Brett Favre is a pretty good quarterback. Three-time MVP, winning quarterback of Super Bowl XXXI, the NFL’s all-time leader in passing yards, touchdowns, and numerous other categories. You’ve heard all of that. He just had a pretty good season – the Packers went 13 – 3 and won their fourth NFC North title in the six years of the division’s existence. So why are the Packers so eager to see him gone?
Let me preface this post by saying that I root for the Chicago Bears, and while I usually don’t have the Packers’ best interest in mind, I will attempt to be objective throughout this piece. BUDawg and Nat Turner do not root for the Bears, and the views expressed are mine and mine alone.
Mike McCarthy has been the coach of the Packers for the last two seasons. In 2006, he went 8 – 8, and 2007, he went 13 – 3, both seasons coming with Brett Favre at the helm. He has had the opportunity to watch Aaron Rodgers in practice time and time again, whereas our only real glimpse of Aaron Rodgers came in a 37 – 27 loss to the Dallas Cowboys, who also went 13 – 3 last season. While overrated by the media, Dallas was still a pretty good team last year, and losing to them in Dallas by 10 points was not a terrible loss. Was this performance, along with what he saw in practice, really enough to convince McCarthy and the higher-ups that Aaron Rodgers gave Green Bay a better chance at winning the Super Bowl? Evidently, it must have.
“But wait!” you cry. “Brett Favre has one losing season and one super bowl ring! He’s a three-time MVP! He gives the Packers way more of a chance to win the Super Bowl!” He is all of those things, but does he give the Packers a better chance? We don’t know. We’ve only seen Aaron Rodgers once. He could be the Steve Young to Brett’s Joe Montana. We just don’t know, and there’s only one way to find out. In these situations, it’s better to be a year too early than a year too late. Brett Favre is 38. Even with the advances in medicine, not many quarterbacks are effective when they reach 38 or 39. How long are they supposed to keep Brett? Until he can’t play anymore? Aaron Rodgers could be out of his prime by that point, and the Packers would have to draft a new quarterback, and the franchise could be absolutely torpedoed.
The Packers need to know what they have in Aaron Rodgers before the uncapped year. With the way the Green Bay ownership system works, it is impossible for them to compete with the Dan Snyders or the Jerry Joneses or the Robert Krafts… or even the Fords, if the Lions ever decide to do anything. With Ryan Grant and AJ Hawk, among others, the Packers have a talented young nucleus. What if Brett plays until the uncapped year, and then we find out Aaron Rodgers is a bust? Green Bay can’t afford to go after any high-priced quarterbacks. They’d have to develop one through the draft and waste the prime years of their best players with a brand new quarterback – and all of the losing seasons to follow would be just to see if a 40-year old man can lead a team to a Super Bowl championship. Or maybe Brett will pull the whole retirement-non-retirement charade again after this next season. Will the Packers be at fault again? What are they supposed to do?
“But wait!” you cry again. “If Aaron Rodgers is so much better than Brett Favre, then the Packers should let Brett go elsewhere and let other cities see his love of the game. He does love the game of football, you know.” No, they shouldn’t. The Packers don’t think Brett Favre is terrible at this stage of his career – they just think Aaron Rodgers gives them a more viable shot at a super bowl ring. But they don’t know how durable Rodgers is. If your starting QB gets injured, would you rather have Brett Favre come in, or Craig Nall? I thought as much. And even if Green Bay thinks Favre isn’t as good as Rodgers at this point, they probably think Brett is better than Tavaris Jackson, Rex Grossman, or Kyle Orton, and that the addition of #4 would be enough for Chicago or Minnesota to leapfrog the Packers in the NFC North pecking order. That would leave Green Bay competing for a Wild Card spot, and while they could beat out two of Dallas, Philly, the defending champion Giants, Saints, Bucs, or Panthers, as well as the other of Minnesota and Chicago, it won’t be easy. Why risk making one of your rivals better when you could put together the best QB/backup combo in the league, if your hunch on Aaron Rodgers is right?
