Winners and Losers in the Favre Saga

Now that Brett Favre has signed with the Minnesota Vikings, perhaps it is time to go back and evaluate his other post-Packers NFL experience. A thoughtful evaluation of Favre's impact on the New York Jets last season seems like an useful exercise (though it appears that Brad Childress passed on it). For it seems to me that the Jets may well have been the biggest losers in last year's "The Old and the Restless" soap opera, starring Brett Favre.

It was March 2008 that Brett Favre announced his retirement from the Green Bay Packers in an emotional and memorable news conference. The news of Favre's retirement dominated all talk radio, sports, and news coverage here in Wisconsin for days. Even national outlets talked of little else. SI.com dedicated its home page to all-things-Brett on that day, and ESPN had every analyst imaginable talking about Favre's career and his place in history.

Favre was an almost universally beloved icon around the sports world. True, people had grown a little weary of the annual "will he or won't he" routine in January and February. But now that he had finally retired, it was HUGE.

But then July rolled around, and the NFL icon turned into a comic character. The events that unfolded during the next few weeks -- painful weeks for Packer fans -- resulted in an almost unthinkable conclusion: the Green Bay Packers trading away Brett Favre. Even all these months after that dust has settled, the headline --"Packers trade Favre" -- remains shocking.

For years, NFL fans had joked at Jerry Glanville's expense that the Falcons had foolishly traded away Brett back in 1992. But Glanville's only error was that he didn't know what he had in Brett Favre. How could the Packers not know what they had?

The fanfare for Brett in New York was amazing. Even if he wasn't getting any love from the Packers' front office, he was getting a ton from the Big Apple -- including a welcoming ceremony from the Mayor of New York himself.

Upon Brett's arrival in New York, the Jets released Chad Pennington. The speed with which they jettisoned Pennington for the 38-year-old Favre was mind-boggling, and their division rivals -- the Miami Dolphins -- seized the opportunity with equal alacrity.

Now all the water of the 2008 season has gone under the bridge, and what are we left with?

The Packers went from a 13-3 team in 2007 to a 6-10 team in 2008. During Brett's last season, the Packers won their division going away, and went all the way to the NFC Championship game, where they lost to the eventual Super Bowl winners (New York Giants). During the first season without Brett, however, Green Bay limped to a 6-10 record, falling to third place in the division behind both the Bears and the Vikings, and missing the playoffs altogether.

The Jets, meanwhile, enjoyed a surge from a 4-12 2007 team to a respectable 9-7 in 2008. Nevertheless, after early and mid-season excitement, New York fell flat at the end and missed the playoffs.

What mitigates the Jets' sense of progress still more is that the Pennington-led Dolphins went from a 1-15 2007 to a division-winning 11-5 in 2008.

So the Jets lost Pennington, they fired their coach, and Favre retired again (though again only temporarily).

The Packers lost their icon, they bungled the 2008 season, and it's too early to say with confidence what we have in Aaron Rodgers.

And Favre dragged his reputation through the muck, prolonging his career in the wrong shade of green, and inspiring a pervading sense that he played too long.

It's clear who the surprise winner in the whole saga was: the Miami Dolphins. But who was the big loser? The likelihood that it was the Jets makes one wonder about the decision Minnesota has made this year. Cast your vote in the poll on the right, and offer your thoughts in the comments below.