Okay, I’m kidding. I think. As of today we’re still waiting to hear whether or not Brett will scratch his “itch”.

I do want to share some thoughts with you about Green Bay and how they will fare with or without Favre. I don’t usually delve into individual player discussion but I feel like I might have something to add to the discussion on this one.

There are some really informative pieces out there about how Favre will net his team extra wins should he return for 2008. Most people are expecting Green Bay to win about 10 games with, and 8 games without, the almost-completely-retired quarterback. In the NFC that’s a big difference considering the cutoff for postseason appearances seems to be about 9 wins.

Technical analysis, on the other hand, doesn’t care who the players are or how many yards per attempt they had. All I need are team stats like PF and PA to get a good idea of how a team is going to perform the next year. I can say that with confidence because I flat out nailed the vast majority of my predictions last year, not to brag or anything. If you’ve purchased the NFL 2008 PREDICTOPOTAMUS you’ll know that my expectations aren’t very high for the Packers this year because their RSI peaked in 2007. The only way for their RSI to get any higher is for them to win 14 games, which we all know won’t happen, so the big question is this: how far will they fall?

Now let’s use a different technical method: my own proprietary Walters Trend Method. Using data going back to 1993 I have plotted out the High, Low, and Close for Green Bay’s last 240 games. If you thought RSI was cool, you’ll love this chart:

Click on the image for a larger view if you want. Some explanation first - Series 1 is the High, Series 2 is the Low, and Series 3 is the close. Each “candle”, or vertical line, is one game. The blue line is a 15 period moving average and the red line is a 50 period moving average, and what we’re looking for is crossovers. The two black lines are linear trends for the H and L values over time.

Green Bay exploded in 2007, pushing their 15 period MA well beyond their long term trend. What this means is that last season’s production was well beyond their historical mean, and a spike of this nature is a good indicator of a pending regression to that mean. RSI and WTM agree - 2008 will not be a good year for Packers fans.

My point in all of this is that I don’t think Green Bay’s final won/lost tally will differ much with or without Brett Favre. I think his shaky play in 2005 and 2006 shouldn’t be overlooked. I absolutely think that Brett Favre should retire now and go out with our last memory of him being a decent playoff game, not a mediocre 8-8 season or an injury to his already damaged body. I can’t stand the thought of Favre in any colors other than green and yellow anyway, so please Brett, retire with your dignity.