<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
There has always been a weird phenomenon in sports where a guy is labeled as “underrated” for so long that he eventually becomes “overrated.” <\/span>Ben Wallace is the prime example of this. <\/span>He was always big on the defensive end, and always got clutch rebounds, so everybody starting talking him up as both valuable and unappreciated. <\/span>But after a while, collectively, we all stopped and realized, ‘Wait, dude scores only 4 points a game.’ <\/span>On Wall Street they call this irrational exuberance—where everybody bases their opinions on other opinions rather than using facts (i.e. stats). <\/span>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. <\/span>Derek Jeter has suffered this fate, and rightly so, because he’s a tool. <\/span>But recently, so has Brett Favre. <\/span>The sportswriters of the world have told us how wonderful Brett Favre is for so long (I agree guys, he is<\/i><\/span> just like a kid out there) that when he unretired I think we all just reached our limit like we’d been Punk’d<\/i><\/span> one too many times: “Ya know what, Ashton, it’s not funny anymore. <\/span>Ya know what else—you’re kind of a jerk.” <\/span>And just like that, Brett Favre was cast out of our hearts and lives, doomed to obscurity in the media capital of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n 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. <\/span>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<\/i><\/span> in which Ben Stiller turns and says: “What the hell is Brett Favre doing here?” <\/span>It was the way all of us were feeling. <\/span>But ultimately it seemed New York was the appropriate place for Favre. <\/span>It’s where overrated players go to die, or to end their careers awkwardly, whichever comes first. <\/span>New York is just so tabloid. <\/span>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. <\/span>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.<\/span><\/p>\n There’s obvious improvements: like the Jets having 8 wins and the AFC East lead after finishing 4-12 last year. <\/span>But there are other improvements, like the Jets scoring 29.4 points per game, after scoring less than 17 a game last year. <\/span>And yet even Farve’s biggest fan, Peter King, doesn’t mention him in his Top 5 MVP candidates. <\/span>But he does mention Farve’s teammate, DT Kris Jenkins. <\/span>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. <\/span>But the D hasn’t improved that<\/i><\/span> much—they gave up 22.2 pts last year and 21.3 pts this year. <\/span>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? <\/span>Don’t get me wrong, he’s a definite Pro-Bowler; but Favre has led the offense on a MVP-type turnaround. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n One of the great ironies of the whole situation is that the Packers offense is just as good if not better off without him. <\/span>Last year with Brett they scored 27.2 points a game, this year with Aaron Rodgers they score 27.5 <\/span>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 2nd<\/sup> in the NFC at Plus 5. <\/span>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.<\/span><\/p>\n This has been a weird season in the NFL. <\/span>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. <\/span>It’s weird that the Cardinals are actually a scary-good team, while Jacksonville can’t do anything right. <\/span>It’s weird that a 3-time MVP leaves a team and their offense doesn’t skip a beat. <\/span>But it’s even weirder that the same 3-time MVP can be playing phenomenally and still not be getting any consideration for a 4th<\/sup> award. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n New York is the center of the over-hyped universe. <\/span>It is impossible for an adequate player to remain under the sports radar while playing in the NYC. <\/span>It is impossible for an under-achieving team to just suck quietly (see New York Knicks). <\/span>And it’s certainly impossible for a good player, or a good team, to remain in perspective. <\/span>Everything gets over-exposed in the Big Apple. <\/span>I think that is the city’s motto. <\/span>But what if one of the all-time greats managed to get over-exposed while in Green Bay, Wisconsin? <\/span>What if he was already huge before the New York microscope got a hold of him? <\/span>Well then I guess it would make sense that he would be so big that we couldn’t see him in perspective anymore. <\/span>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. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It may be hard to believe, but Leaky Pipes actually has some pretty convincing evidence that Brett the Jet isn’t getting the appreciation he deserves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5255"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5255"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}