How to Squander 16 Years of Good Will and Adoration

by tgirsch

August 1st, 2008

It’s apparently not that difficult, if you’re trying.

Categories: NFL, Sports |

7 Comments

Kevin T. Keith August 2nd, 2008
I haven’t been following the situation and don’t know any of the details, but from the story I gather that the team is deliberately handcuffing him so he can’t play for another team. That makes me a little more sympathetic to Favre.

You can argue that his indecision is unseemly, and maybe it is, but he apparently really wants to play football, and there’s apparently at least one NFL team that thinks he’s still NFL-level starting quarterback material, so I think there’s a presumption he should play. If his love of the game is that strong, and his skill is that high, it doesn’t seem embarrassing to me that he’d come back and give it another try.

If Green Bay is simply manipulating his contract to keep him from playing for another team, that strikes me as low-class. (They apparently think he’s not good enough to play for them, but he’s good enough to beat them playing for someone else. So that makes two NFL teams who think he’s good enough to win.) If Favre’s enough of a competitor that he’ll play professional football at the age of 40, and Green Bay are such whimps that they’re afraid to face him on the field and are using contract loopholes to keep him from playing, I don’t know why Favre is getting all the criticism.

The one question is the outstanding salary clause in his contract. I don’t know how that plays out. If the issue is that Green Bay would sell the contract but Minnesota won’t buy it out, or Favre is ambivalent enough that he’d accept the same amount of money for not playing even if he had the option to do otherwise, then my sympathies shift. But the story implies that it’s not the money that’s keeping him from Minnesota, it’s that Green Bay is playing games with the contract - and trying to buy off Favre on the side to keep him from making a fuss - because they want a less-competitive league environment. And if that’s so, that’s bullshit.

(He should be loyal to his old team, you say? Are they being loyal to him, or even sporting about the game they’re actually engaged in? Screw them.)
tgirsch August 2nd, 2008
The issue here is a little more complex than that. For starters, if the team is to be believed (by no means a given), they made offers to him to have him come back, which he turned down and/or changed his mind repeatedly. According to media reports, team representatives were ready to fly to Mississippi to sign a deal for his return, only to have him back out again at the last minute. This seems plausible, based on Favre’s history of mind-changing on retirement. But even that isn’t really the problem.

The problem is that Favre seems to want to play, just not for Green Bay. Worse still, it seems from circumstantial evidence is that his interest in returning is owed in large part to offers to come back and play for a hated rival, Minnesota, all this while still under contract to Green Bay. (In fact, the allegation has been made that the Vikings “tampered” — negotiated with Favre while he was still under contract with Green Bay — and Minnesota has not denied this allegation at all. The suspicion is that the interest from the rival is the prime motivator in his sudden interest in returning.) Basically, Favre wants the Packers to release him from his contract, so that he can go play for the hated rival without the team receiving any compensation whatsoever, and his agent has him playing a particular sort of hardball — if you don’t give me exactly what I want, I’ll show up at camp and bring a media circus with me.

To put it in baseball terms, it would be as if Jeter retired while still under contract to the Yankees. The Yankees repeatedly asked him to return, and he said no. Then he received an offer to play for the Red Sox, and told the Yankees he wanted to be unconditionally released from his contract so he could go play in Boston.

Further muddying the circumstances is the fact that when Favre announced his interest in returning, Green Bay asked him for a list of teams to which he would accept a trade, and he essentially refused to give one. No trade, just a release, meaning the team would not only have no control over where he does go to play, but would also get no compensation if he did go somewhere else. (Plus, I’m not entirely sure about this, but I think there may be negative salary cap implications if they simply release him.)

Normally I’m with you in siding with the player versus the team in disputes like this, but the particulars of this specific case do not look very good for the player.

Also, I’d disagree with your characterization that he’s “apparently not good enough to play for them.” In fact, the team seems to have worked hard to get him to come back. It was only after Favre repeatedly insisted that he really was “done,” that the team committed to a new direction, their current QB. And even after all that, they’ve offered him the option of naming teams to which he would accept a trade, or of returning to the team as a backup.

