Don Hutson considered retirement and reported to camp late in 1939, and he then announced his retirement before the 1943, '44 and '45 seasons, only to play again. Forrest Gregg retired and unretired four times during his career.

Agreed and many more players have felt the urge to play once the off season has passed. I would be the same way, keep playing till no one wants me to play for them anymore. Boxing was always a great example of retiring and unretiring. Ali, Foreman, Holyfield. "The legacy is mine" No truer words.

But I think many of those other players came back to help secure their families financially since the NFL paid not a lot unlike today where you can make enough money to retire before your 30.

See GBP4EVER that misses the point. There are many reasons one might speculate on why so many great players had a difficult time walking away from a game they played their whole lives - it is simply speculation.

The point here is that it is not so unheard of as some would have you believe.

The fact that Favre palyed QB with a 1st round sitting on the bench, playbooks, labor conditions, the era things happend in, team situations and numerus other vairiables, like what GPB4EVER points out, make the comparisions impractical.

That's nice.

Did any of them go to play for a playoff-bound division rival? No? Then it's not the same situation. Nice try.

What's a Piker?


What bothered me about the whole thing was after a while it became kind of obvious he was trying to leverage his return to try to force the Packers to make the moves he wanted like getting Randy Moss or hiring Mooch and others, as well as skipping a lot of offseason things the other players were required (or at least highly encouraged) to attend. And then he is miffed when TT has the audacity to draft his replacement, and then gives said replacement the cold shoulder until he became useful to Favre.

This had been going on for 5 years (or more), and I can't help but notice that the answer is always "I still want to play." Can you name another franchise QB in the last 20 years who put his team through this? Or anything like it?

Joe Montana, but the 49ers didn't play they simply traded him and moved on. They did the same with Jerry Rice. When a team decides to move on it should move on, not start a PR campaign to justify its decision IMO

What am I trying? I simply stated a fact (which Christl dug up BTW) about great players indecisiveness.

The Packers traded Brett, he was released after a year by the Jets (who decisively decided to move on) and he became a free agent.

There is nothing to try.

The post was about great players struggling with retirement -- it is an old story told a thousand times in the NFL -- Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Joe Montana... and many more. Here the story was about Hall of Fame Packers

The leverage for Moss and his friends bothered me too.

Why???

QB's often lobby in the off season for player acquisition. Woodson, a CB did this off season.

Brett clearly wanted to win. He was not the GM and that was clearly conveyed to him.

I was never for acquiring Randy Moss for reasons I stated at the time, but I certainly did not fault Brett or other players who thought he would be a good addition in helping the team win a Super Bowl.

Really? Rice and Montana dragged their teams through 5 years of the retirement tap dance, refusing to commit until after the draft, and skipping offseason workouts? I don't remember it going down that way. Maybe it did, but I don't remember it that way. I do recall them saying he was a little frosty toward Steve Young, so they have that in common at least. But I don't think any team has ever put their team through as much drama as Favre has.

As far as the PR goes, let's face it Green Bay is a lot of different than SF. The Packers are everything in Green Bay and Favre was just short of a god to a lot of fans. Not that SF didn't love Montana, but not to the same extent. They PR from the Packers may have been a little clumsy, but I'm not sure there was a clean way out for them.

It didn't happen for 5 years and this is part of one of the problems in having sensible conversation about this topic.

The clean way out was honesty. TT has himself expressed that he wishes he could have a redo on much of the mess. That is not to say that he would not have move on - I believe he had every intention of doing so. But the Executive Committe hiring Ari Fletcher to lead a smear campaign against a Hall of Fame QB was a stupid mistake IMO.

Just as preparing a Favre retires headline and having it prematurely printed in the teams official website was a HUGE blunder.

Fans may not be happy with decisions to simply move on, but they adjust. Now we have to adjust in the midst of a tangled emotional mess with camps divided and the truth obscured to the point that no one will ever know the whole story.

I have maintained from the beginning that both sides were culpable and that the best solution was to get all of the principle players (front office, coaches, Favre and agent) in a room and hammer out the differences - with all possibilities on the table -- return, trade, retirement...

They chose a different route and all suffered.

Cliff Christl mentioned this in his article as well.

http://www.packerchatters.com/4ums/index.php?showtopic=15877

Yes he did. I actually credit Cliff for digging it up above.

