Brett Favre News

"David Witthoft finally shunned his Brett Favre jersey for a red shirt for the first time in 1,581 days. The 12-year-old Ridgefield, Conn., boy wore the No. 4 jersey every day since receiving it as a Christmas gift in 2003. David's father, Chuck Witthoft, said that his son's last day wearing the jersey was April 23 on his 12th birthday."

"Brett Favre no longer holds a spot on the Green Bay Packers' roster and his $11.4 million salary cap charge is off the team's books."

"While Brett Favre was continuing his I-might-not-stay-retired hint-a-thon with an appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman" Thursday night on CBS and in an ESPN interview that aired Friday, the Green Bay Packers took another step away from the legendary quarterback and toward the future by placing him on the NFL's reserve/retired list. "

"Brett Favre just can't seem to keep fans and himself from second-guessing his retirement. Friday, after the Green Bay Packers placed the quarterback on the NFL's reserve/retired list to keep him from counting against their 80-player roster limit, the future first-ballot Hall of Famer kept leaving his retirement open to speculation."

"Brett Favre is so popular, he will be featured on the cover of the Madden '09 video game, even though he has retired from the NFL. And, he said Friday he's not contemplating a comeback."

"While Green Bay Packers fans continue to debate whether Brett Favre will ever come back to play, the iconic quarterback has just finished filming two new commercials that will debut nationally in a few months."

"An NFL spokesman confirmed former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre will be a guest on David Letterman's late-night talk show on April 24."

"This is meant in the nicest possible way and no disrespect is intended, but Brett Favre needs to shut up. Please, Brett, no more rambling about the prospect of coming out of retirement."

"I admit it. I actually bought Brett Favre’s announcement last month that he was not going to return for an 18th NFL season."

"If Brett Favre is keeping hope alive of a retirement comeback, at least one former teammate said the Green Bay Packers weren't holding their collective breath."

"While reiterating that he's "happy" with his decision to retire, former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre said in a recent interview that he might heed the call, should the team need him if starter Aaron Rodgers is injured."

"The Green Bay Packers and their nationwide legion of fans can't wait to find out how well Aaron Rodgers does in his first season as their starting quarterback."

"Brett Favre isn't having second thoughts about retiring. At least not now, anyway. In an interview with Sports Illustrated magazine on Friday, Favre shot down a published report that he is thinking about coming out of retirement."

"Retired Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre told Sports Illustrated's Peter King this morning that he's not contemplating a comeback."

"Brett Favre made it clear Friday today that he has no plans to come out of retirement next season to play for the Green Bay Packers or any other team."

"Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, who announced his retirement last month after 17 seasons, could be looking into resuming his career with another franchise. According to NFL sources, Favre's agent has quietly inquired with teams about their interest in trading for the three-time NFL most valuable player. The sources did not indicate whether Favre knew of the inquiries."

"Quarterback Brett Favre has retired, but he's not completely out of pocket. Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy said he talked to Favre a couple times last week and the quarterback seems to be doing fine. He said the issue of Favre turning in his retirement papers came up."

"Favre has not yet filed his official papers, however, and it's unclear when he will. His agent, James "Bus" Cook, said he had no idea where Favre was in the process of filing the paperwork that would finalize his retirement."

"The Green Bay Packers are wasting little time finding a way to show Brett Favre some love. Mark Murphy, the team's president and CEO, said Wednesday that the team will retire Favre's No. 4 sometime this coming season."

"ESPN reporter Sal Paolantonio has received a record number of e-mails in response to his controversial column about retired quarterback Brett Favre, with the majority coming from angry Packers fans."

"However, not everyone is fawning over Favre. With the ferocity of a blindside sack, ESPN's Sal Paolantonio called Favre overrated and argued the last decade of his career was pedestrian. Paolantonio not only attacked Favre's credentials, but blasted the media for heaping undeserved praise on the quarterback."

"Brett Favre is on the cover of Sports Illustrated again, and we don't mean that special tribute issue that's been selling like mad this week. Favre's retirement as the Green Bay Packers' quarterback is the magazine's top story in this week's issue, which hits newsstands today. "

"In at least one statistical category, Brett Lorenzo Favre did have a favorite receiver. And his name was Antonio Freeman, a 1995 third-round draft pick out of Virginia Tech."

"Publications focusing on Brett Favre's retirement are being snapped up soon after they're printed. Bosse's News and Tobacco of Green Bay received the first of its pre-sold 6,500 copies of the special Sports Illustrated issue dedicated to the retired Green Bay Packers quarterback just after 8 a.m. Monday. "

"He was Huck Finn in cleats. He exuded a childlike love for the game. How could you not love a star quarterback who head-butted linemen?"

"The reaction to Brett Favre's retirement this week was final proof that the union of a Midwestern community and a southern Mississippi athlete had become more than a marriage of convenience."

"Brett Favre was a gun-slinging quarterback who exuded confidence, yet the fear of failure was his biggest motivator. He was the toughest player in the roughest sport, yet cried openly and unashamedly when it came time to say goodbye. "

"Days of nationally televised tributes to Brett Favre's career prompted the retiring quarterback to muse on Thursday that "I realize what it's like to die.""

