Line of Scrimmage: Is Favre Saga Really Over for Jets?
Posted: Wed Feb 11 1:54 PM
*** Line of Scrimmage: Is Favre Saga Really Over for Jets? *** By Tony Moss, NFL Editor
Philadelphia, PA (Sports Network) - That sound you just heard emanating from Florham Park, NJ was an organization exhaling.
Brett Favre confirmed his retirement in phone conversations with New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and general manager Mike Tannenbaum on Wednesday, a move that helps the Jets in a number of ways.
It prevents them from having to decide whether to cut the future Hall-of-Famer by the end of this month, or to keep both him and his $13 million cap figure on the books for 2009.
It allows the Jets and new head coach Rex Ryan to avoid an awkward situation relative to the 39-year-old's torn right biceps, an injury that clearly hampered Favre during an awful final month of 2008, but which the star quarterback has refused to have surgery on.
If Favre really and truly stays away, it allows the Jets to make a clean break at the position, and to start sizing up their options in free agency and/or the draft. It clears quite a bit of tension from a locker room that was bound to be rife with ill will after multiple players publicly criticized Favre for his poor play on the field and sometimes-aloof manner around his teammates.
In all, it's a God-send for Gang Green, which is why Johnson and Tannenbaum sounded like they were trying to make pre-summer-break amends with an annoying college roommate in comments published on Wednesday.
"His performance last season was extraordinary," said Johnson of Favre. "As I spoke with people throughout the organization, they all told me how much they enjoyed working with him. Brett Favre is a Hall-of-Fame player, but he is also a Hall-of-Fame person. Brett, Deanna and his family will always be a part of the Jets family."
Tannenbaum did some gushing too.
"When we acquired Brett, we knew we would get everything he had," said Tannenbaum. "He took the time to mentor younger players and his competitiveness and enthusiasm at practice and during games was contagious. I spoke with him this morning and told him that he will be a friend of the Jets for years to come and it was an honor to work with him."
To paraphrase the owner and GM, "Brett Favre is a great guy who we're really hoping is a great enough guy to stay on his tractor through the 2009 season and leave us alone."
Unfortunately for the Jets, wishing it doesn't make it so. Once Favre starts reflecting, and the surrounding sycophants that he can't seem to tune out begin weighing in, there's a good chance he'll pull another Larry Holmes and un-retire for a second time.
Favre was a Pro Bowl honoree in 2008, and until Thanksgiving hit, was playing at an extremely high level. When the Jets won at Tennessee to move to 8-3 on Nov. 23rd, Favre had just polished off his third straight game with a 100-plus passer rating and had thrown 20 touchdown passes to 13 interceptions.
Though it's tough to accurately discern when his biceps tear became an issue, there's little doubt that it was indeed a problem during the team's 1-4 collapse, in which Favre threw just two TDs with nine interceptions and never posted a passer rating better than 61.4.
If Favre makes it to May or June feeling that the injury is behind him, and knows that there will be suitors vying for his services (cough...Vikings...cough), Johnson and Tannenbaum should count on getting a phone call from an area code in Mississippi.
The Jets almost certainly wouldn't want Favre back in that situation, but it would be problematic for the team to just absorb the cap hit that would be caused by cutting him at that date. The best option for the team at that point would be a trade, but remember that the Jets, based on the deal in which they acquired Favre, couldn't move him to Minnesota without giving up a first-round pick to Green Bay.
Chances are, unless they find another trade partner that is absolutely desperate for a quarterback who will turn 40 prior to Week 6 of next season, New York would likely be resigned to cutting Favre and dealing with the cap ramifications.
Though certainly the team's braintrust can't be deluding itself into thinking this saga is completely over, the Jets can now feel relatively secure in planning for their future at the position.
Assuming the Jets don't want to travel down the same road by targeting an aging free agent from the Kurt Warner/Jeff Garcia/Kerry Collins pool, and knowing that the Patriots would sooner give Matt Cassel away to 30 other teams before dealing him to the Jets, it would appear that the team's options are fairly clear-cut.
Former second-round pick Kellen Clemens has eight games of starting experience and probably merits another shot, and the team is reportedly high enough on ex-Utah product Brett Ratliff that it will keep him around as well, at least in the short-term.
The Jets could target a QB early in the 2009 Draft, but neither Matthew Stafford nor Mark Sanchez is likely to fall to them at No. 17, meaning they either need to sign up a young castoff from a free agent group including the likes of Byron Leftwich, Kyle Boller, J.P. Losman, or Rex Grossman, or wait and take a second-tier draft choice from the Josh Freeman (Kansas State), Graham Harrell (Texas Tech), Nate Davis (Ball State) school.
None of the above players are likely to generate excitement or jersey sales the way Favre did when he arrived at the Meadowlands last August, though none will be rendered the scapegoat for the type of crushing disappointment the team and its fans suffered this past December either.
Even if the page hasn't been completely turned on Favre, the new chapter in Jets QB history indeed began to be written on Wednesday.