This thread tries to compare this situation to previous situations, and intimate that any emotional reactions in excess of the ones in those past situations is, well, excessive. But this situation isn't the same as those. And that's what I pointed out. You're trying to simplify this as simply an old legend that wasn't quite ready to hang up the cleets. It's far more than that, and you're smart enough to know that.

This situation CAN'T be compared to any past situations, because there's NEVER been one like it.

I thought that was a pretty good article. I would recommend it.

Me too brother, I started a thread about it reommending it also.

For 7 years Favre held a gun to THE PACKER MANAGEMENT'S HEAD regarding HIS QB POSITION. So THE PACKERS decide they had enough, swipe away the gun and escape.

Totally different then any other unretiring situation previously in the NFL.

I mentioned in another thread, once THE PACKERS decided not to take Favre back as their starter, there was no way the following events were going to turn out pleasant. You can blame either side, but it is one of those situations where bad outcomes are a 99% probability no matter what either side said or did.

What smear campaign? What did the Packers do or say that one could construe as a smear against Favre? The worst thing they did was move forward with Rodgers after Favre retired and most folks think that was the right decision for the future of the franchise.

Hutson & Gregg both played in eras where there was virtually no off-season. There were no mini-camps, no-OTAs and players used training camp to get into shape. That is not the NFL of today. Missing the off-season does matter now, a lot of work is done in the off-season and players are expected to come into camp in top shape. The impact of the indecision of those two players is far different than players of today, IMO just not comparable.

What PR campaign? Because they hired Fleischer to assist with their press comments/releases? Justify their decision? Don't buy that. They brought Fleischer in to insure the message was clear, not to justify it.

As for the comparison Cliff raised and you noted, neither of those players referenced played in the past 30+ years. Those players needed jobs in the off-season to make ends meet. How does a guy who talked about retirement for 4 or 5 years and made $10mm / year compare to that era? Also, IIRC Gregg contemplated retiring because of injuries. I was not around for Hutson so I could only assume his reasons. The NFL was not a glamour league and even as one of the best in the league at that time he was not a Madison Av. fixture. Injuries and money likely factored in their flirtations with retirement. Neither of those were factors with Favre.

Apples to banana's from where I'm sitting.

I'm more than a little surprised you're buying that whole "smear campaign" bit. You seem much too levelheaded to be wearing the tinfoil hats. I'm not going to say management didn't make some mistakes, but saying they ran a "smear campaign" is a pretty extreme accusation. For someone who claims to be neutral and indifferent about the whole thing, you fell for that one pretty hard.

Think you are neglecting a little bit of the story here. As with the Packers, Brett retired. He then requested the Jets release. The Jets then released him, but were not happy at all that he came back. Seems they believed Brett when he said that he was done playing football and was 100% sure he wasn't coming back.

Some in the NY press indicated that the owner felt "played" by Brett. When he said he wasn't coming back, what he really meant to say was He wasn't coming back to the Jets.

I believe when Brett asked for his release it was to play for the Vikings . . . period.

The Jets didn't decide to move on . . .Brett did.

According to reports I read, Brett asked for his release twice. The first time the Jets turned him down and the second was after the Jets drafted Sanchez.

Also, when Brett retired from the Jets didn't he say something about having so much respect for the Jets owner and front office that he would never come back and put them in a bad situation. Does anyone else remember this?

Yep, pretty much verbatim.

They ain't in yet! Go Pack Go! 2009 NFL North Champions!

Sorry you dont bring in a guy with Fleischer credentiuals to make sure the message was clear. Any good PR firm in the world could have done that. Do they think their own PR staff was not capable? The BOD and EC saw an issue and they where going to "do what they have to do" to protect the Packer brand...this from the article

This much about the Packers' decision to retain Fleischer as the Favre saga unfolded has been verified by several sources connected to the team. It was a decision made by an executive committee that has become increasingly more involved and not by Thompson or others in the football operation. And the decision was made as panic spread through the top of the organization over concern that the Favre matter could be devastating to the franchise's brand name. Members of the board of directors were informed of the decision but given few details. One board member said the group was left with the distinct impression that it was a subject it shouldn't talk about.

