Regrettably, it looks like there will be a sad ending to Brett Favre’s playing career with the Green Bay Packers, as one of the nightmare scenarios – the Packers appear ready to trade Favre before the opening of training camp – is unfolding before our eyes.
That’s the fault of two men – Favre, himself, for his indecisiveness on retirement, and General Manager Ted Thompson for a lack of creativity in dealing with this scenario and his apparent lack of anticipation of it. Given the hints Favre and others have dropped, and given that the Packers apparently were willing to take him back several weeks after he announced his retirement, it’s not as though this was a remote possibility. A backup plan to accept him back for one more year, and take care of Aaron Rodgers with a contract extension, would have been prudent.
My biggest fear is not that Favre will be wearing another uniform this fall, my biggest concern is for the Packers. This team and this organization are about more than one person, and it has always thrived with top-notch management supplied by the likes of Ron Wolf. With the glaring exception of the Favre mess, which was not all his doing, Thompson has done an excellent job rebuilding the Packers the right way, primarily through the draft and player development. True, a few of his draft picks have been head-scratchers – the injury prone Justin Harrell in the first round of 2007, for one – but for the most part he has replenished the Packers’ roster with quality young talent.
He happens to be building one heck of a roster.
If Favre is traded, my concern is that Thompson will be run out of town by angry fans, and Head Coach Mike McCarthy might not be far behind. Both of them have demonstrated their value, Favre or no Favre; like it or not, they are more important to the long-term success of the team than the 38-year-old quarterback.
We’ve seen other examples of what quality management means in Wisconsin sports – Doug Melvin of the Milwaukee Brewers and Pat Richter and Barry Alvarez at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – and what it brings to our quality of life. Let’s face it, Saturdays and Sundays have been a whole lot more fun since about, oh, 1992, and it’s not all because of Brett Favre. It took a shrewd gentleman, the aforementioned Ron Wolf, to get him here when he was a nobody going nowhere fast.
Let’s remember that and tamper any anger that might be directed at Thompson. As we’ve seen in the too-frequent dry spells of our athletic teams, quality executives are not always easy to come by.
