Quote Originally Posted by Pugger View Post
I think you have mostly hit upon the truth here. Brett did see the writing on the wall (AR) but had to get his release from this contract with GB so he could go to MN. When TT didn't give it to him the relationship really soured between team and player. It didn't help that Favre didn't file his reinstatement papers right away either. By the time BF did it didn't take long before he was traded to NY.
Hmm, I don't recall that he had asked TT to release him, but then it probably went something like this...

1. Fake retirement in March/April 2008
2. Spend summer plotting next move, still talking to the Packers occasionally, knowing that they still want you to play, not 100% sure of their belief in AR.
3. Training camp comes, "get the itch" (never really lose it?) to play again
4. Tell the Packers you are coming back, and reach the cross-roads of your career in Green Bay. Now the Packers can either A) Give you your job back or B) Move on with AR I still maintain he knew that if he came back so late that TT/MM would say no.
5. Once they told him he could be a backup, he asked for his release. Now, if Brett really got mad because Green Bay wouldn't simply release him, then his ego got the best of him. He should have known better. What club is going to just release him for no compensation? Answer=None. So was he faking being upset at that point, or just that delusional that he thought the team should release him to sign with whoever he wanted (Vikings).
6. Now the Packers had only one choice to make; trade him for the best compensation they could get. Keeping him around at that point wasn't going to be an option.

I loved watching him play, and appreciated all he gave the team, but during that episode, I was not happy with how he handled his business. He was like a kid who was not going to take responsibility for his own actions and the consequences of them. It's call manipulation. If he seriously thought the Packers should just release him with no thought of compensation, then he was seriously deluded. I think he just wanted to look like the good guy throughout, no matter how he acted.

After that happened, I knew Packer fans who lost their minds being mad at TT and the Packers. Why? Because they didn't automatically give Brett the starting job back. Because they felt like Favre had done so much for the Packers that the team should have kept his spot open indefinitely, no matter how disruptive his indecision was to the plans of the team. I seriously wondered if some of them weren't bigger Favre fans than they were Green Bay Packer fans. I realized that at some point I reach my limits with a player's behavior and I can't look past all of their actions, no matter how important they are to the team, and I don't put one player above the team.