I have no issues with bringing in a PR firm or whoever to make the message clear as you say. But this borders on "crisis management". And you say he was not brought in to justify it? Then its strange that 3 weeks after Favre tells McCarthy he wants to come back why issue a detailed timeline about talks with Favre during the off-season and how #4 vacillated tfor four months. Who planted the story about tampering ? Fleischer knows how to play dirty like anyone in Washington, thats how the game is played there. He called reporters (Belling) asking for info on Favre...was he trying to dig up dirt ???If all they wanted was to insure the message was clear, they did not need Ari Fleisher.

I really don't understand this at all. Belling isn't a reporter, he is not involved in sports, he lives in Milwaukee and not Green Bay, he doesn't cover the Packers and he never has. He is a political commentator and his specialty is politics. What kind of information could he get from Belling? If he was hired by the Packers to "Smear" Favre wouldn't they have a lot more info about Favre than anything Belling could provide? This makes no sense to me.

I think there was a second tamperer on the grassy knoll.

How a thread about Don Hutson, Forrest Gregg and Brett Favre does not qualify for a Packer forum is way beyond me.

I think that the part that makes Favre's situation hard to compare with past similar situations isn't with Favre, or even the management. It is with the amount of attention given to Favre every single bloody time he wiped his butt.

I just wrote an article not too long ago noting that Reggie White once waited until the end of April to retire from the Packers, then unretired the next day. Never did Favre go past that date in his own retirement decisions.

This is not to say that White is the "same" as Favre. But the one thing you have to admit is, even though there was speculation that the most special defensive player in league history was considering retiring, there was no daily "Reggie Watch" on ESPN. There were no Jay Glazers sleeping in the airports in Tennessee, just so he could get his scoop on Reggie's retirement. There was no daily update on White or any of these players Bruce mentions. They just existed and we went about our business.

Certainly, the fact that he did it year after year is a black mark against Favre. But, the administration had every right to impose a deadline far earlier than they did, and most years (Sherman and Thompson included) it was "Favre can take his time to make his decision", including going past the draft.

No retirement saga got as much attention as Favre's, so no wonder we all grew weary of it. But, we are the customer, and the media gives us what we want to hear. Seriously...who really cared if Favre retired? We had the guy waiting in the wings. Will we care this much if Driver starts doing an annual waffle? Charles Woodson?

But we did care. We cared too much. We obsessed on it. And we are still obsessing about it today. Maybe its time we all get over it.

.......Certainly, the fact that he did it year after year is a black mark against Favre. But, the administration had every right to impose a deadline far earlier than they did, and most years (Sherman and Thompson included) it was "Favre can take his time to make his decision", including going past the draft......

Hey L.A. -
Not taking exception with any of your post but adding my comment to the above portion. Although it could be said the Packers could have taken a harder stance at an earlier time - but looks whats happened when they finally did - they're accused of tossing the guy out of town on his ass. So perhaps the decision making process wasnt quite as free as it could/would have been with another player.

Andrew Brandt has a nice article up about how everything went down over at nationalfootballpost.com. I agree that Sherman set some of this in motion, but Thompson could have laid down the law right away in 2005, too. According to Brandt, Thompson avoided the difficult conversations. Maybe he was intimidated by Favre, and it is easy to see that. But then, the way that it finally went down was inevitable. The gunpowder keg filled up then a spark lit it up.

Please don't get the impression that I am exonerating Favre. He's a big boy and needs to take accountability for his own self-stylized grandeur. But, we all played a part in creating that Frankenstein's monster by obsessing over him and the administration tripping over him. If TT didn't really want him, he needed to solve that problem a lot earlier instead of being afraid of what people would say about him or a PR disaster. In the end, they said it anyway.

I would like to know that myself, why did he even ask him??

Draw your own conclusions. I am sure we will never know the full story. Many of the dots / timelines connect. I understand its speculation on CC's for the most part, but alot of its adds up.

Maybe he was trying to get a pulse on what Milwaukee thought about Favre and was trying to gauge whether people would side with the organization in a dispute. This is the kind of information that Belling may actually have. He does host a popular Milwaukee show and he may a good pulse on the community. If he was looking for dirt, he would probably have more luck at any Green Bay bar as opposed to Belling.

I thought Karl Rove was the smear genius....

Nah, I looked it up Ted was only 10 at the time. Although he was born in Texas. Even I won't pin that one on him.