The Fontenot

The Old Man's Comin' In

Or at the very least he appears to be, although he would "report" to "training camp" even if his goal was to be traded.  But shit.  Maybe Mooch knew something we didn't know.  Maybe, somehow, it will actually work?  Maybe he and Rodgers will dock in the locker room after the first practice?  All remains to be seen.

Update: The Press Gazette is now up on this, with little new information, but what I'm now wondering is whether or not this phone call, which occurred Thursday afternoon, came before or after the shareholder meeting. As I worked to get my screenshot of the Oval Office ad, I zombied out in front of this article.  In it, you can see this interesting detail:

Murphy appeared within minutes and spent more than a half-hour meeting shareholders and signing autographs.

When Murphy left, several dozen shareholders hovered around the Atrium elevators to await Thompson’s arrival. When he finally showed up, he was met with repeated comments of support as he signed autographs.

Thompson was quite late to the meet-and-greet. He sat in his office for a long time before coming out. I wonder who he was talking to on the phone?

Favre Theories #375, #408, and #486

#375:

Part of Favre's general restlessness and eagerness to come back derives from a deep-seeded fear that once football's out of his life, he'll have nothing to distract him from his addictive tendencies. He's afraid of hitting the bottle again.

#408:

Favre is more insecure than we'd guess about his talents, especially his ability to perform in the post-season. He enjoys the adoration of fans and journalists but deep down thinks: "Shit, I don't deserve this. They don't see the truth. I am a false creation." Feeling fraudulent, he has come to suspect that the love people have for him is a little fraudulent too.  The love of his fans is a burden, really--the more they excuse his faults, the more he feels like a fake.  He wants to be fully known, and to be fully known, he needs to air his darker self. And so this ham-handed passive-aggressive, ill-timed bullshit is a form of not entirely unconscious self-sabotage. I.e. Favre knew full well there would be serious backlash if he waited this long and forced the issue, but in a way he wanted to be loved a little bit less, because people sometimes crave Truth over their own self-interest.

#486

Brittany went to Biloxi over spring break, got way drunk at Senor Phrogg's and lost $36 million playing poker on a riverboat casino. Spring break is mid-March. You do the math.

All Over But the Cryin'

All that can be said?  Thanks, Old Man, for some serious fucking entertainment.

(Personal note: For me, your first start came right around the time biologists say the human brain stops physically growing.  Your career encompassed 60.71% of my life and endured through puberty, high school, college, and graduate school.  I believe you a part of my unconscious mind.)

More will be discussed, down the road, as to the moments in which we pushed through the bubble to something more, or when we fell through to something worse.  Not many pro football players could make real art and real sadness and start every game.

Now, let me seal the hatches and submerge once again. 

I just hope nobody lets Kornheiser produce an hour-long retrospective.  Now that would be the end of the world

Dreams and Meta-4

How fun is this? Really, have you ever had more fun as a Packer fan? The Super Bowl seasons were fun, but they weren't this kind of fun, were they? We were supposed to be dominant those years. We were mentally prepared for excellence. Things had been building and it seemed inevitable. This year? This is just a dream. I mean, it feels like things are happening that you literally dream about when you're driving to work, staring at the red tailights in front of you, projecting your own desires for triumph and beauty like an 11 year old boy. The D is generally strong, though, okay, the run D wasn't so hot today, we have 2 great and 3 good receivers, a good RB, and threats on special teams. And of course, Favre, for the last five games, has become the Platonic ideal of Favre. 20 completions in a row? 120+ QB rating? And did you hear his reaction to getting Fox's Galloping Gobbler award? He looked at it, smirked and said: "Well, I guess it's better than not getting it." Perfect smalltalk too.

