Imagine the rapturous vindication Ted Thompson will experience when he comes to find that his Lambeau leap of faith will end with him holding the NFL’s Holy Grail.
With a win in Super Bowl XLV, the Ted Thompson transformation will have come full circle. Brett Favre, a demigod when he donned the green and gold, is 60 minutes away from being unseated as the patriarch of Packer football. Just years removed from the Favre fiasco of 2008, the football prophets would have never foretold that Aaron Rodgers, Thompson’s hand-picked quarterback, would be the one to lance the Legend of Favre and restore the Lombardi lineage.
How has this come to be? For the longest time, Green Bay has been the town corn-fed values like loyalty and nostalgia, the city whose legends show up on road maps, the municipality of the small-town mantra.
All of it started in 2009, when, in anticipation of Favre’s seminal return to Lambeau Field, Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt OK’d the temporary renaming of Minnesota Street to Aaron Rodgers Avenue. The most troubling part: It wasn’t the mayor’s idea; it was the fans’. Then they turned their attention to the kids, the town’s lifeblood. Eighth-graders were challenged to come up with 12 reasons to stay in Green Bay, in honor of Rodgers’ jersey number.
It wasn’t always this way. Travel back to yesteryear, when Favre was the end all be all.
What Thompson was doing was unrepentantly un-American. His eyes too fixated on the future, Thompson was determined to build his team through the draft. And in 2005, instead of adding auxiliary pieces to help Favre, he spent a late, first-round draft pick on Rodgers.
Favre, the histrionic hubrite, probably took it as a sign of disrespect. And so did his followers.
Reluctant to accept his inevitable fall from grace, Favre devotees continued to believe that the Big Cheesehead would get better with age.
They had every reason to.
With his Iron Man streak, Favre was an ever-spring of longevity in a desolate NFLandscape where the fountain of youth quickly runs dry. Still, Thompson did little to refortify the gray-bearded emperor’s army, instead shearing the Packers’ salary cap by shedding timeworn free agents.
We should have known the clock was ticking for the Gridiron Grandfather. We all know what happened.
Rodgers rode the pine for three years. Favre took the Packers to the NFC Championship in 2007, and in fitting Favre style, threw away a Super Bowl appearance on an ill-fated pass. Teary-eyed, he retired at the end of the season. Then he came back and accused Thompson and the Packers’ organization of forcing him to flee his football homeland and into early exile.
But by this time, the Packers had moved on. Thompson and the front office stood their ground. Doing all they could to keep Favre from coming back, the Packers offered the NFL A-lister an unholy amount of money to stay retired.
You could have guessed the knee-jerk reaction.
The general manager was only managing to tarnish his reputation and alienate the Packers’ fan base. Fans wore anti-Thompson shirts to training camp that year. Eventually Favre was unceremoniously FedExed to the New York Jets — and one year later, he was with the Packers’ arch-nemesis, the Minnesota Vikings.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Lucky for Thompson, Favre was still Favre — a magical journeyman with a manic passion for making impossible throws. Because of Favre, the Vikings had a shot at the Super Bowl, and because of Favre, the Vikings didn’t go.
Lucky for Rodgers his rise to prominence coincided with Favre’s demise. And now it’s time to turn the page on a bygone era. It’s time to embrace the future.
For better or worse, Green Bay has always loved its quarterbacks like it loves cheddar and bratwurst.
Yet the time has come for Green Bay to turn its back on Favre, the same player who, one day after his father’s death, put on a riveting four-touchdown exhibition against the Oakland Raiders, the man who overcame an addiction to painkillers.
At the age of 27 — the same age Favre won his only Super Bowl — Rodgers stands to tie Favre’s ring count. Dare I say he will surpass that mark. CBS Sports columnist Gregg Doyel noted that Rodgers, in his first full three seasons, has compiled better numbers than Favre did at the same stage in his career.
Probably the biggest reason Packer fans have embraced Rodgers is because he’s not Favre.
He isn’t a tireless self-promoter. He isn’t an ego-sapped soap opera star. He isn’t a legend. Not yet.
Legend has it, though, once Super Bowl Sunday saturates in all its glory, and the Packers ascend the first-place podium, the Rodgers’ epoch will commence. And with it, Favre’s terrific, and sometimes tyrannous, reign will come to a close.
Glory be to Thompson.
