While waiting for word on Thompson’s press conference, obviously word will leak about where Favre is going/what he is doing. Who will be the first to report it? Vote on our newest poll, up now on the right.

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• McCarthy Presser At 5:35 EDT/4:35 CST

In a lengthy piece over at Yahoo! Sports, Michael Silver brings us all up to date on what has led Favre and the Packers to this point. It’s a great read, full of comment-worthy items, but I’d just like to focus on one that appears at the beginning of the article.

Aaron Rodgers…paused during an individual drill late in the Green Bay Packers’ training camp practice Tuesday afternoon and spied a little boy, maybe 6, among the hundreds of spectators lining the Oneida Street side of Clarke Hinkle Field.“We don’t love you,” the kid said. “You suck.”

First of all, someone needs to smack that kid.

Secondly, where is he getting this stuff? Oh, that’s right. From his Northeast Wisconsin hobbit parents. I am so sick and tired of the willful ignorance that I encountered while visiting the once-great-but-now-suspect state of Wisconsin. This kids parents have obviously told him “Brett Favre is the greatest player ever and the Packers don’t want him back. Aaron Rodgers sucks and won’t win anything. Now go have fun watching practice!” Question for this kids parents: When Ron Wolf traded a first round pick for a third string quarterback, what did you do? Oh that’s right. You lambasted him and were perched on the rails at training camp telling Favre how much he sucked and how Don Majkowski was the greatest quarterback since Bart Starr. In short: You don’t know a damn thing about playing quarterback in the NFL, or about football in general. Stop spreading your ignorance to the next generation, who should have their OWN heroes to cheer for.

Again, this is only one small, fairly inconsequential part of the whole  Silver article. You really should read the whole thing. That first part just really got to me.

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• What I Don’t Get…

Adam Schefter reports that, as Favre was making his ‘triumphant’ return to Green Bay, the Packers were discussing a trade with Tampa Bay.

And on and on…

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• Who Will Break The Story?

Right at the end of Peter King’s excellent Monday Morning Quarterback take on the Favre scenario, he quotes Favre saying the following:

If this doesn’t work out…there’s no way to duplicate the relationship I have with the fans. When Bart Starr was fired by the Packers as coach, it was rough, but look now. He’s much bigger than that. He’s Bart Starr. Fans forgot the firing. Whatever happens, that will never have an effect on my love for the team or the fans. This is the ugliness of business. I understand.

That’s the smartest thing he’s said in the entire month and a half since this whole thing started. I’m not sure if he got that line from someone knowing it would be good PR, but he’s absoutley correct and it makes me realize that, though he is pissing me off something fierce right now, he’s still the same guy I loved watching play the game the last 17 years.

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• The Countdown Begins…

Chris Mortensen at ESPN.com has excerpts of yet another stunning interview with Brett Favre, this time conducted over the phone with Mortensen.

Favre says, among other things, that:

1. Thompson said he (Thompson) would be fired if Brett reported to camp
2. His conversations with Brad Childress had nothing to do with his return
3. That he demanded that Thompson and McCarthy ‘get in front of the media’ to confirm the fact that Favre had never had a Packers’ cell phone.
4. Favre asked Thompson directly if he could compete for the starting job, saying “You know I’ll win this job”. Thompson straight up refused, saying Rodgers is now the starting quarterback.

From what we have learned of Favre over the course of the past month, I’d say about 25% of what Favre is saying is truthful, and the other 75% is, as he says, ‘bogus’. The trick is figuring out which parts are true and which parts aren’t…

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• Woods Nails It

I am a huge Cliff Christl fan. Heck, his retirement from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is what prompted me to start blogging about the Packers. (I figured the net could use a young cantankerous curmudgeon to replace an old cantankerous curmudgeon.) That said, I have to disagree with him completely in regards to his special column on the Brett Favre situation over at NFL.com.

Comparing the Packers behavior in regards to Favre’s request to be released from his contract and the organizations behavior when Reggie White and William Henderson had reached the end of their respective relationships with the Packers, Christl writes:

When White decided he wanted to play again in 2000, the Packers willingly released him from his contract. When 12-year veteran William Henderson had the itch to play again last year after being told he no longer fit in the Packers’ plans, Thompson released him, announcing that he was doing so to give Henderson a chance to “pursue other opportunities” with no strings attached.

I’m sorry, but the comparison is absurd. It is one thing to give an outright release to a player who is washed up. It is quite another thing to let a player go who can still play the game at a high level. It is Thompson’s job to be sure he gets something of value for Favre, if he does indeed end up playing in another uniform. To do otherwise would be not only negligent, but a display of downright incompetence on Thompson’s part.

