Each week we’ll revisit the Favre situation and monitor the intelligence level of the Packers ‘brain trust’. Depending on how Favre and the Pack are making out, their brains will shrink or grow. Check back each week for an update!
December 26
This is tricky. There is a lot of conflicting evidence when it comes to our favorite GM/Coach combination. On one hand, Aaron Rodgers is in the top 10 in most every major passing category. But the Packers are an embarrassing 5-10 on the season, and are only 1-7 in games decided by less than a touchdown, including their last four games in a row. Such as conundrum has forced the like of Tony Kornheiser to ask, “At some point, doesn’t Aaron Rodgers have to win one of these games?”. Rodgers Passer rating has dropped about 6 points in the fourth quarter of close losses, but is he to blame? One Wisconsin columnist wonders if McCarthy really trusts Rodgers with the game on the line.
The victim of the crime may be Brett Favre, who has also shrouded himself in mystery. On one hand, he has helped the Jets into playoff contention and made the Pro Bowl. On the other hand, he seems to be helping the Jets out of playoff contention and shouldn’t have made the Pro Bowl. He’s got a gimpy arm and (gasp) is contemplating retirement. So what do we make of MMTT’s decision to dump the future Hall of Famer?
They may well have sold a talented Packers team down the river for a third round draft choice. There is little question that Aaron Rodgers is a competent NFL QB (something that was soundly in question before the season). He’s proven he’s at least meritorious to be on the field somewhere, but hasn’t shown that he can be the leader of the franchise in Green Bay in the post-Favre era. Instead of keeping Favre and taking one more shot at the Super Bowl, the Packers brass seems to have questionably pissed away the season, ruining something good while not really succeeding in the new endeavor. The result is what Bill Simmons called the “Greatest 6 win team in history”. Much like David Caruso deep-sixed his career by leaving the successful NYPD Blue for a short jaunt on the silver screen, it’s hard to hate on everything that MMTT have done this year. Everyone is pretty sure they are nuts, but it’s hard to articulate and prove exactly why. What they did, didn’t work out, but it didn’t fail as miserably as it could have. So for a weird season, the media forensics team has detected an IQ of 90.
November 13
Since we last visited the bosses of Cheeseville, the Pack has dropped two games AND resigned Aaron Rodgers through 2014. This has to be one of the most baffling moves of the reign of Thompson and McCarthy. On one hand, they draft Brian Brohm in the second round, and now, before the halfway mark of his first season, the ink Rodgers to a massive deal, despite only being one game over .500 at the time. I realize that there is some cap advantage to doing this deal before the end of this season, but ultimately, it makes the Packers brain trust seem eerily similar to Ferris Bueller’s pal Cameron of whom Ferris said,
“Cameron has never been in love. At least, nobody’s ever been in love with him. If things don’t change for him, he’s gonna marry the first girl he lays, and she’s gonna treat him like s*** because she will have given him what he has built up in his mind as the end all be all of human existence. She won’t respect him, because you can’t respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn’t work.”
Thompson and McCarthy jumped into bed with Rodgers too soon, and now they married him. Since then, the Pack has dropped two games including losing to the Vikings in a game in which Rodgers couldn’t win despite a defensive and special teams score.
Oh, and Brett Favre? He’s been uneven but the Jets are 6-3 and looking to claim a division title if they can beat the Pats tonight.
This week, it seems that the collective MMTTB IQ is about on par with a kid who would steal his dad’s vintage Ferrari. Let’s place them at about 110, but with a low self-esteem that makes them do really stupid stuff.
October 23
Well that went well! Last week, the Colts managed to waltz into Lambeau Field and make the utterly average tandem of McCarthy and Thompson look smart again, and at exactly the same time Brett Favre’s Jets were falling in overtime to the Raiders, (though Favre did lead a game tying drive). So what to make of these two? Are they smart or not?
On the one hand, they are now 4-3, and the gimpy arm of Aaron Rodgers held up well last week for an efficient game. On the other, they had an NFC finalist team and have coached it up to 4-3. So are they smart? The media talked at length about how great Aaron Rodgers played last week, and McCarthy’s decision to go for it on 4th and 1 in his own territory effectively won the game for the Packers, so we’ll split the difference. Their combined IQ is still impressive, but somehow we still get the suspicion that their plans to take over the world will come up short before all is said and done. Let’s put them at 145 this week…but note that it’s an average of the two. One may be considerably smarter than the other.
October 16
MMTTB comes home to roost this week as the Colts prepare to meet our intrepid heroes in close combat this Sunday. That makes today a perfect time to examine where the Pack stands on the season. A close inspection of the single most important stat in the NFL shows the Packers to be…
3-3.
Utterly, completely average. They win some; they lose some. Aaron Rodgers has played some good football and some ugly football. Tompson and McCarthy have constructed a team that is sort of like Top 40 radio. For every catchy ditty, there’s a lot of annoying crap. They have become the Hall and Oates of the NFL. They are still popular in some circles, but they’ve had a lot Pack fans begging, “Say It Isn’t So”. They tried to obtain Tony Gonzalez, but Chiefs GM Carl Peterson, “I Can’t Do That. No Can Do” at the last moment. They tried hard; they came up short. Average. Their IQ this week stands at a pedestrian 100. They look better than they did last week, but they still aren’t on anyone’s list to kiss. Unless something good happens fast for them, there’ll be no Jingle Bell Rock come this December in Titletown.
