You raise a fantastic point. There are those recordings of the coaches on the sidelines that we sometimes hear in highlight reels. I wonder how comprehensive the NFL archives are, and how much the league would charge for access to these recordings for the purposes of transcription. It would be a long, painstaking process, but it could be enlightening. Obviously, the league would probably not allow the transcriptions of any games featuring coaches who currently work for the same teams as they did during the recorded games -- and they might mandate that the actual code terminology be redacted out, to be replaced only with the name of the play itself -- but it could still be useful for historical purposes.

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I completely agree. Whose fault was it that ARod didn't get onto the field right away? OH YEAH, Brett's. I'm not real upset about that, I just think that saying you need to compare numbers over the span of an entire career to put one QB up against another is asinine. Favre is one of maybe 5 (or so?) quarterbacks that has played into his 40s out of the hundreds that have stepped onto the NFL field, so to assume that ARod will be able to do so as well statistically is stupid, but not as stupid as to say that he is not as good of a qb is he doesn't have the same total career numbers as Favre.

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I have refused to mention his name, but Aaron was best served to be what he is today to sit, watch, learn and eventually push Brett in Green Bay.

It gave him a chance to adjust to the NFL, learn the playbook and system to a tee... but most importantly it made him an extremely hungry players that paired with his "draft slide" pushed him internally to become what we see before us today.. a top tier NFL quarterback.. there is no reason to feel any animosity because he sat on the sidelines for a couple of years.

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I've never denied that. I wasn't advocating that the Packers should have started Aaron Rodgers in 2005 or even necessarily 2007, though I have read articles from that period that were advocating just that. I do think there are other avenues the Packers could have pursued, however. They might not have been as sexy, but they may well have been more fundamentally sound for the team going forward.

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So name a better option to learn from for Aaron?

While that relationship wasn't of best friends, there is little doubt that Aaron didn't benefit from it.

Not to mention, it kept us relevant in the NFL landscape and schedule.. I see little downside of the waning years of the legend of Kiln, MS.

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What's most impressive of Favre's career is longevity. Typically any argument that favors cumulative statistics over, maybe, a shorter stretch of dominance will be difficult to prove. Favre's career represents an exception: he's the ironman, the Cal Ripken Jr. of professional football. You'd be correct to point out a number of years of relative mediocrity, but all in all his body of work and spacing of elite yearly performances over so many years is undeniable (and even some of his "mediocre" years are only thought of as such because of the high standards he more regularly achieved).

For example, arguing in favor of Vinny Testaverde's breadth of work is wholly different than arguing in favor of Fran Tarkenton's. And with Favre the difference is even more exaggerated because he hasn't missed a game and has achieved extremely high levels of play at the quarterback equivalent age of a geriatric.

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Well said Dave. Favre isn't the most consistent QB year after year, but he has had elite seasons for 20 years on and off. 94-97 is arguably the best four consecutive years ever by a QB. Then he began to fade, came back in 2000-2004 where he was a pretty good QB but not elite. Then went to elite status again in 2007, the first half of 2008, and 2009.

If you compare that to other recent QBs with long careers, how many have been elite for that many years? Let's take Joe Montana, Dan Marino, and John Elway by comparison.

Montana's problem has been his health whereas that's a nod in favor of Brett Favre. While Montana will consistently give you an elite performance in the games he's played, he's only played 4 full seasons his entire career. Yes, 4.

Now Dan Marino was elite from 1983-1987 and 1984 was arguably the best year ever played by a QB. He started to taper off and had a few elite seasons scattered here and there but he was pretty much done in 1999 at the age of 38. Favre was still not just playing, but elite at 40.

Elway played only 7 full seasons in his entire career. Once again, a knock on Elway vs Favre who love him or hate him, Favre will be there next week. Elway never ran up the fat numbers that Marino or Favre did but he'll beat you any way he can. His scrambling was top notch and he wasn't afraid to take a hit for his team to get that first down. He ended his career with 33 rushing TDs, which is significant.

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