After basking in today's win, I was inclined to do a little pondering. Earlier, my brother and I had decided that if Hollywood made a movie about the 2007 Packers season thus far, Eddie Munster should play Mason Crosby, an even fatter Jack Black should play Mark Tauscher, and Matt Damon and Russell Crowe could arm wrestle for the job of playing Favre.  Wanting to make the most of our fleeting brilliance, I floated another question: Has any NFL QB or any NFL player, for that matter, ever had a return to MVP form like this so late in his career? In other words, is there anything we can compare the Return of Favre to?

We thought.

Sure, Elway won the Super Bowl in his last two years in the league, and Jordan won 3 straight in his last three years with the Bulls, but had anyone been calling for their retirement in the years before? Montana got the Chiefs to the playoffs in his last two years after sitting out a whole year with a fucked up elbow, but no way he was as sharp as Favre is now. Rich Gannon and Steve Beuerlein had great years late in their career but, please, how good had they been to begin with? What were we saying? We switched sports. Grant Hill, my brother offered. His All-Star year after his 200th ankle surgery. Don Sutton, my dad said, he came back from an injury too. I vaguely remembered a guy in tight light blue pants with a grey man-perm. Napoleon, my brother said, going historical. His late campaigns! Nah, my dad said, dismissing it. He died in exile. Doesn't work. Churchill, he countered. He was a high ranking guy early in his career before going bust and then rising to legend status in WWII. But no, Churchill's early performance really was more Rich Gannon-caliber than Favre-caliber. Finally, we agreed Favre's resurgence was unique to all of human history. We went back to watching the Nebraska game. Silently, we apologized to Churchill for comparing him to Rich Gannon.

Maybe, I thought later, unable to drop it, Favre's return to excellence is most comparable to the careers of artists. Like Dylan. He becomes a legend early. He's considered not only good at what he does, but uniquely American. Symbolic. There's a period of ill-conceived releases. (You get it? Huh? Huh?) Then, at the point where some people (some) have written him off (Dylan's mumbling performances and so-so songs = Favre's 3 INT in a game performances) he comes back stronger than ever, forcing the critics to stick their thumbs where the sun don't shine. This metaphor, granted, requires that you think Modern Times is up there with Blonde on Blonde. Maybe Philip Roth? Maybe Steve Earle, if you're focusing on the personal struggle angle? Mercifully, it came to a stop.

Now, I realize that if this team shits the bed in the playoffs, all this gushing will seem foolish and premature. There's five games left. Favre is human. There is such a thing as turnovers. There's gaps and flaws and, just next week , a very good Dallas team to contend with. But I don't care. I'm livin in the moment. It's Thanksgiving. The Pack is 10-1 and every game is a treat. Don't even think about waking me up yet.

Ramblin' On

Packer pain now dissipated, there are lots of things going on:

Yanni Therapy
In case there's anything terrible left inside, watch this.  Inspiration is a tenuous thing, but Yanni has found a way to capture human emotion and deliver it, over and over again.  If and when the Packers fall behind against Washington, I urge you to bring your laptop out and cue this baby up.  It will help.  I promise it will help.  I also urge you to allow this to play as you read the rest of this post if you can bear to look away from Yanni's enthusiasm.  Again, same conecpt: it will only help.

At Least You're Not a Buffalo Fan
At least you're not a Buffalo fan.

Congress Cares About Brett Favre
Looks like the US congress is up to its usual tricks.  And, if you're wondering, here's what else congress worked on that day.  Seems about the same degree of importance.  Next stop: UN Ambassador.  After that we'll have to wait until interstellar travel before Favre is again singled out for duties. 

It's possible he'll still be starting when we break through the warp barrier, right?  Fontenot prediction: Rogers asleep behind the bench, 78 years old, his beard gray and long like Rip VanWinkle's.  A reporter wakes him and asks him what he thinks about Favre's planned mission to Belvetron IV.  His quote: "I'm just happy I've been able to learn so much from him.  My shot's just around the corner, and I will use what I've learned, definitely." 

New JSOnline Packer Blog
Now you can finally read an informative blog about the Packers.

