Another Episode Of The Brett Farve Soap Opera

Brett Favre arrived in Green Bay yesterday to report to training camp. Favre will be officially reinstated on the Packers roster at 1:30pm est today. With Favre in town it seems the Packers attitude is changing. Since the team couldn’t pay Favre to say retired, they now welcome him back. You can read the A.P. story here from the Green Bay Press Gazette.

Now there will be a quarterback competition in Green Bay. Aaron Rodgers is ready to fight for the starters job the head coach Mike McCarthy has said is his. Rodgers acknowledges that it’s going to be a dogfight.

Brett Favre has started more games consecutively that any other quarterback in the NFL. To keep that streak alive, he will have to earn it in camp and beat out Rodgers. McCarthy has made ”no promises” to Favre.

Mark Murphy's statement
"Sixteen years after Brett Favre came to the Packers, he is returning for a seventeenth season. He has had a great career with our organization and although we built this year around the assumption that Brett meant what he said about retiring, Brett is coming back. We will welcome him back and turn this situation to our advantage."Frankly, Brett’s change of mind put us in a very difficult spot. We now will revise many actions and assumptions about our long-term future, all predicated on Brett’s decision last March to retire. As a result of his decision, we invested considerably in a new and different future without Brett and we were obviously moving in that direction. That’s why this wasn’t easy. Having crossed the Rubicon once when Brett decided to retire, it’s very difficult to reorient our plans and cross it again in the opposite direction – but we’ll put this to our advantage."Brett will be in camp tomorrow. Although there has been uncertainty regarding Brett’s return, Ted Thompson and Coach McCarthy had previously discussed this and have had a plan in place. Coach McCarthy will talk to the team and the quarterbacks about the plan moving forward, and after he has done that we will share it publicly."No matter what, I look forward to another successful season for the Packers and our fans. This has been a tough situation, but the Packers will make the most of it."

Photo Courtesy: Yahoo sports.com

Time For Another Episode Of The Brett Favre Soap Opera

The bizarre saga between the Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre continues to reach higher levels of the absurd. First Packers President Mark Murphy flies down to Mississippi to reportedly offer Favre $20 million just to go away and stay retired. Now every Packer fan or reporter including some poor production assistant at ESPN is tracking every flight out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi in case Farve shows up at the Frozen Tundra.

More on that Thursday’s Green Bay Press Gazette

Favre’s agent Bus Cook says his client understands he would be walking into a media frenzy but that he is willing to do so and not have retirement forced upon him.

“He’s prepared to deal with it.” Cook told the Associated Press Thursday. “He’s ready to go back, but he can’t go back until the commissioner reinstates him.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday that the Packers are so desperate that the team has discussed internally about trading Favre within the NFC North. That would include the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings.

Meanwhile Packer fans seem to want Brett Favre back in the Packer colors. There seems to be a lot of support for Farve according to Lori Nichel’s article in Thursday’s Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Your Monday Brett Favre Update

Mark Craig of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune says that Packers GM Ted Thompson was asked whether or not Number 4 would ever be traded to a team within the NFC North Monday.

His answer- "No."

And that was it for the answer... one word...

Other questions and answers included this one having to do with a Packers-bought-and-paid-for cell phone...

“There are no, and none that I have ever heard of, certainly since I’ve been back — and I think I would know — any cell phones that any of our players have that are issued by the Packers.”

So much for that theory...

The rest of Craig's daily blog is hyah

The Jolly Roger was at Toronto Buffalo Bills camp in Rochester, New York and answered a few questions on behalf of The Shield today... a sample...

"Brett Favre’s a great player, a great competitor, and I think it’s been a great reflection on the Packers and the NFL. So if Brett Favre wants to return and play , I think that would be a great thing for the fans and for the league."

The rest of Tom Pelissero's work from the Green Bay Press-Gazette is hyah

If you go down one more story in his blog, you get more notes from the Ted Thompson press conference...

And away we go...

Tamper Tamper??? Or "Can You Hear Me Now?"

This really should come as no surprise to anyone to follows life inside "The Shield" or the Brett Favre saga over the last few days. But it seems that the Green Bay Packers are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore...

Our friends at foxsports.com report that the Packers are bent at the Minnesota Vikings ((big shock there)) because of conversations Favre has had with Vikes Offensive Coordinator Darrell Bevell. Apparently, Favre and Bevell talked to one another in the off-season.

The hook- Bevell was Favre's QB Coach from 2003-2005, and the offense currently run in Minnesota is the closest thing to the "West Coast" Offense that Brett is comfortable running from behind center.

Hmmmmm....

Mike Sherman retools his offense to fit Aaron Rodgers.

Brett Favre goes to an old boss to talk shop...allegedly...The Vikings deny this, of course...

Hmmmmm....

((Insert black helicopter noise here))

If it's proven that conversations took place, the Vikes could lose a draft pick or draft picks-plural... and, maybe, some caish for good measure...

And, apparently, "Bus" Cook, Favre's agent is telling folks that Brett is laying low on the whole idea of filing for reinstatement.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette article by Pete Dougherty is hyah

Jay Glazer's scoop, if you missed it the first time, is hyah

UPDATE: 17 July

According to Mike Florio at Profootballtalk.com, the Packers may have this whole phone conversation-thing traced to one place.

Ahem... quote

"...it has been reported that the Packers believe that phone records will reveal that Favre has had multiple conversations with Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell. But we’re hearing that the Packers might already have the phone records. Since the Packers wouldn’t have had access to the phone records of Bevell or any other Vikings employee, the logical conclusion is that Favre was using a cell phone that has been bought and paid for by the Packers — and that the Packers have full access to the documents reflecting all calls made and received."

Another name on the phone records, according to PFT, could be that of a phone allegedly linked to Vikings Head Coach Brad Childress.

If that's the case... well, then... um... Oops!