"Even now, after more than two decades, Mark McHale wonders what made him reconsider and take another trip to the backwoods of Kiln, Miss. In a way, he's haunted by it. "

"The Streak defined Brett Favre, but it didn't stop him from walking away. "It's been 275 games," Favre said Thursday at his retirement press conference. "At some point, it's got to end. "

"Brett Favre heads into retirement as the only NFL player to win three Most Valuable Player awards."

"Brett Favre grew up on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, played college football at the University of Southern Mississippi and spent all of the formative years of his life in a warm-weather climate. So, it's perfectly natural he played some of his best football — where? — in the chill of Green Bay's harsh winters. "

"The Favre family's final memory of Lambeau Field — a cathedral for the past 16 years for their husband, brother and father — will be a cold, dark one. An hour after Brett Favre threw an interception on the final play of his career in an overtime loss to the New York Giants, a golf cart plowed through the sub-zero air on a catwalk in the empty stadium. "

" The first time I heard Brett Favre's name it came from Bill Werndl, who used to help run Our lads Guide to the NFL Draft."

"In all the adulation accompanying Brett Favre’s retirement, anybody the least bit familiar with N.F.L. history was quick to bronze him on the ladder of the best quarterbacks ever, anywhere from the top rung to the top 10. But that won’t happen here. There’s no ladder here, just a top shelf where more than a dozen quarterbacks from Sammy Baugh to Tom Brady deserve to be."

"Now then. Brett Favre was a very accomplished football player. There will be no discussion needed when his name comes up on one of those Super Bowl Saturday mornings on which the Hall of Fame nominees are evaluated. It will be an acclamation "yea" vote, and that will be that."

"Brett Favre's plans for his immediate future are simple. When asked at his retirement news conference on Thursday at the Legends Club in the Lambeau Field Atrium, he made it clear what he wants to do, at least for a while. "

"Green Bay Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy created a minor stir on Feb. 27 when he publicly stated he believed quarterback Brett Favre would return for the 2008 season. Murphy was out of town Tuesday, when the team announced Favre was retiring. "

"They're the kinds of things that make up the jetsam of life in Green Bay: A matchbook from Brett Favre's Steakhouse and a pocket-sized season schedule from 2007-2008. But to some buyer out there, they were apparently worth all $1.04 they paid for the two items (and another $3.99 in shipping). "

"Former Green Bay Packers General Manager Ron Wolf believed he would work until he was 70. "Then all of a sudden, boy, I'll never forget this, it's just like somebody blew out a candle," said Wolf, who seven years ago abruptly retired at 62. Brett Favre experienced that same gust of wind at 38. He possessed superior physical skills, excellent health and a talented team around him, but the competitive fire inside Favre burned out. "

"If all the things at our fingertips these days in a point-and-click world are to be believed, it is 1,123.3 miles from where these words were typed to where Brett Favre worked most each and every day of the past 16 NFL seasons. And his measure as a person and a player over that pile of calendar pages are the memories, the remember-when moments, the did- you-see-thats that fill the distance for folks in between and beyond."

"He wasn't the greatest quarterback who ever lived. Not even close. But Brett Favre was the most beloved. By far. In fact, a case could be made Favre, the legendary quarterback of the Green Bay Packers who retired Tuesday after 17 years, is America's most beloved athlete in any sport. The only one who comes close is Tiger Woods. And I'm not so sure the distant and detached Woods is beloved as much as he is revered for his sheer dominance."

"HERE WAS this guy whose image is that of toughness and resiliency, with tears creeping from his eyes. And America thought better of him, not worse, because in a way he was crying as much for us as for himself. The difficulty in seeing a great athlete retire is he reflects everyone's mortality, a realization our days, as were Brett Favre's, are limited. "

"Brett Favre made it clear today that he's finished with football. "I know I can play but I don't think I want to," a teary Favre said in a news conference at Lambeau Field two days after he announced his retirement. "It's been a great career for me, but it's over." "As they say, all good things must come to an end. I look forward to whatever the future may hold for me.""

"Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell was on the Packers coaching staff from 2000 to '05 and got to see Brett Favre put on many of his great performances up close. But one of the things Bevell will remember most about the retiring quarterback didn't happen on the football field. Rather, it was the speech Favre made to the team in California after his father died in December 2003; Favre had decided to play the next night, a Monday night game against the Oakland Raiders. "

"And just like that, Favre's time expired. The Packers announced that the most popular player to wear a Green Bay uniform and one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time announced he was retiring after 17 seasons in the National Football League."

"More than anything, Brett Favre wore out mentally. After a 17-year career that will land him in the pantheon of the NFL's all-time greats, Favre couldn't find enough reasons to put himself through the rigors required to play to the standards he'd set as quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. "

"His daughter Alexandra's end-of-season basketball awards dinner was about to begin when Mike McCarthy's cell phone rang in his pocket. It was the call that would change the Green Bay Packers — and the NFL as a whole — forever. Brett Favre had decided to retire. "

"The boyish enthusiasm that drove him to a Super Bowl championship and three N.F.L. Most Valuable Player awards gave way to weariness. And so Monday night, Brett Favre, the beloved quarterback of the Green Bay Packers and one of the most iconic, crowd-pleasing players in football history, told the Packers he was retiring."

"Brett Favre told Green Bay Packers officials yesterday that he is walking away after a 17-year career in which he established himself as one of the most prolific and charismatic quarterbacks in NFL history."