by Scott Benson
scott@patriotsdaily.com

I’ve tried to turn a deaf ear towards most of this Favre foolishness over the past few weeks, but that’s been damn near impossible for someone cruising around the Internet in search of training camp news and notes from around the NFL.

So, like Robert DeNiro, I heard some things. A lot of things. Then, finally, it hit me, what this whole thing has been about all along.

Brett Favre doesn’t want to quit football. He never wanted to quit.

He just wanted to get the hell out of Green Bay.

Favre’s trying to run away from the Packers. He’s headed back there now to force them to trade him. He doesn’t want any part of Green Bay anymore, not if Mike McCarthy (and the man who hired him, Ted Thompson) is going to be there.

Truth is, Brett still wants to play, to have FUN, to be BRETT FAVRE, but he doesn’t want anybody telling him he has to study and prepare and carry out the game plan and use his check downs like a pussy, instead of chucking it, gunslinger style. Always asking if he’s looked at film. Film? You mean like Smokey and the Bandit? Ha! Brett wishes he’d saved that one for Madden, or maybe for a text to Peter King.

See, Brett’s always believed you didn’t need all that book learnin’ if you’re BRETT FAVRE. These new guys coming in here and bitching about not running the play they called – they piss Brett off. He’s not having any FUN. He (sniff) still wants to play but (sniff) he can’t do Monday through Saturday any more (sniff)……it’s the grind.

The grind. Meaning the time of the week he’s being COACHED.

If somebody would just pay Brett to show up and play on Sunday he’d play forever, but shucks, nobody’s going to do that, are they (eyes scan the room for the one guy saying “I could see the Vikings doing that…”)?

For somebody who’s waffled like Belgium for the last four years, seemingly never knowing what he wanted, I’m beginning to think that in this case Favre knew exactly what he was doing. Not at the first – he was just tired and cranky in the aftermath of the season, six months of these guys askin’ him “what’ll you do if this happens, what’ll you do if that happens,” like Brett’s supposed to know. BRETT FAVRE will cross that bridge when BRETT FAVRE comes to it, pally.

Besides, what did all this “preparation” stuff get BRETT FAVRE, anyway? Last season just ended like they all do – with another stupid, ballcrushing BRETT FAVRE interception. Big diff. And these guys think they’re smart. What is it with them? Didn’t they talk to Mike (“Whatever, Brett”) Sherman? No more. If Brett has to pay attention in meetings instead of making fart noises or just blowing the meeting off altogether, BRETT FAVRE quits.

That lasted just long enough for him to get home, where he quickly realized that as much as they’d like to, ESPN simply cannot suspend its regular programming to train its cameras on Brett 24 hour hours a day. It’s a short walk from there to Darren Bevell, his old pal from the Sherman days, and the pliable, desperate Brad Childress, who I’m certain both assured Brett they would do nothing to interfere with Brett’s FUN. Because that’s what this is all about. BRETT FAVRE having FUN.

He demands to be paid like a king without putting in one-tenth of the work and discipline that Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and just about everybody else accepts gladly, or at the very least begrudgingly. Not Favre. He’s exempt, because he’s BRETT FAVRE, and BRETT FAVRE has always done whatever the hell he felt like doing, and not a damn bit else, ever since Big Irv first spared the rod.

And now, to slack on the responsibilities he’s somehow managed to avoid since Mike Holmgren gave up on him, he’ll call in the chits from his cultivated cadre of media pals and make one of the NFL’s signature franchises – the Green Bay Packers, for crissakes – look like a bunch of fools. To escape the accountability he’s never accepted, he’ll ditch the town and the people that lionized him, because he’s lazy, and stubborn, and he’s such a self-centered boor that he wants to be celebrated for those things and not critiqued.

After all, he’s just like a kid, having fun out there. A spoiled rotten kid who’s become all too accustomed to HIS way.