James Jones Won't Get Bounced
It doesn't seem like it, anyway.  Nor should he, really.  After seeing the replays, it's a lot easier to say that Tillman made two solid plays than Jones made two horrible plays.  Yes, he fumbled.  But it's not like the guy was running free down the sideline and just dropped the ball.  It's not like it was the end of the Vikings game and he inexplicably dropped a handoff after the game was locked up.  He needs to bounce back.  I predict a redeeming performance from him on Sunday.  There's something about Jones that seems very, very psychologically sound.

Not that the fumbles weren't devastating.  When you're there, as you probably know, you can feel the energy and momentum a little better.  During that second drive, when it looked like the Packers were going to score again, everything was in place.  By all indications it was going to be another night-game Bear-demolition.  I know it was early, but feeling the enthusiasm of 70,000 people sucked up into the sky (or worse, sucked up into the sky and sucked down the shore of Lake Michigan and deposited into Chicago) makes it hard to believe your team is going to win.

So it goes.  What if?: the second-lowest form of conversation.

The Challenge
I learned on Wednesday via the NFL PR flotilla NFL Total Access that the refs technically got the time out/spot change thing right.  However, this rule, along with a few others, highlight some oddly complex philosophical problems you would not expect to be dealing with in America's Meathead League.  Seriously, I'll take an extension class somewhere if I want to do gedanken experiments.  The tuck rule leads to a morass of intentionality vs. action.  The "plane of the endzone" conceptualization asks fans to imagine  invisible lines, planes, and rectangular solids extending (infinitely? ) away from the field. Think  about who you're asking to do this!!! Replay draws all causality into question--if we say it was a force-out, we are also implicitly saying there is no longer  history.  Also, if we say he fumbled and he didn't, we'll turn it around, but if we say he didn't fumble and he did, we will blow the "Whistle of Nothingness," which, as you know, also stops time, causality, and history.

For the Packer situation, the rule is this: all challenges for field position must be linked to challenges of a first down.  Therefore, if you challenge for field position, you are also automatically challenging for first down.  Both changes must be made in order for it to be a "successful" challenge.  A few strange things here.  First, why link the two things at all?  Does this not imply that you are not, in any circumstance other than a first-down challenge, allowed to challenge a spot?  Of course it does.  And yet the game is full of "spot" challenges that have nothing to do with first downs.  Imagine a play in which a runner steps out of bounds, then runs another 35 yards...first downs are never discussed, and are not part of the equation.  If you say, in response, that they are part of the equation, and are simply not mentioned, then I'll give you a different hypothetical: say a player is nearly tackled ten yards behind the scrimmage, shakes a few defenders, and gets back to the line of scrimmage.  Now say the replay show this runner's knee clearly touching the ground ten yards back.  Of course you can challenge this. Field position is challenged independently of first downs all the freaking time. So what is there to conclude?  Only that the refs arbitrarily "link" the field position and first-down challenges when faced with situations in which they are both relevant.  

This is stupid, makes no sense.  The rules of your game have to be coherent.  Watching the game on Sunday night was like playing a video game that has yet to be debugged.  Everything is okay for awhile, then you walk into a frame that just doesn't work, and all of physics collapses in on itself.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the end of the Buffalo/Dallas game highlighted another serious problem with the rules, and one that should be addressed by the league in the offseason.  With about 13 seconds left in the game, T.O. appeared to catch a pass that put the Cowboys into field position.  The ref, befuddled, took a solid five seconds to make a call (he called catch), and then we got to watch their uninspiring hustle as they tried to get the ball in place for a snap.  The game easily could have ended here, because of that ref's hesitation, which is a problem in and of itself.  But furthermore, even though Dallas spiked the ball, the refs decided to review the T.O. play.  The official word was that "they pressed the button" just before Romo snapped the ball.  I think this is bullshit.  Mike Perriera, director of officiating, lauded this moment as a great job from the guys upstairs in the replay booth.  Clearly, though, there is no oversight at all.  Perriera claims that they have to wait to "press the button" until it is clear Romo  would have been able to get off another snap.  Only then will they interfere and challenge a play.  Otherwise, they risk falsely interfering with the flow of a game.

