That's not a Green Bay Packer that Vince Lombardi is talking to...

        ...and that's not a "GB" on his cap, either.     It's an "R", as in "Redskins".

        Yes, the most hallowed coach in all of Titletown last plied his trade not for the locals from the Fox Valley but instead for those who lived along the Potomac River, leading Washington to a 7-5-2 mark his one and only season in D-C in 1969.       In his short time there, Lombardi was able to figure out that running back Larry Brown was deaf in one ear, leaving successor George Allen a stud who would be a key member of the Redskins' early 70's success.       He even tweaked the Washington uniform so that it would look exactly like the ones he crafted for the Packers, only with burgundy residing where the green should've been.

       Who knows how much Lombardi would've burnished--or, perhaps damaged--his coaching reputation with the 'Skins?      We'll never know, since he died of cancer before he could ever take the pro gridiron again.

        Remember Jim Taylor?

        That's him alright, sporting the ever-present early 60's flat-top and the green and gold number 31 we all remember.      Look closely under his name--that's no typo, folks.       Geezers like me remember that Taylor finished out his Hall of Fame career not at Lambeau Field but rather at Tulane Stadium as a member of the 1967 expansion Saints.     He rushed for under 400 yards, but the team still retired his number.

        Packer great and "Instant Replay" author Jerry Kramer writes in great detail about one of the most painful days of Lombardi's Green Bay career--the day he put running back Paul Hornung on the '67 expansion list--those players who that season's new teams could pluck off the Packers' roster.    Lombardi rolled the dice, figuring no one would take the oft-injured Hornung who'd sat out the '66 campaign (as well as the first Super Bowl) with a neck injury.     New Orleans did the unthinkable and chose him--meaning that, for a time, there was a chance the Saints would've had a starting backfield of both Hornung and Taylor.      Hornung never suited up for New Orleans after doctors warned him that further play could lead to serious, permanent damage.     

         The point here is fairly obvious--even the most beloved Packers sometimes moved on after their Green Bay glory.    Not all of them, mind you, but enough to remind us that while what's going on right now with Brett Favre is unpleasant, it is not at all unprecedented.      Herb Adderly became a Dallas Cowboy, as did Forest Gregg.       Remember Marv Fleming?      He won some Super Bowl jewelry with the Dolphins.     Carroll Dale became a Minnesota Viking.         And, who can forget this?

        Even the guy who founded the Packers, the legendary Curly Lambeau, left Green Bay under less-than-ideal circumstances, having gotten into a tussle with the team's board of directors about a variety of issues including where the team should hold it's camp.      Lambeau ended up coaching the Cardinals and Redskins before calling it a career.       The Packers renamed City Stadium in his honor before the 1965 season.

        Carroll Dale is no Brett Favre.       Nor was Marv Fleming.      Adderly, Gregg, Taylor and Hornung were all Green Bay standouts, but never were the franchise type of player that Number 4 became.      Lombardi?      A class by himself, but still not loyal enough to make the Packers his final professional destination.        He changed his mind after a season as Green Bay's GM, watching his replacement Phil Bengsten  take what was left of his Packers to a .6-7-1 finish in '68.       The press box, Kramer would later write, was no place for the likes of a Lombardi.     He needed the clipboard and the whistle.     The competition and the strategy.      Lombardi missed the game.

        It's not that anyone begrudges Favre what he wants--it's how he's trying to achieve it that's so...galling.      He's either uncertain, unsure, flighty, casual with the truth, or genuinely afraid of what this controversy will do to his public image.       He's probably a little bit of each.      The question the Packers have to ask themselves is: can he still play quarterback, and if so, where?  

         No matter what, Favre will always be mentioned with Lombardi, Lambeau and the other Packers legends who accrued great glory in Green Bay before ending up  somewhere else.      And, there's little doubt folks in these parts have much of an appetite for seeing Favre emulating those career paths.      There is no doubt his number will join those of Nitschke, Starr and the others on a Lambeau wall someday.  

         It's just looking less and less as though it'll be for the season opener against the Vikings that September Monday night.