Despair

I keep telling myself, no, no, no. The Green Bay Packers are not going to trade Brett Favre. They're doing due diligence. They're just seeing what other teams would really trade for him, that's all. They're not going to take the chance to let him go play for someone else.

Like the Vikings. Or the Bears. They can't afford to have Brett Favre playing for an NFC North team, or for that matter any team that is on the 2008 schedule, like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Because they absolutely, positively, cannot take the publicity blow that would be Brett Favre quarterbacking another team and defeating the Green Bay Packers.

And then just when I get myself to calm down and I'm about to convince myself that it's all just leverage for negotiation and they'll find a way to either keep Brett retired or get him back to Lambeau, I see this:


I wince. I tell myself it was a disgraceful fluke. But then, I close my eyes again, and I see this:


I even see this and realize that it, too, is just wrong:


And then I despair. What else can I do? Because this could easily be the future:



The horror! The horror! Oh, why couldn't Brett Favre have just stayed retired? Why'd he have to unretire? Why'd he have to attack the team management this way? How could this have happened?

But there's thirteen million reasons spread out over the next three years why Green Bay would be willing to trade. There's plenty of teams that could use a veteran quarterback to support the team while it rebuilds elsewhere. Four teams come immediately to mind: The Fish, the Bucs, the Ravens, and the Falcons. Bonus points for irony if it turns out to be Atlanta.

What about Cleveland? If it has to be somewhere, how about Cleveland? Maybe Packer fans could live with that?