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Brett Favre has finally retired. After months of speculation Green Bay Packers ‘ number four has apparently decided to hang up his cleats for good and let the team start preparing for a future without him.

 As he promised the Packers once their season ended, Favre  decided whether he’d return to the NFL for one more year well before the drat (about two months away) something that will allow them to make the proper preparations for that key date and the free agency period.

After balancing all his options one of Green Bay’s greatest quarterbacks decided that coming back was not worth it. He was simply too tired mentally, physically and emotionally. He realized that contrary to what most people would think winning made it all tougher, and that the only way to go out on top, if he did play one more season, would be to come back and win the Super Bowl.

“Anything less than a Super Bowl win this year would have been dissapointing for me and for a lot of people because the expectations would have been higher,” Favre said in a message that he left in the voice mail of ESPN’s Chris Mortensen. “A Super Bowl win to me it would have been the only way to come back and feel like I made the right decision.”

With Favre’s expectations that high, he probably made the correct choice because right now you can’t say that the Packers are the biggest favorite to win it all next year.  

At an age where just playing at the top of your game gets tougher with each passing day, and when you reach that point where you have to train twice or thrice as hard to perform at the same level you did when you were younger, you have to ask yourself if going at it for one more season will make such a big difference in your career.

Obviously Favre realized that he’s had a career in which he’s accomplished most of what any quaterback can accomlish on a football field (Three MVPs, Super Bowl winner, countless records, longest streak of games played) and that one more season was just not worth it.

Favre’s 18th season was not going to make or break him as a football player. His legacy as one of the game’s greatest is secure and thus the fact that he threw an interception in what has become the final pass of his career (to the New York Giants‘ Corey Webster in the NFC championship) should not bother him that much.

In the end Favre succumbed to the pressure of being Favre. Due to the kind of career that he’s had he’s used to simply setting his goals as high as possible. This year, after the success the Packers had last season, he realized that he can’t just sacrifice his body one more year in order to meet the expectations, reach those goals and have an epic ending to an already glorious career.

 Favre biggest critic was probably Favre himself and that’s why rather than worry about living up to the expectations of the others he tried to live up to his own, but this time his expectations were simply too high.

He was tired of the pressure and he was tired of living up to those standards. At this point in his career Favre knew that one more season would not make a difference, one more season would not define him, and thus he could ride into the sunset on his own terms.