Oh Really? Brett Favre Wasn’t Committed
Before we get to the Green Bay Packers news of the day, we thought we’d start your day with a laugh. Former Minnesota Vikings linebacker Ben Leber says quarterback Brett Favre wasn’t committed to the team in his final season.
Shocking!
I guess that’s what happens when your primary motivation is a quest for school-girl-like revenge and, as we previously noted, money.
“He clearly wasn’t mentally and emotionally into it, and that’s the thing that kind of bugged me,” Leber said. “I get it, you’ve got to make the money when you can make it, even though he has made hundreds of millions of dollars. When he says it’s about the money, it just means that he wasn’t committed to us. So that irritated me a little bit, not for him taking the money, but for what it really meant.”
Scandalous!
Leber said he perceived Favre’s general attitude in 2010 as, “You know, I’ll kind of stagger back in here, and I’ll give you guys what I’ve got, but I just know wholeheartedly I don’t have it in me, and the money’s too good to pass up.”
“If that’s the case, move on,” Leber said. “I’d rather go with somebody that’s maybe less talented, that’s 100 percent committed to us winning. It bugged me a little bit. I’m not going to say I lost sleep over it, but it bugged me.”
Let’s be honest. Favre went out and embarrassed himself in his final season with the Vikings. Years from now, everyone will probably forget about that or file it away like some Johnny Unitas in San Diego aberration.
The Vikings, on the other hand, have always been and will always remain an embarrassment.
Related Posts:
- Greg Jennings and Brett Favre Colluding on Minnesota
- Minnesota Vikings May Trade Percy Harvin
- Brett Favre Says He’ll Come Back to Green Bay One Day
- Packers Still Blathering About Retiring Brett Favre’s Number
- Aaron Rodgers, Brett Favre Talk About Making Nice
07/27/2012 - 7:14 am
LOL, is someone still bitter? Favre was a great QB in GB, Favre left GB, now Rodgers is a great QB in GB. Respect both men for what they’ve done for your team.
07/27/2012 - 8:52 pm
I’m still bitter. I’m also embarrassed for him, so I guess empathy remains to sweeten the bitter.
07/27/2012 - 7:49 am
I seem to remember that the Packers had first offered Brett 20+ million a year to retire and do PR for the team, but he wanted to play and turned it down, starting the debacle. Anyone confirm that?
So now he says it was just for the money, historical revisionism
07/27/2012 - 7:50 am
the only one sounding a little bitter is Ben Leber, and who frankly can blame him. If I remember right, Favre was to make 13 mil that last season and without asking the Vikes upped it to 16 mil prior to the season starting, ensuring his return. If I played on that team, I’d be disappointed with his efforts as well.
07/27/2012 - 9:15 am
The Minnesota Vikings intend to sweeten Brett Favre’s contract for the 2010 season, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported.
Favre returned to the team on Tuesday after three teammates went to his Mississippi home to recruit him to play a 20th NFL season.
The Star Tribune reported that the Vikings intend to increase Favre’s base salary from $13 million to $16.5 million, with incentives that could bring his total haul to $20 million.
Teammate Bryant McKinnie told ESPN on Tuesday that Favre told him the return was not about money. Favre also said that earlier this month when word broke that he had sent text messages to teammates indicating he wouldn’t play this season.
At the time his agent, Bus Cook, told the AP that Favre wasn’t motivated by money but by the health of his left ankle.
“If they want to reward him, nobody’s going to walk away from that,” Cook said. “But it’s not a factor in his decision.”
07/27/2012 - 9:30 am
for 20 mil. a year…..hell; I’d text pics of “my brain” to a dozen girls as well……………..
07/27/2012 - 10:14 am
They man who said he’d probably play football for free finally admits to only coming back for the money. At least he’s honest about it.
07/27/2012 - 10:56 am
Favre refused the Packers “pay-of hush money” when they tried to force him to retire so it obviously wasn’t all about the money.