Are you fucking kidding me.

Here's what this policy implies:  a blown call (T.O.'s catch) creates a false path in time.  Within this false path of time, however, you must prove to us that  you can get a false snap off before the false clock ticks down to zero.  Once you have successfully shown that it's hypothetically possible to do this, now that you've passed the Test of Falsity, we will go backwards in time in our Delorians and let you try again, this time for real. 

There is bad, bad confusion afoot.  There need to be many changes.

Best Thing To Ever Happen
Profootballtalk linked to this the other day, and I found the full version and watched it and cried while watching it.  I was up watching this live whenever it happened, and I absolutely lost control of myself then.  It's still the same.  If you have any bad feelings left, watch this, and get better.  Oh, and the Packers and playing the Redskins on Sunday.

421

YouTube's creeping me out this morning.  There's enough video evidence of this one particular moment in time, I think, to make a 3D hologram for Madden 2021. 

A little reminder of the beginning... 

Also just really disturbing... 

Check It: Arvt

Here's an interesting little conversation about Favre-art at Madison Guy's blog.

This is the same dude--the artist--in a NY Times piece a few years old.  He's been working the Favre aesthetic in Brooklyn for awhile.

All Hail the Scruffy One

How great was it to watch Favre not scowl, be patient, play smart, throw lasers, spread the ball around, smile his chapped-lip smile and hoot and slap people's helmets, set a big-time NFL record, and yak a mile a minute to his teammates after his touchdowns like a kid who just ran home from school to tell Mom about kicking the winning kick for his kickball team?

So great.

On the last scoring drive when it was first and goal  Favre had lots of time to throw and was looking and looking but instead of forcing something, instead of reverting to 1993/2005 Favre, he threw it out of bounds. That may have been my favorite pass of the game. Okay, third-favorite.

The D looked good again--they broke up passes, got pressure on Manning and J.Load and Other Guy, and made Amani Toomer lose his shit and Eli Manning see a running back mirage where there was only Corey Williams.

And Bubba Franks lives! He lives!  Good to see you again, Bubba.

Sure, the Giants' D was lame. Sure, the running game could have been better. But still.

Before the season began, I wrote that I thought the Packers would go either 8-8 or 9-7. I don't know if I really believed 9-7, but I sure hoped for it. Now? I believe it.

That said, next week: San Diego 24, Green Bay 20. And watch Mason Crosby get his groove back.

To Vent or Not to Vent

From a USA Today story posted Thursday, excerpts about the training regimen BFF's been on to get into game day shape:

"I've taken better care of myself, not great, but better care of myself," Favre said. "I have to admit I kind of eat what I want, I just don't eat a lot of it. I don't kill myself in the weight room or (doing) cardio, but I do enough, and as training camp gets closer, increase it a little bit more."

"I don't have the self-motivation I once had," Favre conceded. "It's frustrating to me, it's disappointing at times that I just can't make myself get up and go do it. It's much easier to say, Ah, I'll do it tomorrow.

"The difference being theres going to be people chasing me (on the field) in about six weeks. So, I better do it."

So here we find Favre copping to the fact that he's having a harder time getting psyched about prepping for the season this year. I totally understand what he means. Working out sucks. Even if you're getting paid $11.8M to do it, it sucks. But "I don't have the self-motivation I once had" doesn't exactly put make me want to crank up "Eye of the Tiger" and put on my large green and gold styrofoam finger.

Seems like we're getting a lot of this brand of offhanded honesty from Favre this year. Being one of the few active, relevant NFL superstars, he's allowed to say whatever he wants, of course, the same way my Grandma was allowed to say whatever she wanted once she hit 80.When you know your legacy is locked up, and the people that love you will love you no matter what, and the people that want to bash you are going to do that no matter what, you stop censoring yourself. You shoot from the hip.

And yet I worry about all this honesty.