Now Favre will play if healthy … maybe

by | Aug 4, 2010 | NFL Random Thoughts

See? It never gets old.

Yesterday the media jumped on reports of text messages indicating that Brett Favre was retiring.

Today ESPN reports that he told Ed Werder he never sent those alleged text messages and that he’d play if he felt he was healthy enough to do so (I tend to believe that there were text messages of some sort and that they were either subterfuge or that the media misinterpreted them or blew them out of proportion, but I have no evidence to support the hunch).

And Deadspin reports that as a New York Jet two seasons ago, Favre text-messaged pictures of his … unit to a female employee of the team.

The soap opera never gets old.

…

…

Okay, it’s ridiculously old and it has been for a couple years now. But it never goes away. So when we wrote the post yesterday indicating that he was “retiring … maybe,” it was with full expectation that this was just the beginning. Others felt the same way.

I’m a little surprised the second chapter of this year’s “Will he or won’t he” book happened this quickly. But the truth is we don’t know if Favre will play or not and we won’t know if he will play or not until the season starts and we see who is starting at quarterback for the Vikings.

And even then, if Favre doesn’t start the season I think there is a good chance that if the team gets off to a slow start he’s cajoled into returning.

As we wrote yesterday, the only certainty with Favre is the uncertainty. That’s what you sign up for when he joins the team. And I think it’s going to be around for another year or three.

Cheers.

Jeff George throws name into Vikings quarterback derby

by | Aug 4, 2010 | NFL Random Thoughts

The restarting of Brett Favre’s annual retirement saga has promised to make the rest of the Minnesota Vikings’ training camp a circus for the second year in a row. And it got even stranger this morning when KFAN radio host and Vikings play-by-play guy Paul Allen interviewed Jeff George on his morning show.

The 42-year-old George last played in an NFL game in 2001 (he was also on rosters in 2002 and 2004). But he pops up annually trying to get one more shot to make a roster. And he makes some decent points.

A quarterback surrounded by a defense like the Vikings have and with skill position players like Adrian Peterson, Sidney Rice and Visanthe Shiancoe isn’t going to have to do a ton to make the team a winner.

“I’m not saying I’m a savior,” he told Allen. “I’m just saying I can still do what I need to do.”

George and Allen have kept in touch sporadically since the 1999 season when George stepped in mid-season to rescue what had been an underachieving Vikings team to that point. He went 8-2 as a starter that season and ultimately took the team to the second round of the playoffs before falling to St. Louis. (more…)

Favre might announce retirement … or not

by | Aug 3, 2010 | NFL Random Thoughts

Word leaking from Brett Favre-camp indicates that the quarterback will release a statement Tuesday saying he won’t play in 2010.

Fans on comment boards all over media sites are up in arms that he could hold the Vikings’ organization hostage like this.

Really?!?!?

This is the ride the team and the fans signed up for when Favre joined the Vikings a couple weeks before the 2009 season. And when he showed up he took the team and the fans on a helluva ride, finishing just a few yards and a couple minutes shy of the Super Bowl.

Newsflash, everyone. If Favre doesn’t play in 2010 it hampers the Vikings chances of making a similar run this year. But last year also doesn’t happen if Favre stays retired and Tarvaris Jackson starts at quarterback all year.

The developments coming out today should be a surprise to nobody. Favre was a diva three years ago. He was a diva two years ago. He was a diva a year ago. And he’ll be a diva a year from now.

I think there is still a 50-50 shot that he shows up to play in 2010. If he does, great. It will make the season much more interesting again. (more…)

Little’s Hall nomination supported, perhaps enhanced by author Mackie

by | Jul 22, 2010 | Hall of Fame, We Forgot

Former Denver running back Floyd Little was one of Tom Mackie’s favorite players while the latter was growing up watching the Broncos. He was so dedicated a fan, in fact, that for years after Little retired he wrote letters and compiled statistics arguing for his idol’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

And as Little and Mackie suffered through years and years of disappointments, Mackie even got to write Little’s biography, which was titled “Floyd Little’s Tales from the Broncos Sideline.”

Little’s induction later this summer has been supported by some and panned by others both here at this site and elsewhere. Those who support him say his numbers don’t tell the entire story of what he meant to the Denver Broncos and the National Football League. Those who disagree with his enshrinement say he didn’t play long enough or put up dominant enough statistics.

Whether you agree with it or don’t, however, you can’t knock the efforts Mackie put forth in supporting his friend and one-time hero. SportsIllustrated.com penned a fascinating story this week that looked at the relationship that developed between the two and at the steps Mackie took to ensure that Little would one-day be memorialized in Canton.

It’s a good read. I’d suggest checking it out.

1986 Van Note profile in SI shows that labor issues haven’t changed much

by | Jul 20, 2010 | Business of Football, Hall of Fame, NFL Random Thoughts

I stumbled across this old profile on former Atlanta Falcons center Jeff Van Note at sportsillustrated.cnn.com today. I often check that site but only occasionally actually click on the stories they have in their “vault,” which for those who don’t check the site, is really a repository for old, interesting stories that seem to randomly pop up from time to time.

I started reading it because of Van Note. I can’t completely explain why but he’s one of my favorite players from the early 1980s when I started watching the game. And the profile was very interesting. It was written as his career wound down. He had lost his starting job at center but was sticking around for a final season or two for no other reason than he really loved the game.

If Wikipedia (and my math) is correct, Van Note is 64 now. He played in the NFL from 1969 to 1986, all of which was with the Atlanta Falcons. When he retired, only Jim Marshall of the Vikings had played in more games with one team (246).

He played mostly for teams that weren’t very good, though he was a solid contributor on the Atlanta teams in 1978, that made and won the team’s first playoff games, and in 1980, that won the NFC West and had arguably the league’s best team before falling victim to a Dallas Cowboys comeback in the the playoffs.

He made five Pro Bowls and strikes me as one of those guys who will not make the Hall of Fame but who will more than occasionally be brought up for consideration.

I was very young and just learning about the game back then but everything I remember and everything I read indicate that he was, at worst, a very solid, workmanlike player and, at best, during his prime, memorably good.

One of the things that struck me about the profile was that he broke the picket lines during a 1974 labor issue only to decide later that he made a mistake. He became a vice president to the NFL Players Association and then the union’s president from 1983 to 1984.

One of the issues of the time was rookie salaries. “We’ve got to stop paying all this money to rookies,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Ralph Wiley at the time. “Salaries are fine, but earn them. What do rookies know about winning in the NFL? Tilt the scales to the proven veteran.”

As top picks like JaMarcus Russell, Tim Couch, David Carr and Ryan Leaf continue to sign massive contracts and fizzle out after a few years, that continues to be one of the main issues in today’s labor discussions as well. Of course it wasn’t a billion dollar institution at the time Van Note played, but it’s still instructive – the league has been fighting about some issues for as long as 25 to 30 years and still hasn’t figured out how to get it right.

Van Note may never make the Hall of Fame. But it was blue collar guys like him who came unheralded from the University of Kentucky to play for just short of two full decades who helped turn this league into what it is today.

His voice was instructive in 1986 when this profile was written. And it strikes me that if you got a half-dozen or so of his contemporaries into a room in an effort to solve the labor issues of today that you might have more success than the league and the union are having with some of the out of touch owners and players of today.