"Oh dear, how can Brett Favre possibly wear another team's uniform?" WHAT-EVAH. **********
News around the campfire has come through that Brett Favre has decided he isn't quite done yet. He's asked the Green Bay Packers--who after three or four false alarms officially tabbed Aaron Rodgers their new starting quarterback the minute Favre retired--to release him from his contract so he can find a new team to play for this season.
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Sound familiar?
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Favre wants to be released rather than traded so that he could have more say in his choice of teams. Green Bay is hesitant to give him what he wants because he might end up in Minnesota or Chicago--teams that would make this incident twice as embarrassing should Favre succeed.
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We're going to carefully watch how this plays out. Sure, Jake Plummer's numbers aren't up there with Favre's, but the situation is very, very similar. Team moves on to young QB, veteran requests release so HE can move on, team decides to hold his contract hostage due to egos and greed.
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Brett Favre does not have a trade clause, by the by. Technically the Pack can trade him to New England in exchange for a never-worn "19-0" World Championship T-Shirt and some slightly used video tapes and Favre would either be forced to report or retire for real...just like Jake. Now, the media has a big boner for Favre because he's been the NFL's Golden Boy QB since the day he took the NFL's favorite team back to the NFC title game in 1995. He's going to get weekly articles written about his situation; some sympathetic, some critical. Jake Plummer didn't get as much attention when he opted out, and I think we all know why...
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Because Brett Favre is white, and Jake Plummer just happens to be...um, wait. Never mind.
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Either way, the Packers are in a lose-lose situation. If the organization is truly the class act it purports to be, it will wash its hands of Favre, wish him well, make no attempts to keep him off the Bears, or Vikings, or Lions, and resolve to pound the crap out of him after the standing ovation dies down the first time he walks back into Lambeau. If the organization is a bunch of punks revolving around the decisions of a has-been with a Napoleon complex, Brett might find himself getting shipped off to another city or forced to do something drastic like show up to training camp and play well enough so that the Packers have to either alienate their supposed future QB for life or look like complete tools by letting Favre ride the pine when he's still considered a top ten player at his position.
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Now, because you might be calling us complete idiots right now, here's where the story differs between Favre and Plummer besides the fact that, yes, Favre is a future Hall of Famer and Jake is not (but we still like Jake better so f*** you.) Jake never asked to be pulled from the starting lineup. The Broncos still had a playoff spot when Shanahan decided that the Broncos were no longer playing for the Super Bowl that year (and what does every team state that they're playing for when the season begins, from Detroit to Miami to Oakland to Houston? THE SUPER BOWL.) When the next season started, Jake saw no logic in backing up Cutler for a team that had plainly stated "WE DON'T WANT YOU IN THERE EVEN IF IT COSTS US THE SEASON," and asked for a release. Shanahan and the Broncos, fearful that Jake might go to Houston or Oakland and potentially make them look foolish, said, "NO," and traded him out of the conference despite Jake's promise that he would never put on a helmet for the Tampa Bay Fake Raiders (oh, we aren't letting that one go.)
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Favre, meanwhile, is simply a man going back on his word, albeit a word pressured upon him by Green Bay, who needed to know well in advance if they needed to tweak their NFC runner-up team around Brett Favre or retool the offense for Aaron Rodgers. Favre, tired from a long season, disappointed by a conference-losing interception, and comforted that he'd had a hell of a season for his age, made the snap decision that okay, enough was enough I guess. The Packers exhaled and tried to move on. Then six months later Brett decides okay, well I guess enough is NOT enough. Favre gets blame here as well simply for not thinking things through. It's the same kind of thinking that took Roger Clemens from respected Legend-with-a-capital-L of baseball to a recurring will-he-or-won't-he-come-back annoyance. And this was BEFORE the steroid allegations blew up.
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We here are going to side with Favre simply because we couldn't give a crap about the NFC and we'll always take the proletariat over the bourgoisie. The thought of seeing Favre with an NFC Central rival chopping up the Packers secondary gives us a perverse little chill. Will Brett get his wish and get released? You know what? We believe he will if only because the Football Gods obviously hate us and will want us to get pissed off about seeing Brett Favre doing what Jake Plummer could not do--come out ahead of The Man. Maybe he finds his way into an approved trade that works out for everyone, but the only way the Packers trade him within the NFC is if they send him to a creampuff team that's no threat to Green Bay, like Atlanta or St. Louis. And even then, there's the danger that Favre sparks an unexpected playoff run and the Packers end up looking stupid. They'll talk to a few AFC teams, they'll try to con Favre into retiring, but in the end, Brett Favre will probably get his way because he's Brett Favre and that's just what happens to the Brett Favres of the world.
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However, it won't end up exactly how he pictured it. That much we can guarantee. The NFL is a funny place and the owners do not want to set precedent by letting a guy get his way over the outline of a contract even if the owners can terminate most contracts with a word. Why else do you think Tampa Bay and Denver came down on Jake so hard instead of just letting him go? The NFL bigwigs don't want to set precedent for players gaining an advantage; they want to make examples of players and remind them for whom this league exists to be exploited.
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Our final thoughts are directed towards Jake Plummer. One wonders what he thinks of the situation. We imagine after he finished rolling his eyes at the coincidence and irony of Favre's situation, Jake sat back, had a few words about it with his wife, family, or friends, and said "You know what? I hope Brett comes out on top in this one and sticks it right up Green Bay's cheese." (purely hypothetical)
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Not just because old QB's stick together. Not just because one naturally tends to favor the individual over the corporation. Not just because Jake was once in a similar situation and would like to see someone stick it to The Man the way The Man stuck it to Jake. No, Jake would favor Brett in the end because when it's all said and done, right or wrong, Brett Favre embarrassing Green Bay would be Schadenfreude of the highest order and would simply be damn fun to watch.
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Brett Favre and Green Bay owe each other nothing now. It's time to wipe the board clean and walk away, without a bitch move like, oh, Green Bay trading Favre someplace he plainly doesn't want to be and costing him millions because the other team got dazzled and didn't pay attention to the traded player himself. After all, if Denver and Shanahan had just sucked up their pride and did Jake a favor for replacing and embarrassing him by saying "next year" was more important than "this year" while "this year" was still an outside possibility, we might have seen a 2007 NFL team that:
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LET PLUMMER PLAY!!!
(Note: Please forgive us for the ' stuff betweeen paragraphs. the blogger.com formatting is screwy on this particular computer.)
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