Brett Favre Gives It One More Season. Why?

I've been a Packer fan since the early 90s when I lived in Wisconsin. Favre has done an outstanding job in his time as quarterback. But I see no reason for him to continue playing -- let alone for Green Bay. The Pack stand no chance of having a good season this year, so why would Favre want to subject himself to another brutal year? I believe he is physically able to play another year, but an athlete with as stellar a career as Favre should play his final years on a good team. The Packers should get a new quarterback -- someone maybe a year or two out of college. That person should work with the struggling team, and they can rebuild the team together. Favre should be allowed to go out with dignity, not as the leader of the league's worst team.

Favre Is Back, But Rebuilding Packers Have No Chance
(SI.com) So Brett Favre is coming back for another year, which he swears will be his last. And Ricky Williams will be leaving for another year, which probably spells the end of his always eventful NFL saga. No shock value in either case, is there?

The storylines involving the much-discussed futures of two NFL headliners finally came to some sort of resolution on Tuesday, and we wish there was some sort of larger significance we could attach to it all, wrapping it all up in one nice, neat package. But there isn't.

There's the famous Favre, who annually flirts with retirement but can't seem to find it within himself to follow through, and the infamous Williams, who just can't stay on the right side of the league's substance-abuse policy, no matter how many chances his talent seems to buy him.

First, Favre. We'd like to close our eyes and imagine that a fairy-tale ending is now in store for the NFL's most recognizable and charismatic player. A 16th season straight out of Hollywood, where Favre returns to lead a young and hungry Packers team back from mediocrity and into the playoffs, allowing him to go out in one last blaze of Green Bay-style glory. It would be the year-long victory lap of all victory laps, dwarfing even JohnElway's final triumphant title run in Denver.

The problem is, there is virtually no shot of that happening. The Packers are a rebuilding team in the throes of a major down cycle, and even Favre himself seems to realize that his coming back changes nothing about the 4-12 reality that descended on Green Bay in 2005. Sorry, Cheeseheads, but hiring MikeMcCarthy as coach, re-signing defensive end Aaron Kampman and drafting Ohio State linebacker A.J. Hawk (maybe) does not a turnaround make.

The Packers are likely a double-digit loss team with Favre in 2006, and they certainly would have been without him. The best we can hope for are a few special moments from his last trip around the league, flashes of the old Favre doing what he has always done best, playing his own brand of slightly out-of-control football and improvising like no other quarterback anywhere.

I'll take that, but you wonder if it'll be enough of a final reward for Favre, whose competitive streak has widened to a four-lane highway through the years. If the Packers sink to the bottom of the NFC North standings early on in the season, will Favre's game head even further south than it did in '05, when he threw a league-worst 29 interceptions, 12 more than the next quarterback in that dubious category?

Tag: Brett Favre