Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers reunited on a public stage for the first time since Favre retired following the 2010 NFL season.
The relationship between the two was an interesting one. Rodgers was selected in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Green Bay Packers and expected to eventually replace an aging Favre. He sat on the bench for three seasons and finally thought he would get to start in 2008 after Favre retired. Favre unretired, causing an extraordinarily difficult situation for the Packers, who chose to move forward with Rodgers and trade their former quarterback to the New York Jets.
Favre and Rodgers squared off after Favre retired/unretired again and went to the rival Minnesota Vikings for two seasons. Though Favre initially got the best of Green Bay going 2-0 against them in 2009, Rodgers got him back by beating the Vikings twice in 2010.
The two former MVP quarterbacks were paired together to present the 2012 NFL Comeback Player of the Year award at the “NFL Honors” show on Saturday in New Orleans. They went through a scripted routine that included some jokes about Favre coming back from retirement. They patted each other on the back, shared a handshake, and then things got awkward when they couldn’t decide if they should go in for the bro hug to complement the shake. We don’t know if the awkward shake/hug was part of the script or not, but it sure was interesting to watch, especially after Rodgers said, “that was awkward.”
They then presented the award to Peyton Manning, who predicted he would one day be in a similar situation presenting an award alongside Andrew Luck, who replaced him as the Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback.
As far as the handshake/hug goes, I tend to think it was intentionally awkward. Why? The two looked pretty comfortable together backstage:
Photo credit: Twitter/Brian McCarthy
