No. 4 being retired at Packers' opener
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By JASON WILDE / Lee Newspapers
Friday, April 18, 2008 10:02 AM CDT
GREEN BAY — Mark Murphy chuckled at the thought Thursday afternoon.
The Green Bay Packers new president and CEO had just finalized plans to retire legendary quarterback Brett Favre’s No. 4 at the team’s Sept. 8 regular-season opener at Lambeau Field against the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football.
But given Favre’s recent comments about possibly being “enticed” by the “tempting” idea of coming out of retirement and playing for the Packers if new starter Aaron Rodgers suffers an injury — “It would be hard to pass up,” Favre has said of the hypothetical — it was suggested to Murphy that the Packers may want to consider affixing an “in case of emergency, break glass” hammer to his commemorative framed jersey, in the event that Favre needs to put it on (along with his Wranglers) to play in the second half that night.
“In case of emergency,” Murphy said. “Riiiight.”
In all seriousness, though, Murphy said that while he and general manager Ted Thompson both spoke to Favre while planning the retirement ceremony, neither of them broached the subject of Favre’s unretirement talk in their conversations with the NFL’s only three-time MVP, who retired March 4.
“No, we didn’t,” Murphy said, adding that he and Favre “communicated a couple times within the last few days” after the NFL released its full, 16-game regular-season schedule on Tuesday. “And I’m sure Ted has not (talked about it with Favre) at all, either.”
Asked if he thought setting the opening-night ceremony might put to rest some of the unretirement conjecture, Murphy replied, “It may. I just go back to the press conference (on March 6) and how emotional it was. To me, he’s made a decision to retire and we really haven’t heard anything otherwise.”
Thompson was in pre-draft meetings all day and did not return a message.
When the schedule was released, Murphy said the team wanted to hold the Favre ceremony at one of the first four home games: The opener against the Vikings, a longtime division rival; a nationally televised Sunday night game against Dallas on Sept. 21; an Oct. 5 noon game against the Atlanta Falcons, Favre’s first NFL team; and a nationally televised 3:15 p.m. game against the Peyton Manning-led Indianapolis Colts on Oct. 19.
In the end, Murphy said, the opener made the most sense.
“Obviously we’ve got a lot of fans across the country, and to be honest, there are a lot of people who are Brett Favre fans. He’s been such a great player and has meant so much to the league, to be able to do it before a prime time national TV audience was attractive,” Murphy said.
Murphy acknowledged that the one concern he, Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy had about having Favre at the opener was putting additional pressure on Rodgers, who’ll be making his first NFL start and is already going to be under considerable scrutiny following Favre, a likely first-ballot Hall of Famer.
The three men talked about the issue at length — Rodgers was not consulted — and decided in some ways, the best thing for Rodgers might be to simply get the Favre ceremony out of the way.
“Even if we didn’t retire Brett’s number at this game, there would still be all kinds of attention on Brett, since this is going to be the first game in 16 years where there’s been somebody starting at quarterback other than him,” Murphy said. “So there was going to be a lot of attention on it regardless. I think having the retirement ceremony during that game in some ways minimizes the impact it may have on the team or Aaron down the road.
“The nice thing about this is, it’s the first game, and then, that’s it. Then you move on. Not to be cold-hearted, but you’re moving on from that. If we’d waited until five or six games into the season, it may have prolonged that. So we saw some advantage in that. So as we put it all together, we felt this made the most sense.“
Favre’s No. 4 will become the sixth number retired by the Packers, joining wide receiver Don Hutson’s No. 14 (1951), fullback Tony Canadeo’s No. 3 (1952), quarterback Bart Starr’s No. 15 (1973), linebacker Ray Nitschke’s No. 66 (1983) and defensive end Reggie White’s No. 92 (2005).
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