Is Brett Favre's End Finally Near?

By Derek Lofland

I promised everyone I would do a final article analyzing the Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre trade after year one.

I will try to have that done in about a week. Right now, the question is about Favre’s future with the Jets or in the NFL.

The Jets bringing in Favre was a calculated risk, but at the end of the day, it was a failure.

Chad Pennington was the starter that they got rid of to bring Favre into the fold. Pennington led the Dolphins to an 11-5 record and to the playoffs. That was a 10-game improvement over the year before, tied with the '99 Colts for the best single-season turnaround.

While Favre improved the Jets record from 4-12 to 9-7, they missed the playoffs after starting 8-3. Favre played terrible in the final five games. Since Thanksgiving, his QB rating is 58.2, 30th among quarterbacks with at least 50 attempts.

That’s unacceptable.

I don’t care if he’s hurt or not. He made the decision that he was healthy enough to play, and he has to deal with the criticism of not getting the job done.

That said, I think people are oversimplifying this.

I think one thing people are missing in this is that Chad Pennington needed a change of scenery. He had started 16 games only one other season, back in 2006. He set a career-high for completions and passing yardage. It was the second best rating of his career other than 2002. Same for touchdown passes.

It was also his best ratio for interceptions per attempt. He basically had not played like this since 2002. That’s six seasons ago. Chad Pennington had shown the Jets nothing that he was capable of still playing at this level. There is no guarantee he would have had the season he had in Miami had he stayed in New York...

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