Ted Thompson: Idiot.

As the Green Bay Packers' second Favre-less season has recently ended, I feel like it is a good time to reflect on Packers General Manager Ted Thompson's decision to let Favre go.  After a disappointing 2008 season (the first under new quarterback Aaron Rodgers) where the Packers finished 6-10, 2009 was fairly successful.  The team finished 11-5 and came one overtime sack away from advancing in the playoffs.  Looks like the team's doing just fine without Favre, right? Possibly, but just fine is not good enough when excellent would have been possible.

Favre's 2009 season with the Minnesota Vikings has been one of the best of his career.  At age 40, Favre led the Vikings to 12 wins (two of which were over Rodgers and company) and a first round bye in the playoffs.  Oh, and Favre himself finished as the second highest rated passer in the league, a finalist for the MVP award, and second string in the Pro Bowl (right above third string Rodgers).  So let's look at how the Packers 2009 season could have gone had Favre been quarterback:

With Tavaris Jackson still playing quarterback for the Vikings, its safe to say that the Packers would have picked up two wins against Minnesota instead of two loses.  So even if they won no more games with Favre, it still would have been a 13-3 finish instead of a 11-5 finish.  Depending on tiebreakers, that would have resulted in either a 1 or 2 seed in the playoffs, providing for at least 1 playoff game at frigid Lambeau Field.  And with Favre in the playoffs, anything can happen.  He sure could have hit a wide open Donald Driver on the first play of overtime against the Cardinals that would have won the game for the Packers (didn't Rodgers badly overthrow him or something?)

So, apparently Ted Thompson feels that a three-time MVP who is still putting up the best stats of his career isn't good enough to play for his Packers.  I'm sure glad Thompson knows more about football than everyone else.  It's good to know that my favorite team's in the hands of someone who is so brilliant that he knows that the best thing to do with good players is to trade them away (Ryan Longwell? Darren Sharper? Mike McKenzie?).  I sure hope that at least Thompson prefers "pretty good" over excellence, because the fans sure don't.  Ted Thompson: you are an idiot.