In more recent days, Green Bay has seemed to back off its stance and open up the possibility of trading him even to a division rival, including possibly Minnesota, the team he seems to be interested in playing for. But even that doesn’t seem to be good enough. He’s still asking for his unconditional release, and threatening to cause a media circus if he doesn’t get exactly what he wants. All of this leads me to believe that he’s the one being inflexible, and he’s the one being manipulative. And I say this as someone who has been a very big fan of the guy — it’s not like I’m inclined to dislike or mistrust him. Throughout the entire drama, he’s the one who hasn’t budged — he’s the one making demands, and offering nothing in return.

All that said, the latest update is that the Packers have offered Favre a $20 million marketing contract (in effect, paying his contracted salary for the two remaining years of his contract) if he stays retired and doesn’t return to play for another team, and the word is that he’s seriously considering it. If this has really been all about a desire to play all along, why would such an offer even be considered?
Kevin T. Keith August 2nd, 2008
What’s the benefit to Favre of getting a release, if they’re willing to trade him to the team he’d play for if he got the release anyway? That sounds like he’s just deliberately causing trouble, and that’s a little hard to swallow.

As for the no-play option, that was what I was wondering. I could see it as making the best of a bad situation if he resigned himself to the idea that he’d never play again. But if they are willing to arrange for him to play, then turning back around and just demanding money for, essentially, nothing, does cut his whole argument out from under him.

It seems very hard to get a straight story from anybody about this, though.
digglahhh August 2nd, 2008
TG summed this up pretty well.

Basically all GB wanted was a decision; the world don’t stop for Brett Favre. They made their plans for a Favre-less future, and they want to stick to them. With the departure of Favre, GB drafted another QB in this year’s draft. They wouldn’t have done if they had Favre.

Sports is competitive (Captain Obvious), the players agree to the terms of their contracts. Green Bay should only trade Favre if they think it is in THE TEAM’S best interest. Frankly, fuck Favre’s interest. It being in Favre’s best interest to go to Minny should be irrelevant to GB’s decision of what to do with him. Hell if that were the case, Rogers (former back-up, heir to Favre) woulda been traded years ago and starting somewhere now.
tgirsch August 2nd, 2008
What’s the benefit to Favre of getting a release, if they’re willing to trade him to the team he’d play for if he got the release anyway?

Well, depends upon the benefit for whom. First and foremost, the Packers would rather not trade him to Minnesota. Their willingness to even consider it, I think, illustrates who’s being more flexible here. The benefit to the team for trading him is that at least then, they get something (hopefully of value) in return, instead of letting another team have their hall of fame player — a player who insisted he didn’t want to play any more — “for free.”

Meanwhile the benefit for Favre of getting a release, instead of a trade, is that he gets to dictate all of the terms at that point. If there’s a trade, both teams must agree to the terms of that trade or there’s no deal. If he’s released, he can sign wherever, no fuss, no muss. Further, if he’s traded, then his current contract applies. If he’s released, he can negotiate a brand new deal with the new team.

Now, I don’t know how much cap room Minnesota has, so I don’t know if they could afford to throw a blockbuster contract at him for a year or two, but it doesn’t strike me as being outside the realm of possibilities.

Thus far, there have been several opportunities for Favre to end this “peacefully” — including, at one time, options where he continues to be the starting QB in Green Bay — and he’s passed on all of them. He’s basically taken an “all-or-nothing” approach here — “release me from all obligations, or I’ll make things ugly.” I just don’t see how you can fault the team for that. Is it possible that the team isn’t being entirely forthcoming? Of course it is. There just isn’t any evidence that this is the case here, however.

There’s a part of me that thinks a lot of this has to do with Favre not getting along with Green Bay GM Ted Thompson — not exactly a secret. But what’s interesting to me about this is that I usually err very strongly on the side of the player, and Favre — a guy I’ve always genuinely liked — just hasn’t given me anything to grab on to here.
digglahhh August 4th, 2008
It’s worth noting, re: the why not trade him to Minnesota thing, the Vikings have the best running back in the division (some might say in the sport), and the best defense as well (again, some might say in the sport). Their QB options are terrible though. If they added #4, they’d immediately become the prohibitive favorite to win the division, as well as be put on the short list of teams with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations.
tgirsch August 4th, 2008
Which would help explain why #4 is so eager to play there.