And that seems to be where the debate is – how can Green Bay possibly think Aaron Rodgers is better than Brett Favre at this point, especially after last season? Again, McCarthy has seen more of Aaron Rodgers play than anyone since Rodgers left Cal. If anyone is fit to make that decision, it’s McCarthy. Perhaps Green Bay is tired of the high risk Favre and wants to go to a more conservative Rodgers, focus the offense on Ryan Grant and ride an above-average defense to the NFC North championship, which will probably be won with a mere 10 victories.
Going conservative could be a good option for Green Bay. The last pass Favre threw in an NFL game was a killer interception in overtime of the NFC championship game that led to the Giants’ game-winning field goal. As mentioned by the Cold Hard Football Facts, Brett’s “gunslinger” mentality was also responsible for the Packers first ever home playoff loss (against the Atlanta Falcons in January of 2003, a game in which he threw two interceptions), a loss to the Rams in January of 2002 where he threw SIX interceptions (though the defense certainly did not help in that one), and a four-interception game against an 8 – 8 Minnesota squad in January of 2005, making Green Bay only the second team ever to lose a playoff game to a team without a winning record. And let’s not forget 2005, where the Packers at one point were 3 – 10 despite scoring just as many points as their opponents. Again, the Cold Hard Football Facts come through with the reasons this occurred, and summarize it far better than I ever could:
* Week 1: Trailing 10-3 midway through the fourth quarter at Detroit, Favre is intercepted by Kenoy Kennedy. The Lions score a touchdown on the ensuing drive to make the final margin 17-3.
* Week 2: Trailing 12-7 late in the third quarter against Cleveland, Favre is intercepted by Gary Baxter. The Browns score a touchdown on the ensuing drive and go on to win 26-24.
* Week 3: Trailing 17-16 versus Tampa Bay with just over five minutes remaining, Favre is intercepted by Will Allen for the second time in the quarter. The Buccaneers run out the clock to preserve the victory.
* Week 8: Trailing 14-7 in the second half at Cincinnati, Favre throws four interceptions on four consecutive drives in the third and fourth quarters. The last one, Odell Thurman’s second pick of the day (and Favre’s fifth), is turned into a touchdown by the Bengals, propelling them to a 21-14 win.
* Week 9: Trailing 13-10 in the fourth quarter against Pittsburgh, Favre is intercepted by Tyrone Carter. The Steelers score a touchdown on the ensuing drive and secure a 20-10 victory.
* Week 11: Trailing 17-14 in the fourth quarter versus Minnesota, Favre is intercepted by Brian Williams. Each team adds a field goal for a final score of 20- 17.
* Week 12: Trailing 19-14 at Philadelphia with less than a minute remaining, Favre is intercepted by Roderick Hood. The Eagles take one knee to run out the clock.
* Week 13: Trailing 12-7 in the second half, Favre is intercepted by Nathan Vasher, who returns the ball 45 yards for the deciding score. This is Green Bay's first loss at Soldier Field since Brett Favre joined the team.
“But wait!” you cry for the third time. “2005 and 2006 were an aberration! Last year was the real Brett!” How sure are we that 2007 was not the aberration, as opposed to 2005 and 2006? Remember, Favre is 38 years old. Before his resurgence, his average season was as follows: 337 of 548 for 3,833 yards, 27 touchdowns, and 18 interceptions. Let’s assume that he avoids a letdown (and ignore how suspicious a career resurgence at 38 happens to be), and posts career-average numbers. That’s one less TD and three more interceptions than 2007, and that is effectively worth one loss. The Packers’ defense gave up 344 points in 2005, 366 in 2006, and 291 in 2007. The Packers gave up only 30 points last season, once in the 37 – 27 loss to Dallas in which Favre was hurt, and again in the completely inexplicable 35 – 7 loss to the Bears, in which Brett Favre threw an interception returned for a touchdown – so the Packers’ defense only gave up 30 points once. Will they stay at a high level, be even better, or will they regress towards the mean? And what of Ryan Grant? He wasn’t the starting running back at the beginning of last season. He really didn’t get set into the lineup until weeks 8 – 10. That means he was running his best against the weakened offensive lines late in the season. How will he hold up against a full 16-game beating? Will he play as hard now that he’s not playing for a contract? We don’t know the answer, but again, it’s an area in which the Packers will most likely be worse than they were in 2007. Don’t forget that the other teams try too: Chicago will have a healthy defense and offensive line, and everyone agrees that Minnesota will be improved. Green Bay doesn’t have to fall as far as you think to miss the playoffs, and the difference could be one Brett Favre “gunsling”.