07/27/2012 - 12:58 pm
Guys guys guys, Bret was great for the Pack, end of story that matters sheesh
07/27/2012 - 12:59 pm
I lived and watched for th e29 years between SB 2 and 1996. Bret’s a Packer super hall of famer
07/27/2012 - 1:35 pm
No, the end of the story is this Number Four, aka Berty Judas, aka The Traitor, aka Baron von Dongschotz committed the crime of treason against the Packers by engineering his way out of the trade to the Jets—perhaps feigning or at least embellishing injury to induce release from Mangini—for the express purpose of playing for our most hated rival, the Vikings. By his own admission, he did this to “stick it to Green Bay.” With the hindsight of 2010, whereby Rodgers and the Pack swept Berty Judas and the Vikings, culminating in one of the most valiant Super Bowl runs ever, it is all too easy for folks to be lulled into a state of gooey complacency about this matter. In the end, as it turned out, all Berty ever did was deny the Packers a division championship a year before they were truly ready to recapture the Lombardi Trophy.
This only came to be so by the thinnest of margins—one errant pass intercepted in New Orleans. Absent that, given the Colts’ performance in the Super Bowl two weeks later, it is, at the very least, quite possible, if not probable, that, but for that single interception at the end of the NFC title game, Berty would not only have beaten the Packers twice, but would have led our most hated rival their first Super Bowl Championship ever, thus breaking the spell we have over them, once and for all.
This WAS his intention—this WAS his design. And one only need to revisit the smug look of contentment as he looked on from the Vikings’ sideline in either of those two games that painful season to be forever reminded of this, or perhaps those vile Sears commercials in which he jests about once having liked the color green.
All of this is of course compounded by the absence—even to this day– of even the slightest attempt to at least feign the slightest concern for what these actions did to the legions of Packer fans who once supported—nay adored— him in spite of everything up until to that point.
Detractors like you will point out what ‘he did for Green Bay.’ It is precisely because of his importance in Packers history—and at least up until 2009 importance to Packer fans—that make such crimes so heinous, and so completely, indelibly beyond even the suggestion of forgiveness or reconciliation. No figure who came to personify a franchise had ever played for a hated rival for the express purpose of foiling his prior team. Of course, such sentiments overstate the importance of Number Four in the renaissance of the Packers, downplaying the role of Bob Harlan, Ron Wolf, Reggie White, and above all Mike Holmgren, without whom the quarterback may have never risen out of obscurity in the first place.
People forget all this. People also forget the toxic, poisonous environment that man created for Thompson, McCarthy and even Rodgers, putting the entire organization in grave jeopardy of not being able to function. People overlook the sort of brass balls it required for Thompson and McCarthy to stare into NFL mortality, with the cold, steely eyes of an assassin, and say “No.” Of course, it then required Rodgers to put forth an unparalled, superhuman effort, culminating in a Super Bowl Victory, an MVP award, and all around the greatest career stats ever enjoyed by a quarterback to nullify this toxic environment that this man created. And in spite of it all, some residual effects are still seen even today.
For all these reasons, his crimes—his treason!–against the Packers must never be forgotten, and he must NEVER be forgiven. Retire his number and welcome him back to Lambeau? It is not just that the time is not right now, it will never be right given the outrages he—and he alone—perpetrated. I for one hold that man in absolute contempt and disdain. I hate his guts. And I call for Packer fans everywhere to demand his eternal banishment from Packerland, for now and forever more, until the end of days.
CURSED BE HIS NAME!
07/27/2012 - 9:41 pm
WOW. E., you are now my TP hero.
Well said.
07/27/2012 - 11:44 pm
Not sure if that is a good thing if you are like the real nurse ratchett–but thanks.
07/31/2012 - 7:59 pm
You can always take your meds another way….
07/27/2012 - 1:29 pm
At least acknowledge the year he had in 2009. Viking’s were so embarrassing that year.
07/27/2012 - 1:32 pm
Wow, what a douche you are. You just prove that everyone from Wisconsin is a blinded by homerism, bloated on cheese and drunk at all times. Speaking to someone from Wisconsin is like going back in time about 20 years. Get a life.