October 9
No one but our favorite GM/Coach combo: Mike McCarthy and Ted Thompson! While Brett Favre spent his bye week sunning on the beach of his swamp down in Mississippi, Aaron Rodgers was busy playing hard, but lofting ducks with his lame right shoulder. The Pack has fallen below .500, and while that may not be all Rodgers fault (Paging Ryan Grant! Paging Ryan Grant!), the media dogs have to be licking their chops while the Packers fans are definitely forming a posse to string up their front office. Their IQ this week sinks to 50, begging the question: what exactly do those to have in their heads? I don’t know, but it doesn’t smell real great.
October 2
Here lies a fallen god. His fall was not a small one.
Yes, it is with a heavy heart that I bring you all the MMTTB report today. Just a few weeks ago, we were all basking in the collective glow that emanated from the countenance of everyone’s favorite front office combo. Their combined luminescence promised to usher in a new era of harmonic convergence among us mere mortals. But now? Oh what rough beast is man! Our enlightened duo has fallen hard from the slopes on high where they supped with the divine, and now wallow in the mud with the rest of us.
Since last we saw Thompson and McCarthy, their protege Aaron Rodgers has lost not one, but two games and seen a precipitous drop in every major passing statistic. The Packers have gone from being seen as a potential contender in the NFC, to being one of the major question marks. What’s more, terrible luck has befallen the new Packers QB! He is injured! There was surely no way to forsee this! He is nursing a sprained shoulder, and his ability to play and/or produce is in serious question. This is just bad luck, right? Aaron Rodgers has no history of getting hurt? Right?
Meanwhile, the cursed Favre played Dr. Lecter on the Arizona secondary, throwing for a career high 6 touchdowns. For one so callously tossed from the halls of football’s valhala, he’s doing pretty well for his new team. So what to make of Mike McCarthy and Ted Thompson? Whereas once the media had deemed them worthy of the highest prose, they are now reduced to cheap cliches. That is to say…we see the wheels turning, but the hamster might well be dead. Their IQ this week: 69. They are morons, but highly functioning ones!
September 18
If science has taught us anything, it’s that the highest plane of human evolution will lead us to become beings of pure energy and light. It seems that such heady days are finally upon us. In Green Bay, reporters have been noting a bright sheen around the heads of Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy for weeks now. On Sunday afternoon, these two immortal football men broke forever the bonds of their fleshly bodies and entered a higher plane of being. Thanks to Aaron Rodgers’ evisceration of the mighty Detroit Lions, coupled with Brett Favre’s inability to tame the hapless Patriots, Thompson and McCarthy have transcended this dimension and gained the ability to move unencumbered through time and space, existing freely at all points in the continuum at once. Mike Greenberg of ESPN affirmed their greatness by declaring Aaron Rodgers “the best quarterback in the NFL”. Wear glasses in their presence, boys. Staring directly at them can cause retinal damage.
September 11
The mental prowess of everyone’s favorite coach/GM duo continues to grow by the week. After a stunning debut at home over the Vikings Monday night, Aaron Rodgers seems slated for a sure fire Hall of Fame career. Surely, no more vindication is necessary for these two football savants. Even more shocking was their inspired move to trade Favre to the AFC East. Their mental powers have evolved beyond those of mortal men, allowing them to foresee the Brady injury that will propel the Jets to a Super Bowl, thus upping the final value of the pick these gods among men will receive for the aging star. Truly, they are sights to behold. We have it on good authority that they reconstructed Deanna Favre after they came upon her badly burned body. We peg their IQs this week at the interstellar level of 260. 
(Kudos to anyone who can correctly identify where those heads are from)
August 29
Since last we met, Aaron Rodgers has been a house a fire eviscerating the Broncos and showing up in last night’s game just long enough to throw one pass which went for a 68 yard TD. Frankly if Rodgers plays well, it doesn’t matter how Favre does in New York. All this preseason glory bodes well for the embattled leaders of the Pack. Going into the regular season they appear to be geniuses whose brains are so large, they’ve actually sprouted Einstein hair. We’ll put their IQ this week at an astounding 160, on par with with nuclear physicists, string theory mathematicians and the 9 year old Asian kid that was in my high school calculus class.
August 22
When last we saw our intrepid football men, they were basking in the preseason glory that was Aaron Rodgers. My, how much changes in a week. Since last week’s post, Bret Favre looked brilliant in green and white and Rodgers made the 49ers defense look like the Steel Curtain. Needless to say, McCarthy and Thompson have felt some moderate media heat. Their brains are smaller this week, but not too bad; it is just the preseason of course. We’ll give them an IQ of 90. They are below average, but still ahead of say…James Harris of the Jags who traded the farm for the 8th pick and now won’t pay the kid.
August 14
This week we saw Aaron Rodgers play well (according to the media) and yesterday Favre claimed he has some arm ‘fatigue’.
Both men seem to have very large brains this week. We’ll place their collective media-driven IQs at 125. They aren’t quite geniuses, but they look smart enough. Check back next week to watch their craniums grow and shrink with every win and loss.
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