All the talk about whether or not Brett Favre will or should retire reminds me of the undeserved belittling of Terry Bradshaw as a quarterback. At the core of this issue is the tricky question of how to distinguish the QB from the team. All of the usual suspects (Montana, Elway, Marino, Favre, Unitas and Bradshaw) played for good or even great teams for much of their careers. How good would they have been in a bad team? Compounding the problem is the usual peak vs career issue.

Without wading into these more general matters, the last couple of years have provided an interesting contrast between Green Bay and Favre in decline on the one hand and the Steelers and Bradshaw on the other. My recollection of the last two years that Bradshaw played is that the Steelers were a pretty poor team yet Bradshaw managed to keep them competitive. Favre has not done so well. Despite the almost universal aspersions cast upon Bradshaw’s intelligence, my impression remains that a lot of this was due to smart adjustments at the line of scrimmage and reactions to broken plays, specifically that Bradshaw was remarkably good at getting yardage out of unfavourable situations without giving up bonehead turnovers. Not so with the more acclaimed Mr Favre.

Without trying to diminish Favre, I remain puzzled at the lack of respect given Bradshaw.