David J. Phillip / ASSOCIATED PRESS

Packers quarterback Brett Favre (4) walks off the field after his team's 23-20 overtime loss to the Giants in the NFC Championship game on Jan. 20.

When you have three quarterbacks on your roster and none of them have started a single NFL game, and when your so-called first-string passer’s entire career statistics don’t even equal Favre’s best game, the correct response should have been uncontrollable glee with the “Hallelujah Chorus” as background music.

Yet for some absurd reason, Green Bay’s response was to act like Favre had cooties.

So shortly after Favre drove out of the Packers training camp on Tuesday — apparently on the verge of successfully forcing the team to at long last trade him — a reporter asked McCarthy why the team chose this insane strategy.

“I don’t have a short answer for you,” said the coach.

Well what’s the long answer, he was asked?

“We don’t have enough time.”

Well actually, we have plenty of time, but it’s doubtful that McCarthy and his buddies have any good answers, long or short. “Having crossed the Rubicon once when Brett decided to retire, it's very difficult to reorient our plans and cross it again in the opposite direction — but we'll put this to our advantage," Murphy said a few days ago.

So this was putting it to your advantage?

You bring him in, create a distracting media carnival, split the locker room, put Aaron Rogers in an impossible, no-win situation, leave Favre twisting in the wind for another day, then trot your head coach/fall guy out in front of the public to be painted as the perceived villain who ran Favre out of town?

Just out of curiosity, what the heck was Plan B?

As he tried to awkwardly make his way through Tuesday’s media inquisition, McCarthy tried once again to say that the reason Favre wasn’t welcome into the locker room was because “he wasn’t in a mindset to play for the Green Bay Packers . . . Given his mindset, why would I let anyone of a negative mindset into our locker room?”

Here’s a better question: Given his obvious Hall of Fame talent and his negative mindset, how stupid do you have to be to have created a situation where the most significant player in your franchise’s history would feel so betrayed?

I believe they call this biting your nose to spite your face.

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