Favre's Final Farewell

Last April, quarterback Brady Quinn copied the unexpected draft-day round-one slide of quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

Soon, we suspect that Quinn (or, at a minimum, his agent) will be clamoring to join Rodgers' current team.

Though he might be fooling himself into thinking that he's got a shot at winning the starting job this season, Brady Quinn is destined to open 2008 where he finished 2007 -- on the bench. After all, the Browns aren't paying Derek Anderson $8 million per year to hold his helmet next to his ear so that he can listen to the play be called in to the huddle.

More importantly, Quinn needs to get on the field in order to unlock the big-money incentives that his agent, Tom Condon, held him out of training camp in order to get.

And so while it might be unlikely that Quinn will demand a trade in his own voice, Condon could be contacting the Browns and asking them to explore the possibility of moving Quinn to Green Bay.

Quinn would surely welcome the move; it would give him a better chance at becoming the long-term starter, and it would put him on the same team with his brother-in-law, linebacker A.J. Hawk.

The problem? The Packers might want to give Aaron Rodgers a full and fair shot in 2008 at showing he can do the job (or, more importantly, proving he can stay in one piece) before looking elsewhere. And since the Browns have a high second-round pick and a 2008 first-rounder tied up in Quinn, the Browns would need to get a one and a two in order to justify trading Quinn less than a year after drafting him -- especially since the Browns would then be going "all in" with Derek Anderson.

But while we don't see anything like this happening in 2008, we don't rule it out for 2009, if Anderson cements his grip on the job in Cleveland, and if Rodgers fails to fill a sufficiently large portion of Brett Favre's shoes.