Wow, lots of posts on this thread and musccy is still the only one who even halfway agrees with PPierce. I'm here to say that I COMPLETELY agree with PPierce, and I said pretty much the same thing on this board halfway through the season. (And also took a pummeling for it, of course.)
I do think that Brett Favre is still just fine physically. He is elusive, he still has that quick release, and he still throws the ball with good velocity and accuracy most of the time. The problem is that he does not have the commitment to the game that he used to have, and this is something I never questioned up till this season, with the exception of that horrendous illegal forward pass he made against the Vikings in last year's playoff loss. That was a sign of things to come.
This year I have seen a few more plays of that type. The one in Cincinnati was the worst. It was the last play of the game, Favre was five yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and he chose to throw the ball away rather than keeping the play alive and risking a hit. End of game. Another bad one was in Chicago, on a fourth-down play. If he had run the ball he may not have made the first down, but at least he would've had a chance. (How many times in the past have we seen Brett fake a throw to juke a defender, then pick up the first down?) Instead, he threw the ball to nobody rather than take a hit. On FOURTH DOWN. I am not satisfied having a QB who gives up on plays in crucial situations like this, even if his name happens to be Brett Favre and he happens to be one of my favorite players ever.
TOPackerFan mentions the game against the Lions, where Favre played more conservatively and the Packers won the game but only scored 16 points. What's wrong with that? It was a cold weather game against an opponent with a bad offense. Favre knew that slow and steady would win the day. He played exactly the kind of game he needed to play. The fact that TO criticized this peformance--a WIN--just goes to show how far many Packer fans will go to make excuses for Favre's reckless play.
"He's a gambler." "It's just Brett being Brett." "With Favre, you have to take the bad with the good." It's bad enough we hear these kinds of excuses from fans and announcers, but the coaching staff is not much better. What we have here is a player who is beyond criticism in the eyes of many fans and maybe even the coaching staff. The result is a player who is making more and more poor decisions as he gets older. I don't know if I've ever seen a player this great tarnish his reputation so badly at the end of his career. Favre needs to leave so this team can move on.
