After watching the Green Bay Packers ride exceptional quarterback play to another 13 regular-season victories and another playoff appearance in 2021, it's time to reprise the familiar lament of Vikings fans:
Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers have been the only quarterbacks atop the Green Bay depth chart since 1992 and … it's just too bad that the Vikings got stuck with one of these guys.
Somehow, the Packers have won just two Super Bowls since 1992 despite having this advantage over the rest of the league for three decades. The Patriots benefited from Tom Brady for only two decades, and made much better use of having a dominant player at the position.
The price for the Packers' two Super Bowls: Egomania, manipulation, off-field embarrassments, and a lot of playoff failures.
Packers fans will counter that the Vikings and their fans don't have the right to criticize a franchise that has acquired great quarterbacks and won two Super Bowls. They're right. The Vikings' decades-long brand of elevated mediocrity is due to a failure to do exactly what the Packers have done with Favre and Rodgers, and the Vikings' best chance to win a Super Bowl might have arrived when Favre led the Vikings in 2009.
As Rodgers cynically trolls his franchise and the public for a second straight offseason, following a season in which he lied about his vaccination status and missed a game because of a positive COVID test, the question for Packers fans is: Aren't you tired of this?
Favre played for the Vikings for two seasons, requiring hand-holding, massive amounts of cash, begging teammates and training camp avoidance in both seasons.
He backstabbed Brad Childress, the guy who brought him in, and didn't seem fully committed in his second season, a disaster for the franchise.
Off the field, Favre allegedly sent unwanted graphic photos of himself to a sideline reporter. Last year, he was forced to repay $600,000 in state welfare money he accepted for speeches he didn't give, as part of a fraud scheme.
In his home state, one of the poorest states in America.
Media reports in November noted that Favre still owes $228,000 in interest to the state.
Favre made the 2009 season a thrill, but how can anybody, in Wisconsin or Minnesota, feel good about having cheered for this guy?
Favre gave way to Rodgers, who initially was a sympathetic figure in Green Bay because of his draft-day slide and Favre's dismissiveness toward him.
Now Rodgers is a proud anti-vax disinformation artist who refused to work with his team last offseason and is dragging out his decision for next season. We don't know whether he'll return to the Packers, force a trade or retire, and that's the way he wants it.
It isn't enough for Rodgers that Green Bay has made him rich and has supported him with exceptional talent and coaching. The Packers' audacity in drafting what they hoped would be the next Aaron Rodgers led to a level of pettiness that is almost unprecedented.
The Vikings have been stuck in a competitive rut — too good to start over and rebuild, not good enough to make a realistic run at a Super Bowl title.
The Packers, with one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, are stuck, too, even if on a higher plane.
Let's not forget what Rodgers did at the beginning and end of the 2021 season:
In Week 1, he produced three points in the season opener, after failing to prepare himself in the offseason.
In the Packers' first playoff game, he produced 10 points in a loss.
The Packers are doing everything they can to keep Rodgers.
Given all of the problems he has caused them, you have to wonder if that has more to do with Jordan Love's slow development than Rodgers' talent.
