Dear Mr. Favre: Your antics are making me thirsty.
Let me explain. Do you remember the classic episode of “Seinfeld” in which Kramer gets a role in a Woody Allen movie? His one line is “These pretzels are making me thirsty”. Well, your recent fickleness with the Green Bay Packers and the heartstrings of the Cheeseheads (and Aaron Rodgers) has me downright parched.
Kramer’s classic phrase has me reminiscent of you and your recently frustrating interactions with the Packers. Why?
1.) In the episode, every character (Jerry, Elaine and George) takes a crack at the proper way to say “These pretzels are making me thirsty”, with none of them nailing the line the way it should be said. The line is simple and ultimately irrelevant to the plot of the Woody Allen film, but the characters of “Seinfeld” just can’t figure out the right way to put the line to bed.
I feel as if you want to let go but you can’t: you have to “nail” that line. Why you can’t let go defies me. What defies me even more, though, is how you could hold a franchise for ransom for so long with demands for better players (Randy Moss, a running game), a see-saw attitude towards your retirement and an air of self-importance that only took a backseat to the team when your supporting cast matured and came one interception (yours) from making the Super Bowl.
2.) Kramer’s over-dramatization of his small on-screen part is reminiscent of the overblown way you have handled your retirement from Green Bay. Kramer had an overbearing sense of pride about his one line, his glory. What you have done, Brett, is taken a three-time MVP career and a Super Bowl and somehow made it seem overrated. How? Well, that’s what happens when the player becomes more important than the game. Kramer should have been happy just being in the movie, as you should have been happy ending your career with unquestionable statue-in-front-of-Lambeau-Field status.
3.) Finally, the salty media hype surrounding your actions has left me with Brett Favre Dehydration, or BFD for brevity’s sake. Why should we be talking about you when other young quarterbacks are preparing for the biggest training camps of their lives?
I want to see pieces being written about Aaron Rodgers heading into his first camp as the Green Bay starter (for the record, I think he’ll flourish), not interviews of him on a golf course speaking sheepishly about your situation.
I want to hear about 2007 first-rounder Brady Quinn pushing surprise Pro-Bowler Derek Anderson for a job in Cleveland.
I want to get the city of Atlanta giddy about having a new franchise quarterback (Matt Ryan) to help them rise from the doldrums of post-No. 7 and Bobby “Pig Suey” Petrino, a guy with a great skill set and a similar rally-around-me mentality as the one you possessed as a 21-year-old country boy out of Southern Mississippi in 1991. That year, the Atlanta Falcons chose you. They took a chance on a gunslinger and so did the Packers a year later. Let another young quarterback get a chance to prove himself like you did, let the Packers move on and let the NFL usher in the new guard of quarterbacks, the likes of which looked up to you as kids.
Sincerely,
Erik Horne
P.S. Aaron Rodgers is thirsty too.
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