One final point I would like to make is the media’s (especially ESPN and noted Favre sycophant Peter King) absurd treatment of this entire story. Ignoring the fact that they constantly complain about the circus atmosphere which is entirely their own creation, they have all taken the side of Brett Favre. No one has taken the side that “Hey, maybe Green Bay is making the right choice.” They are taking Brett’s side for five reasons. He is a quarterback, he puts up gaudy statistics (or did in the past), his opponent is a faceless conglomerate or corporation, he is personable (and white), and most importantly, he is nice to the media. I will not delve into the news media’s distaste for faceless conglomerates, whether they be Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Big Oil, or the Green Bay Packers – well, not very much. If there’s not a face that can go with the title, that entity is deemed “bad”, or “evil”. As soon as the average person can put a face to the product, as soon as the human element is added to these media-created villains, they cease to be evil in the mind of the average person. They become somewhat sympathetic, because hey, they’re people trying to make a buck too. Since every story needs a good guy and bad guy for reasons unknown to me, this is unacceptable. There is no one person responsible for the Packers’ dilemma (okay, there is, but it’s Brett Favre, and he’s the unquestioned hero), so it becomes the faceless entity known only as “The Packers”, or as the more foreboding “The Packers’ brass”. Brett Favre cannot be the villain, again, because he’s a white quarterback who puts up numbers while being nice to the media – in other words “A down to earth guy”, despite making over $7 million a year.
Brett Favre was carrying the Packers as recently as 2004. That year, the Packers went 10 – 6 and won the NFC North. They finished 5th in points scored and 3rd in yards gained. However, they also finished 23rd in points allowed, and 25th in opponents’ yards gained. They also finished an abysmal 27th in turnover margin. It took a great season by the offense (and a terrible division) for the Packers’ to get out of that muck and post 10 wins. Since then, however, the defense has improved significantly. Even though the Packers were 31st in turnover margin in 2005 (mainly thanks to Brett’s 29 interceptions, the most by anyone in over two decades), they improved to 17th in that category in 2006 and 10th last season. They were 4th in points scored, 2nd in yards gained, 6th in points allowed, and 11th in opponents yards gained last season. It was an all-around team effort that led the Packers to a 13 – 3 record, but none of that mattered to the media, who had their story by week 3. It was a career resurgence for Brett. That’s what it was, and no evidence to the contrary could change that. When Dallas defeated Green Bay, the story was that if Brett had been in, then Dallas wouldn’t have won. It wasn’t that Green Bay’s normally sturdy 2007 defense gave up 37 points, a tough hurdle for any quarterback to overcome – it was that Brett wasn’t there. When the Bears torched the Packers in week 16, it was because of the weather and the fact that the Bears were playing “for pride” against a hated rival, not because Brett wasn’t at 100% anymore after 15 weeks of playing better than he had in over two years. Of course, it wasn’t the last time that inclement weather would be Brett’s undoing. When he “led” the Packers to a 42 – 20 victory over the Seahawks in the snow (Ryan Grant’s 201 yards rushing notwithstanding, of course), his problems in Chicago were quickly forgotten. Brett was the master of the elements – until the very next week, when the ridiculous cold in Green Bay affected his aging body more than any other players, and he threw the absolutely horrid interception allowing the Giants to kick the winning field goal, as mentioned earlier. But that wasn’t Brett’s fault, of course. Brett is a good guy who was just trying to win it for the team on a risky play. He just loves the game. If you listened to it, it was if no other quarterback apart from Tony Romo (who is overrated), Tom Brady (whose team allegedly cheats), and Peyton Manning (who is named Peyton), even tries to win half as hard as Brett Favre does. It’s absurd.
