NFL

Packers may postpone Favre’s jersey retirement

Team scheduled ceremony during season opener, but his future up in air

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updated 6:39 p.m. ET July 24, 2008

GREEN BAY, Wis. - With Brett Favre’s retirement up in the air, it goes without saying that the Green Bay Packers might have to put off retiring the three-time MVP’s jersey.

The Packers had scheduled a ceremony to retire Favre’s jersey in conjunction with the Sept. 8 season opener against Minnesota at Lambeau Field.

But with Favre now considering playing again in 2008 and locked in a standoff with Packers management about his future in football, Packers president and CEO Mark Murphy acknowledged Thursday that the ceremony might have to be postponed.

“We have not made a decision yet on whether to cancel it,” Murphy said, after the Packers’ annual shareholders meeting at Lambeau. “But we’re coming up to a point where we’re going to have to make a decision pretty quickly.”

But Murphy said any delay would only be temporary.

“We’re going to retire Brett’s number at some point,” Murphy said. “Regardless of whether it’s this year, it’ll be sometime in the future. We’ll wait and see, but I think it’s still enough up in the air that we want to wait and see how things play out.”

The three-time MVP asked to be released from his contract earlier this month after his sudden desire to unretire was met with lukewarm enthusiasm from the Packers, who committed to moving forward after Favre said a tearful goodbye in March. The Packers have said they have no plans to release Favre — they hold his rights until his contract expires after the 2010 season — but haven’t commented publicly on a potential trade.

Murphy did, however, hint at the possibility of Favre playing for another team by conjuring the imagine of Joe Montana in a Kansas City Chiefs uniform on Thursday.

“We want to have positive feelings about Brett and the Packers, and we want him to continue to be a part of the Packer family,” Murphy said. “I think the way this is handled will be important in terms of how that plays out in the future. But I’m also cognizant of some of the things that have happened in the past with Joe Montana ending his career with the Chiefs, now you look back on it, most people might not remember that he played with the Chiefs. They remember he was a 49er.”

In other Favre-related news Thursday, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported that if the quarterback was talking to the rival Minnesota Vikings, it wasn't on a phone that belonged to the Packers.

The story refutes a report earlier in the week related to allegations of tampering by the Vikings in pursuit of Favre.

"One-hundred percent, without a doubt, no Packers-issued phone," a source close to Favre told the Press-Gazette.

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The Associated Press contributed to this story