Christl addresses this somewhat with the following:

If Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy truly believe the Packers are a better team with Rodgers at quarterback, they should have the courage of their convictions. If they have as much confidence in Rodgers and their team as they say they do, they shouldn’t fear facing Favre in another uniform.

The Packers could have defused this controversy and made this a much less messy divorce if they had given Favre his release soon after he asked for it. Had they exercised the kind of PR savvy that marked the Harlan administration, they would have released Favre and simply announced that they were doing so only to honor his request.

Now that we’ve visited La-La Land, let’s all come back down to Earth. It’s great to be cozied up with your laptop and to write something with such bravado, but when you’re making franchise-defining decisions at 1265 Lombardi Avenue, things are just a wee bit different. Again, it would be incompetence to the Nth degree on Thompson’s part to let Favre play for any other NFL team without getting something in return.

Having said all of the preceding - it is a fantastic piece and well worth your time for the unique historical perspective Christl’s long history covering the Packers brings to his view on the current situation, however misguided it may be.

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• Who’s Lying Now?

Seriously, could he have been any worse in that interview with Greta Van Susteren? Not once did he give a clear, concise answer to any substantive question. (He did directly answer whether he was physically ready to play football.) The entire interview was a rambling train wreck, without any coherent reasons offered by Favre as to why he retired other than he “felt pressured” Really Brett? After 17 years, untold pressures both on and off the field (I mean, for God’s sake, you took the field 24 hours after your father passed away…) you couldn’t find the mettle to say “Look, I’m Brett Favre and I’ve got two years left on my contract. I’ll take as much damn time as I need and you’ll like it” - THAT’S the kind of man Packer fans thought you were Brett.

And I have to say - I am SHOCKED at how he threw McCarthy under the bus. I mean, we’ve known for a while that Favre and Thompson were at odds, but his characterizations of McCarthy and their talks this past off season were shockingly unflattering towards McCarthy.

The one thing that sticks in my mind is Favre saying (and I’m paraphrasing until I can go back and watch the DVR) “People keep saying the Packers didn’t make me feel wanted, and that is just not true.” Um, Brett? It’s not ‘people’ saying that. It’s your agent, your brother and your mother. If it really is “just not true” you need to tell them to shut the hell up. But you can’t can you? Because it is true, and once again, given the opportunity to come clean with the fans you claim to care so much about, you’ve chosen to keep playing games.

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• Woods Nails It

Not that any of this will be valid on Monday morning…

I won’t bore you with who I think the Packers’ should select in the first round, or any round. You have great resources all over the net for that. (Some personal faves here, here and here) I would, however, like to engage in The Great Taking A Tight End In The First Round Debate that is raging over at PackerGeeks. (Raging, Aaron? Yes, dear reader, raging.)

While both Andy and Steve make valid arguments, I think they, along with Greg Bedard over at JSOnline, (sorry, sub required) are missing a key point when assessing if a player or position is or isn’t “worth” the Packers first round pick, and the point is tied up in that very word, “worth”. Ted Thompson, as we speak, has his board assembled and knows exactly what worth he places on each player in relation to each other, regardless of whether it’s a tight end, cornerback, offensive lineman, ect. The position the player plays is immaterial next to his perceived value in relation to all the other players on the board. (Confused? Good.) Now, of course, the position each player plays has been taken into consideration when making up the board, but the day of the draft, he doesn’t look at it like you and I, or most anyone who writes about the Packers. If the 30th pick comes up, and the next player on his board is a tight end, he’ll take him. In his mind, it’s the best football player available, and he wants the best players possible on his team. Period. As Thompson said:

I just think the draft is a long-term investment, especially the early round picks. … If you know Player A is a better player and you wind up taking Player B because he happens to play a different position, I think that’s a mistake.

Now, as to the merits of taking a tight end early in general, I think Steve and Greg discount the scheme the Packers run when evaluating whether a tight end is “worth” taking in the first round. At no point since the Packers resurgence that started with Ron Wolf’s hiring have the Packers been more potent on offense than when they had Keith Jackson and Mark Chumura playing at tight-end. (One could argue that if Jackson had stuck around one more year, that whole Denver nightmare would never have happened…) The Packers have one of the Top 15 tight ends in the game in Donald Lee. Pairing him with another end that could motion into and out of the backfield and split seems in the middle of the field, well, the avenues that opens up are worth a first round pick to me. Yes, as Steve and Greg both point out, good tight ends can be, and have in the recent past, be found in the latter rounds. But that’s why they pay Thompson and his staff all that money. They’re the professionals. So if Goodell calls out a tight end’s name for the Packers first round pick, exhale, and know that Thompson and the Packers know more about him than you do, and he must be the best football player currently available. Or you might end up looking like this.

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