There has always been a weird phenomenon in sports where a guy is labeled as “underrated” for so long that he eventually becomes “overrated.”  Ben Wallace is the prime example of this.  He was always big on the defensive end, and always got clutch rebounds, so everybody starting talking him up as both valuable and unappreciated.  But after a while, collectively, we all stopped and realized, ‘Wait, dude scores only 4 points a game.’  On Wall Street they call this irrational exuberance—where everybody bases their opinions on other opinions rather than using facts (i.e. stats).  But there’s another side to that coin—when everybody decides that a player is overrated in so many ways that that player now becomes underrated.  Derek Jeter has suffered this fate, and rightly so, because he’s a tool.  But recently, so has Brett Favre.  The sportswriters of the world have told us how wonderful Brett Favre is for so long (I agree guys, he is just like a kid out there) that when he unretired I think we all just reached our limit like we’d been Punk’d one too many times: “Ya know what, Ashton, it’s not funny anymore.  Ya know what else—you’re kind of a jerk.”  And just like that, Brett Favre was cast out of our hearts and lives, doomed to obscurity in the media capital of the world.

We had all assumed that Favre would go out as a Packer like he was supposed to, completely forgetting the history of Unitas as a Charger, Namath as a Ram, or Montana as a Chief.  But it was still weird to see Brett Favre in the Green-and-White, possibly summed up best during the Chargers pregame against the Jets when the Jumbotron played a clip from There’s Something About Mary in which Ben Stiller turns and says: “What the hell is Brett Favre doing here?”  It was the way all of us were feeling.  But ultimately it seemed New York was the appropriate place for Favre.  It’s where overrated players go to die, or to end their careers awkwardly, whichever comes first.  New York is just so tabloid.  But that really kind of makes sense, because after all Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers make Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook seem like a healthy breakup.  But something happened on the way to Canton, or at least back home to Mississippi: it turns out that Brett Favre is actually better than we expected, and so are the Jets.

There’s obvious improvements: like the Jets having 8 wins and the AFC East lead after finishing 4-12 last year.  But there are other improvements, like the Jets scoring 29.4 points per game, after scoring less than 17 a game last year.  And yet even Farve’s biggest fan, Peter King, doesn’t mention him in his Top 5 MVP candidates.  But he does mention Farve’s teammate, DT Kris Jenkins.  And Jenkins has been huge in every sense of the word for the Jets, he’s singlehandedly taken a defense that gave up 134 yards-a-game on the ground last year to being a Top-3 run defense this year.  But the D hasn’t improved that much—they gave up 22.2 pts last year and 21.3 pts this year.  So is the biggest difference that Kris Jenkins now makes other teams go after the Jets through the air instead of with the run game?  Don’t get me wrong, he’s a definite Pro-Bowler; but Favre has led the offense on a MVP-type turnaround. 

One of the great ironies of the whole situation is that the Packers offense is just as good if not better off without him.  Last year with Brett they scored 27.2 points a game, this year with Aaron Rodgers they score 27.5  Last year #4 threw 15 interceptions but the team as a whole had a Plus 4 turnover margin; this year Rodgers is on pace for 12 interceptions, and the team is 2^nd in the NFC at Plus 5.  This year Green Bay has had some trouble, but the only way Favre would improve this Packers team is if he were a run-stopping lineman.

This has been a weird season in the NFL.  It’s weird that the Chargers at 4-7 have a chance to win their division while there will be multiple 10-win, maybe even 11-win, teams that get left out.  It’s weird that the Cardinals are actually a scary-good team, while Jacksonville can’t do anything right.  It’s weird that a 3-time MVP leaves a team and their offense doesn’t skip a beat.  But it’s even weirder that the same 3-time MVP can be playing phenomenally and still not be getting any consideration for a 4^th award. 

New York is the center of the over-hyped universe.  It is impossible for an adequate player to remain under the sports radar while playing in the NYC.  It is impossible for an under-achieving team to just suck quietly (see New York Knicks).  And it’s certainly impossible for a good player, or a good team, to remain in perspective.  Everything gets over-exposed in the Big Apple.  I think that is the city’s motto.  But what if one of the all-time greats managed to get over-exposed while in Green Bay, Wisconsin?  What if he was already huge before the New York microscope got a hold of him?  Well then I guess it would make sense that he would be so big that we couldn’t see him in perspective anymore.  But if you take a step back, and put on a wider lens, you might just find out that Brett Favre, of all people, is better than you thought.