Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader, like many Americans, has spend nearly four days of his life in an orgy of self-indulgence. Yes dear readers, he’s been watching football since Thursday night.

He did not watch all that silly dancing and “singing” stuff they called a kickoff party. No. He did not. He watched pregame shows on ESPN. The shows with the manly men talking about manly things. The shows with commercials showing men in humourous situations or scantily-clad women offering beer to slake the thirst of sweaty men.

h yes… The sweet, sweet NFL season has begun.

Of course, if you happen to root for the Green Bay Packers (like your Maximum Leader does) you are getting ready for a loooooonnngg year. Your Maximum Leader is a Packers fan. And his is a great Brett Favre fan. But, it was apparent to your Maximum Leader that Brett Favre is not the quarterback of the future, or the qb of the “now,” with the Packers. It pains your Maximum Leader to say this. But, so long as Favre remains with the Packers they will not be able to rebuild and move on. It just will not happen.

The Packers organization should make Favre an offer. The offer is this, the Pack will make subtle trade offers to only teams that Favre would want to play for. If any of those teams are interested then a trade can be arranged. When Favre decides his playing days are over, there is always a home for him in the Green Bay organization. (There is also a one day contract with Favre’s name on it so he can retire a Packer.)

The Packers need to make this move because Brett Favre will not. And frankly, he probably shouldn’t. He loves the Packers. The fans love him. And Favre can still play football. In the right environment Favre can still be a top producer in the NFL. Your Maximum Leader used to think (last season and during the off season) that Favre should just retire. That was rather selfish thinking on your Maximum Leader’s part. Since Favre wasn’t the future of the Packers, then no one else should have him.

Brett Favre’s inner competitor still has lots of fight left in him. He needs to play. But what he needs to do is play with another team where he might platoon the QB with a younger player and start the job of mentoring. This is not a role he can play in Green Bay. He needs to move on to do it. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t think less of Joe Montana because he went to KC for a few years. Montana is always a 49er. But those years in KC helped that KC franchise greatly as well as many young players.

Perhaps Favre could go to DC and platoon the QB role with the Redskins. While this isn’t the “mentor the young guy” senario your Maximum Leader just laid out; it could still benefit both the player and the team. God only knows that the Redskins have the cash. And they’ve stolen top names from the Packers before (Vince Lombardi anyone?).

If Favre would take a backup role there are few limits to where he could go…

Of course, then there are the hometown Redskins. Your Maximum Leader thinks that the ‘Skins have a big problem. An offense that doesn’t seem to know what it is doing all the time. Much hay has been made over the huge “700 page” playbook that the ‘Skins are using this year. The undercurrent of this playbook size comment seems to be that football players are dumb and can’t learn that much. While this might be true in many cases, your Maximum Leader has met and known a number of serious football players in his life. Not many of them would be rocket scientist material, or even post-modern literature professors; but when it came to football they were smart. Very smart when it comes to their millieu. A 700 page playbook is not the whole problem. What is the problem is practice and making sure you have the right players in the right roles.

Watching the ‘Skins game, your Maximum Leader couldn’t figure out what the “theme” of the offense was. They didn’t seem to try to establish the run. They didn’t seem to try to establish a short passing game. They seemed to try a lot of different stuff and hope that something stuck.

So… It looks like your Maximum Leader’s teams, the Packers and the Redskins, are going to have long and unpleasant seasons. The Packers definately will. Indeed, if your Maximum Leader had to pick a number he’d say that the Packers could go 3-13 this year. (The can probably knock off the Lions twice and pick up one more game along the way.) The Redskins will probably be 9-7. (Though they might be 8-8.) Both the Packers and the Skins have seasons that look to be pretty tough.

If you have a (non-Dallas) eam that you think your Maximum Leader should pull for over some other team… Let him know… It might give him some comfort over the long season to occasionally root for a winner.

Carry on.