Editorial: Favre's drama grows even more tired

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Brett Favre is, without a doubt, a future pro football hall-of-famer.

That doesn’t mean he should get a free pass from criticism, and Favre deserves plenty for his relentlessly egocentric approach to the game this season.

The aging quarterback has played the media like a fiddle this year to the point where if he wasn’t a member of the Minnesota Vikings, it wouldn’t be out of line to place a moratorium on Favre-related news.

First, there was the will-he-or-won’t-he saga that dragged out well into training camp, leaving his teammates and coaches up to his own selfish devices. We find the story of three players going to Favre’s Mississippi home to lure him back for another season a little too whimsical to believe. Favre almost certainly knew what his plans were all along; he just wanted to milk the story as he long as he could.

Then, after Favre came back, came the struggles and injury woes. Virtually every week came a question of how healthy Favre was — and the only other consistent thing about him was a general ineffectiveness. Favre did enjoy a magical game of sorts in a win over the Arizona Cardinals ... but they were the Cardinals, for pity’s sake.

Let us not forget the inappropriate text message saga that further contributed to the sullying of Favre’s reputation. And Monday night, in his latest headline-stealer, the one-time great was supposedly — and miraculously — healed enough from an injury to start against the Bears. Sure, one can credit Favre’s well-documented recuperative powers and his competitive drive, but did the out-of-contention Vikings really have much to gain by having him on the field?

Next week, we want Joe Webb.

Tags: opinion, editorials, football, vikings