The Bitter Pill

The recently retired John Madden authored a refrain for Brett Favre, one that shorthanded his legacy of occasionally amazing, occasionally frustrating play on the field.

“He looks like a kid out there.”

Like the annual retirement drama – first the will-he-or-won’t-he shell game, then the coyly denied encore – Madden’s fawning refrain for Favre became tiring and the object of ridicule.

But perhaps there’s more truth to the statement underneath the surface.

The new cycle is abuzz with Favre’s possible retiring of retirement again. This time around, though, it’s about righting wrongs, a delayed union with the Minnesota Vikings while sticking it to the Packers management which deftly manuevered around Favre’s demands during last summer’s standoff, shipping Favre to the New York Jets, an ironic Siberia of sorts.

I was prepared to make no more comments on the swirling controversy. Did you miss what I already wrote? It was buried in musings on Percy Harvin to the Vikings:

Favre is a much better quarterback even at 40 than Tarvaris Jackson or Sage Rosenfels. But at this late stage he can only fulfill the same arch as those two. A surprising and competitive regular season with diminishing returns, a nonfactor once they reach the playoffs.

(And it’s not just Jett Favre that brings me to this conclusion. I was in the stands at Lambeau, we were chanting MVP during what was an incredible statistical season for a 38 year old signal caller. But we knew it was all a nostalgia trip. The Stones with Ron Wood, not Brian Jones. All of the form, most of the substance, but not all the substance… we supplied the rest, the missing part.)

As is his wont, my friend the Counselor was even less charitable than I. “The Giants threw the kitchen sink at Tom Brady and Romo two years ago but they dared Favre to beat them,” he said, “[Favre] couldn't do it.”

But, at some point, this new old mess became about something else. And like Madden’s refrain for Favre, the on-field truths started spilling over to the off-field reality.

Unnamed sources close to Favre report that his bitterness toward the Green Bay Packers management is so deep that he’s seriously considering subjecting his nearly 40 year old body to another grueling season, just a season after injuries limited his effectiveness down the stretch.

The entire bitterness angle might become moot if Favre requires serious surgery on his throwing arm. But it’s there nonetheless, acknowledged during his latest retirement, potentially eating away at the substance of his legacy.

And it strikes me that this overwhelming bitterness is entirely immature, even childish, especially for a man whose beard is flecked with gray and face creased with wrinkles, each gray hair and craggy wrinkle earned through physical campaigns of football seasons stretching back decades.

Perhaps Madden was more right than he knew, that Favre is essentially a child.

There’s a puzzling logic at work here, namely, that something is owed to him yet he owes nothing in return.

At the center of this is a struggle with Green Bay’s management for the identity of the franchise. In last year’s standoff, Favre and wife Deanna revealed a series of demands on the team, players to trade for and sign to give Favre a contender in his final years.

The lines blurred between Favre and the Packers. The face of the franchise thing went too far. Many had a hand in it – fans, coaches, writers, etc – but most of all, Favre himself.

At some point, current general manager Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy sought to draw those distinctions again. What started off as tense became untenable after the Packers close loss in the NFC Championship game two years ago. The new management provided the contender on their own terms in concert with Favre’s diminished role. Did someone not hold up their end of the bargain? If so, which side?

From that tit-for-tat Favre’s bitterness sprung, that childish sense of being denied something owed.

Yet lost in the controversy is what the team’s fans are owed. The front office is not interchangable with the team. Yes, it’s a part, an integral and essential part. But a team is more than this, especially one owned by its fans (though I would argue all fans own their teams to an extent, with the Packers it’s merely a formality).

Fans are owed a contender as often as possible. It’s about what’s on the field. The energies of the players, coaches, and personnel guys should be focused primarily on the goal of a championship. That’s all we ask, a simple and considerable request.

We can debate the various degrees at which this player or that coach is effective at their job. But without that focus, little progress is likely to be made towards a championship.

Favre’s bitterness is about something else. It’s a derailing of this focus. Money and fame already do their part in distracting the group psychology of a team. It's too much to add a quarterback, a de facto leader, not campaigning for an elusive ring, rather because the petty squabbles of power plays bruise the ego.

Favre may play like a kid, but he's acting like one, too.