What Did the Packers Owe Favre?

In 1998, Brett Favre was coming off his third consecutive MVP season. His team had gone 13-3 and to its second straight Super Bowl the year before.

Peyton Manning entered his rookie year for the Indianapolis Colts, who had gone 3-13.

From 1998 on, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning remarkably have started every game. Here are the results:

• Favre made 6 play-off appearences; Manning nine.
• Favre made 5 Pro Bowls; Manning nine.
• Favre won zero MVP's; Manning three.
• Favre won three play-off games; Manning seven.
• Favre got to and won zero Super Bowls; Manning got to one and won.
• Favre threw 282 touchdowns; Manning 333
  
• Favre threw 215 interceptions; Manning 165
  
• Favre went 106-70; Manning went 117-59
• Favre had a passer rating of 85 or better six times; Manning had a rating of 95 or better six times (Favre just once), and of 85 or better nine times.

If we throw out the first year, 1998, Manning looks even better compared to Favre. And let's not forget Favre was outplayed on the Frozen Tundra in play-off games by Michael Vick and Eli Manning.

Donovan McNabb came into the League in 1999. His worst year for throwing interceptions equals Favre's career best. (Career interception percentage for McNabb: 2.1; Favre: 3.3)

I don't know if McNabb is a Hall of Fame quarterback. Indeed, trade rumors have swirled around him for years. And he's won a heck of a lot more play-off games in his first ten seasons in the league than Favre did in his last ten in Green Bay. Indeed, the oft-benched Kurt Warner has more meaningful accomplishments in the last ten years than Favre, and he's no lock for the Hall either.

Here's what it comes down to with Favre: when he entered the League, it had Young, Aikman, Moon, Kelly, Marino, and Elway. And from 1994-2007 he was playing better than these six Hall of Famers.

But just when he was entering his prime years, his production fell off. He started throwing more interceptions again. This decade, he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Warner and McNabb, along with Garcia, Hasselbeck, and Brees. But nowhere near the same breath as Manning and Tom Brady, the only current sure-fire Hall of Fame quarterbacks (although the younger class beginning with Eli Manning, Big Ben, and Rivers may join them).

In Favre's last eleven years, and last ten at Green Bay, he has been good, not great. He hasn't played like a Hall of Famer. And it raises the question: what did the Packers owe Favre?

He resented that he had to go to mini-camp on his daughter's graduation day. That's why you're paid several millions a year.

He was unhappy the Packers didn't sign Randy Moss in 2007. Though you had your best year in the last ten without him, and so did the team.

He retired, then was shocked that by training camp the Packers had made plans to go in a different direction. Even so, they still gave him the opportunity to start. His unfounded bitterness toward the organization forced a trade.

Hey Brett, if you had consistently played closer to the level you had played in your younger years, and if you hadn't retired, the Packers would have been more enthusiastic to bring you back. But the Packers didn't owe you any greater courtesy and deference than the Eagles owe McNabb.

Whatever goes inside your head to now "get revenge" on the Packers is probably the same area of the brain that causes you to throw up bone-headed interceptions.

Get over it.

If you want to continue to play, you shouldn't have retired from the Jets. And if you want to just get back at the Packers, grow up already!