Brett Favre's messy departure from the Green Bay Packers left a sour taste with that loyal fan base, but the team's former general manager believes the quarterback's place in history is solid.
Ron Wolf calls Favre the best Packer in history.
"To me, Brett Favre and I are like connected at the hips," Wolf told the Green Bay Press Gazette last week. "I feel strong loyalty to Brett Favre. When I got here, Don Huston was the greatest player ever to play for the Green Bay Packers. I think everybody will tell you now, the greatest player ever to play for the Packers is Brett Favre. That's his legacy."
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A legacy, we should point out, deeply tied to Wolf's success in Green Bay, but the old GM isn't shy about pointing that out.
Long after Wolf was gone, when Green Bay traded Favre to the Jets before the 2008 season, their split was eased by the steady rise of Aaron Rodgers. So often when a legend exits stage left, teams languish for decades searching for a successor, something we'll call "The Dan Marino Complex". In Green Bay, one potential Hall of Famer was replaced with another (while we're at it, something we'll title "The Steve Young Effect").
"I'm not familiar with any schism because I'm not around here," Wolf said. "He retired, and I watched all of that from Florida. And then suddenly he came back, and I always felt that was a situation that no matter what happened the Packers would never be right. There wouldn't be any way they could be right until that thing worked itself out. Now, fortunately for Ted Thompson, Aaron Rodgers has come in and just played lights out."
The list of Packers legends is long and dense. Bart Starr won two Super Bowls and three world championships. Hutson was a marvel. Ray Nitschke and Reggie White are in the hunt. And let's check back with Rodgers in half a decade. Favre was an epic force in Green Bay, but he's an easy pick as best all-time Packer -- perhaps too easy.
