means Clemens or Pennington were going to be better. Now Favre comes in, and say the team wins 9 games, Favre just gets to add to his mythology without really earning it.

3 - If the team isn't ready to win right now, why waste a year of developing a young QB? No one reasonably thinks that the Jets are winning the Super Bowl this year. At the very least the Patriots, the Colts, and the Chargers are better teams, not to mention Pittsburgh and Cleveland. And that's just the AFC. So, if that's the case, why not see what you have with Clemens? If he starts to come into his own, you are in great shape for 2009. If he's awful (which is what he was looking like last year) then you get a good draft pick and take another young QB in the first or second round and start over from there. Now we get one year of Brett Favre, two at the most, which means a year or two (but probably just one) of just good enough to be watchable but not good enough to do anything really interesting, which means a middle-round draft pick and another year or two of Clemens getting no game action. If it's not getting the team any closer to the Super Bowl now or next year or two years from now, why is this supposed to be exciting for me?

4 - I'd rather have relevance from success than from purchases. Maybe this is some warped old-world immigrant way of thinking, but I hate that the columnists all say that this finally gives the team relevance. It's not relevance earned, it's relevance paid for, which feels phony (and goes back to point #1). If the Jets were going to be relevant on the NFL landscape, I'd like it to be because they did the right thing as a franchise, built a tradition of drafting and signing the right players, being smart about how to build a team, and creating an overall culture of excellence. Like the Steelers have done, or the Pats have done under Kraft. I actually thought the Woody Johnson-Mike Tannenbaum-Eric Mangini regime was starting to do this, laying the foundation that might have started paying real dividends in the next three years. I'm not saying that the Favre thing undermines it altogether, but it certainly doesn't feel as genuine as the alternative.

5 - He's 38 years old. I've been of the opinion that Brett Favre has been washed up for about five years. He did have an excellent year last year, but that seemed to have as much to do with having an incredible defense and a strong offensive line than anything he was doing on his own. In his prime, Brett Favre by himself wins you an extra two to four games in a season. Now? You're lucky to break even, given how many bad interceptions he throws (see: the NFC Championship game against the Giants last year.) Old QBs can get really old really fast. Does he even have one more good year in him? I'm not totally convinced.


Look, I'll be super honest: if the Jets start out something like 6-2 and Favre looks like the real Brett Favre and he's making Coles and Cotchery look like Toon and Walker circa 1986, I'm sure I'll be giddy and writing laudatory columns on this site looking to name Favre President for Life. Right now I've got misgivings and feel like this move doesn't at all align with my personal philosophy, but I'm not that much of a masochist.

At the same time, the one thing I want more than anything as a Jets fan is to see the team win the whole thing. Not as a fluke, and not as a stunt. And let's be honest about something else - if the Jets do win the Super Bowl this year or next year, what does the story read? It reads "Brett Favre wins Super Bowl." Not the Jets, but Brett Favre. I'm not saying I'd hate that necessarily, but I'm not sure, today, that I'm going to love it as much as I should, either.

I Am Filled With Expletives And Not Much Else

Brett Favre is a Jet.

This would be great news if it was 1996.

Unfortunately, it is 2008. So this is the opposite.

The only thing that would make me happy right now is if the Packers signed Browning Nagle, for symmetry.

The only good news is that they didn't give that much up, I guess.

Am I supposed to say that I can't wait to watch him throw all those "adorable" interceptions that make him so endearing to people like Peter King?

Am I supposed to say that this is going to take the team to the Super Bowl when I know that it won't?

No. I'm supposed to say fuck a lot. Which is what I'm doing, believe me.

Fuck.