Sportsfrog.com

Green Bay, where it looked like it did when Favre played for them, only different. Mike Vandermause in the Green Bay Gazette with this:

Favre showed exactly why Packers General Manager Ted Thompson refused to trade him to the Vikings last season. The 40-year-old gunslinger still possesses magic in his arm and is helping the Vikings run away with the NFC North Division title. To Thompson’s great dismay, Favre found his way to Minnesota anyway, and the Packers general manager’s worst fears have been realized. Favre came into the Packers’ sacred house, the place he once called home, and carved up his former team with impressive efficiency (128.6 passer rating) and eluded the defense’s furious attempts to generate pressure. “He did a good job of recognizing where the pressure was coming from before it even came,” lamented Packers cornerback Al Harris. “But we’ve got to come up with it. It doesn’t matter if he recognizes it or not, somebody has to beat somebody one on one. Somebody has to do something to make whatever it is work.”

Harris’ frustration was evident, and for good reason. Unless someone starts making plays, the Packers will continue to struggle. This is a team talented enough to subdue the stumblebums on their schedule (Lions and Rams and Browns, oh my!), but not capable of keeping pace with an elite opponent like Minnesota. “That’s what we are,” said Charles Woodson. “Right now we can’t win the big game.” The blame for that must ultimately be laid at the feet of Thompson and head coach Mike McCarthy. The longer this team hovers near the .500 mark after a subpar 6-10 record last year, the more it looks like the Packers’ 13-3 mark in 2007 was an aberration. That remains the only season the Packers finished above .500 under Thompson and McCarthy. Both bear responsibility for ending Favre’s relationship with the Packers, a move that will be debated endlessly but ultimately was based on sound football principles.

It was, but as much as I have been annoyed with the Favre will-he-or-won’t-he retirement stuff, I can’t forget that it is ultimately Ted Thompson’s fault that it came to that. And this. It’s one thing to decide you want to roll with Aaron Rodgers (a decision that clearly made sense for the long term). It is another to decide to roll with Aaron Rodgers AND also try and force Favre into a retirement he clearly didn’t want or to be a back-up, something that he clearly is better than. What should have happened that would have spared everyone several years of Favre related retirment shenanigans? Thompson decides to go with Rodgers, and grants Favre his release to continue his career elsewhere. But since Thompson was too big a puss to do that, we have had the machinations of the last 18 months.

At any rate, Favre can clearly still play and wants to play, it is not Aaro Rodgers’ fault that Green Bay is coming up short in big games, and Ted Thompson is a douche. My scorecard is clear.

In Minneapolis, they are so bored with the Brett Favre story this morning that Sid Hartman devotes his column space to the homerun draft picks that were Adrian Peterson and Percy Harvin. In Harvin’s case, the worries of off-field troubles that caused him to slip in the draft to a grateful Minnesota seem quite distant.