Enjoy it while it lasts

Rick Kamla has an interesting view on many peoples favorite Green Bay Packer, Brett Favre and how long his career might actually last. It's also currently available on Yahoo! Sports.

I wrote an article last year (that I left unpublished, intending to put it up the following day after the game) about how we should appreciate everything Favre has meant to the Pack and start preparing for his eventual departure. At the time, I was thinking that he might retire at the end of the year. The next day Brett was hurt and a lot of fans got the message without me needing to write anything about it.

As a lifelong Packer fan (no, not a cheesehead), I've been there through the good and the bad. When Favre decides to take his leave, the Packers won't immediately be a disaster, but offensively, they will be in trouble. The modern game demands a good quarterback. The team will also be without one of its most respected leaders. When Brett says something, the other players listen.

The ten year run we're in as Packer fans has spoiled us. We might have forgotten (the younger fans have no idea) just how bad this team was through the seventies and eighties. In '72, Green Bay went 10 and 4, taking the old 'Black and Blue' division but losing to the Washington Redskins in the playoffs. In the strike season of '82, they went 5-3-1, making the playoffs, beat the St. Louis Cardinals and then lost to the hated Dallas Cowboys. They'd gone 8-8 in '81 and went 8-8 each of the next three years ('83-'85) with Lynn Dickey as the quarterback (inducted into the Packer Hall of Fame in February of '92) before sliding back to being awful again. That pretty much covers all the highlights from 1970 through 1990.

Players like Brett come along very infrequently. He has combined a great love of the game with tremendous physical talent and leadership on and off the field. More typically, they're missing some vital part of the package, be it leadership, or less than great skills and in some cases, don't even appear to like the game.

Favre has been special and we fans need to remind ourselves to appreciate what time is left. The clock is ticking...