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All reports seem to indicate that Favre is retiring from football and will not be returning to the Vikings.

Now, some of you might be saying, “Finally, now we don’t have to hear about this every day for the next 12 months. Well, it probably only fuels speculation about him coming back throughout the season. But the NFL gets huge ratings boosts from Favre, and so does ESPN and EPN radio by just talking about Favre (and Lebron) 24/7. You might not like either of those players, but you are always intrigued to hear about them and watch them play. It’s just a fact.

Do we buy it? Not really. But let’s assume it’s true and see the implications for other players outside of Mississippi. Peyton Manning’s record hunt and Tarvaris Jackson stand to gain the most from Favre’s departure.

Tarvaris Jackson

Tarvaris Jackson stands to be the only person in the NFL to not lose money and fame from Favre retiring. Favre brings a lot of attention to the NFL and makes everyone richer. Except his back-up QB. Tarvaris Jackson will now start the season for the Vikings. If he has a crappy year, he’ll be in the same exact position he was 2 days ago, a back-up making back-up money.  But if Tarvaris has a pretty decent season with all that talent around him, he stand to make some good money on his next contract.

Tarvaris Jackson may actually not like this announcement.  He might be such a professional that he wanted the team to win, and knew Favre was about 62% better than himself, and was happy with his back-up role in exchange for a winning atmosphere. But the competitor in everyone makes this unlikely, and Tavaris probably wants to play. I don’t think he’ll be great but he’ll probably lead the team to 9 or 10 games as opposed to 12 or 13 with Favre.

Peyton Manning

Manning will finally have some numbers to shoot for, and won’t have to keeping adding years onto his own career just to outlast Favre. Let’s look at the numbers manning has to beat.

Note: Wins/Losses taken from career W/L Avg. TD, Yds, INT, Comp, Att, and Sacks will be projected from the WORST year Manning has had since 2003.

Stat	Manning	Favre	Per Yr	Per Gm	Worst Year	GMs Needed	Years
Wins	131	181	10.9	.682	Avg	74	4.6
Losses	61	104	5.08	.318	Avg	136	8.5
TD	366	497	27	1.69	2008	78	4.9
Pass Yds	50128	69329	3747	234.2	2005	82	5.1
Cons GMs	192	284	16	1	Avg	92	5.5
INT	181	317	16	1	2009	136	8.5
Comp	4232	6083	305	25.4	2005	73	4.5
Att	6531	9811	453	37.8	2005	87	5.5
Sacks	215	503	21	1.3	2007	220	13.7

So Peyton is right on his way to take down most of Favre’s records in the next 5 years (at least the good ones). Note that these projections are projected from Mannings WORST year of the last 7 years. Comp, Att, and Yds were all taken from 2005. Int projected from 2009, sacks from 2007, and TD from 2008.

Within 4 years he could break the TD, Wins, Comp and maybe even yards if he has stellar seasons. If his career winds down like most players’ do, hell do it in 5.

If Favre comes back for another year, you can add 1 full year onto each of those projections.

There are some records Manning will never (probably) break. For sacks, the most extreme case, would take 220 games, or 13+ years to get to the Favre sack mark. Also interceptions, will take 9 years to break, and would probably be even longer. Losses are on point with interceptions, would take 8.5 years to break that one, rather than 4.6 years for wins.

So all in all, there are only 2 beneficiaries from Favre retiring. Hopefully he comes back, so we can all be enthralled watching Favre during the season. And that way he won’t have to end on a terrible interception in the playoffs last year.