Brett was great in the past. From 1995 – 1997 he put up amazing numbers. In those three years, he had 12,179 passing yards, 110 touchdowns against 42 interceptions, and a 37 – 11 record. In 1996 he was the offensive cog of one of the 15 best single season teams since 1950 (you may remember some guy named Reggie White on defense). That team scored 456 points and allowed only 210 en route to Green Bay’s first Super Bowl championship since the Vince Lombardi days. As mentioned, Favre was producing as late as 2004. But Mike McCarthy is betting that 2007 was a fluke, and father time is going to take its toll on Brett this season. It has to eventually. That’s why he’s going to town with Aaron Rodgers under center. And as I said earlier, he needs to know what he’s got in the Cal product. Does Green Bay have a two-year window, or a ten-year window? Right now, there are four possibilities. They may look incredibly stupid this season if Rodgers falls flat on his face and goes 5 – 11 and Brett goes 14 – 2 for the Vikings (or god forbid the Bears) and wins the Super Bowl, or they may look incredibly smart and ESPN will have to eat crow when Rodgers goes 12 – 4 and gives the Packers their fifth NFC North title in seven years while Brett finally ages, and throws 15 TDs and 24 INTs for the 6 – 10 Vikings.
There’s also the possibility that McCarthy is banking on, and the reason the Packers don’t want to trade Favre: Rodgers could go 11 – 5, and so could Favre and the Vikings or Bears or Bucs, and Green Bay would miss the playoffs on a tiebreaker (why risk it? Keep Favre, even if it does take $12 million on the bench), or the possibility that I as a Bears fan am hoping for – that Rodgers turns out to be a bust, goes 6 – 10, and Favre ages 10 years in one offseason and also goes 6 – 10 for Minnesota.
Only the Packers can weigh those four possibilities. They have decided that possibilities 2 and 3 outweigh the probability of possibilities 1 and 4, and that means that Aaron Rodgers is the better option at starting quarterback. He could be the next Steve Young. He’s the devil we don’t know and Brett is the devil that we do. Green Bay is in the unenviable position of needing to know both devils (as opposed to Chicago, with no devils in sight) in order to succeed. It’s not all about instant history. Green Bay cannot compete with the major markets, so they need to look farther into the future than your average squad. This is what they’re doing. As long as Brett Favre doesn’t win a super bowl with his new team, then the Packers have the advantage. Despite Minnesota’s improvement and Dallas’ continued overratedness and the Giants’ upset, the AFC’s overall superiority makes this unlikely if Favre’s window is three years at most (he’ll be 41, and there will come a time where he just won’t be a serviceable NFL QB). As much as people like Brett Favre, the right move is to see what you’ve got in Aaron Rodgers. Wasting one season is much more preferable to wasting five or six, and wasting the prime of your current nucleus.
Believe it or not, Green Bay is actually making the correct decision regarding their quarterback controversy. Despite what you hear from the talking heads, the goal is not to win now, the goal is to remain a solvent business enterprise. While winning now helps in this regard, mortgaging the future to win now doesn’t. A team that goes 13 – 3, 10 – 6, and then has nine straight losing seasons because they held onto a former MVP quarterback too long isn’t going to help finances. A team that goes 13 – 3, and then 5 – 11, but then has nine seasons where they average a 9 – 7 record and make six playoff appearances will. That’s what Green Bay is aiming for, and if they happen to go 10 – 6 this year because their quarterback isn’t 38 years old and throwing 20 interceptions a year, then more power to them. Brett Favre thinks he can help Green Bay win now. Mike McCarthy thinks Aaron Rodgers can help Green Bay win now AND later – and that’s the right move.
Ja Doe spent his formative years in New England in the early 1990's, meaning he roots for the Chicago Bears and has since 1993. He also follows the Blackhawks and Bulls, as well as the Colorado Rockies in baseball. College Basketball is #1 in his book though, and he pulls for the Maryland Terrapins.
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