Dear Brett Favre: Thanks for the Season, Now Please Get Out

Brett Favre was brought to the Vikings to exorcise the ghosts of failures past.  Far from succeeding in this endeavor, Brett has instead invited a whole array of new and frightening specters into the Purple’s haunted house.

We already had enough goblins and ghouls cackling in our attic:  Pearson’s push-off, the Herschel Walker trade, Gary Anderson‘s miss, 41-Doughnut.  Thanks to Brett, we may now add The Interception to the roll-call of spooks.

If the world were an ’80s comedy starring Bill Murray, we could call the Ghostbusters to come rid our house of its supernatural invaders.  Unfortunately, ghostbusting exists only on the big screen.  In reality, our sole choice is to cut our ties with those responsible for our psychic misery, and try to muffle the spirit voices left in their wake.

Because firing Brad Childress is out of the question, there is only one tie we can realistically hope to sever, the one binding us to the old Heartbreakslinger himself.

I don’t wish to seem ungrateful toward Brett Favre, who left everything including a few body parts on the field on behalf of the Vikings’ cause, but enough is enough.

Yes Brett, you gave us an epic season, and led us closer to the Promised Land than we’ve been since Cris Carter and Randall Cunningham roamed the dusty halls of Viking Mansion.  But, for this Viking fan, close to the Promised Land isn’t enough.  I don’t want to stand on the border and watch others partake of the fruit of paradise.  I want my passport stamped for the Garden of Eden.  I want my mouthful of the forbidden.

You were supposed to bring us there Brett, but you didn’t.  Instead of rising to the occasion as we had come to believe you would, you transformed back into a post-season choke artist, just as Packer fans promised.

That is some double-decker pain you heaped on us, Brett.  The pain of another failure, and on top of it, the pain of making Packer fans look like they know what they’re talking about.

And this after we spent the entire season defending you.  This after we cited ad nauseam your brilliant touchdown-to-interception ratio as proof that you were no longer the reckless gunslinger of yore.  This after we set aside our objections to certain elements of your character, and learned to almost enjoy your pitiful press conference blubbering, your blatant attention-whoring and your selfish insistence on controlling the offense.

It was all good, until you decided to throw across your body at Sidney Rice, who could only watch helpless as Tracy Porter snatched away the errant ball and with it any hope we had of ending our Super Bowl drought.  With that one ill-advised pass, you burned up all the goodwill you’d accumulated, and returned to being the pain in the ass some of us had fooled ourselves into thinking you weren’t.

But pain makes you smarter, Brett.  We know now that, no matter what happens, no matter how great your passer rating is, no matter how many times you trash the Packers in the regular season or make the Cowboys look like fools in the divisional round, it will all be for naught in the end, because you…just…can’t…help…yourself.

You have to make it about you.

You have a hero complex, Brett, and it will always lead you astray.  It will always make you take too much on your shoulders.  It will always make you force the ball into places balls were not meant to be forced.

Some may appreciate the high drama that comes as a consequence of your bouts of Supermanism, but this is one Viking fan who has had enough drama for one life, thanks very much.

As I said before, I don’t want to seem unappreciative.  I realize, Brett, that we would not have gotten as far as we did without you.  You gave us a steady quarterbacking brilliance the likes of which we’ve not seen in nearly a decade.  You made football fun again.  But then, in the end, you ripped it all away like a teasing bully, and left us to once again wallow in humiliation.

And do I need to reiterate:  You made Packer fans look like they know what they’re talking about!

That is more than a soul can bear.  So, at the risk of being labeled an ingrate and possibly worse, I am asking you Brett to pack up your ego, your drama, your hero complex, your puking earnestness and your superhuman recuperative abilities and just go the hell back to Mississippi.

Go mow the grass.  Go shoot animals.  Go make some new Wrangler commercials.  And when the season gets close and you start feeling that itch again, instead of calling Brad Childress, try some tough actin’ Tinactin.

I’ve got enough ghosts rattling their chains in my head, thanks very much.