Brett Favre retires. For real this time, it seems.

The gentleman pictured above is Chris Hanson, punter for the New England Patriots. In eight games, he's been called upon to punt 18 times. For those who don't know much about football, that's not a lot of punts.

But that's not what this post is about - I'm not here to give you a different spin on "The Patriots are really good." You know that by now. The reason I'm posting is because it's recently come to my attention that when Chris Hanson was employed by the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2003, he missed a good three-quarters of the season due to injury. An injury that occured when he cut his foot open with the axe that Jags coach Jack del Rio brought in to the locker room as a "motivational tool" to remind the team to "keep chopping wood."

I'm not sure this is coming across properly: he chopped his foot open with an axe. Seriously.

I'm not sure there's any way I can attempt to take a rational look at the recent revelations of the Patriots' videotaping tactics in a way that will make me look like anything but a homer, but I'm going to try.

What happened on Sunday was against the rules. And the Patriots got caught doing it. Whatever penalty the league decides to hand down in this case will have to be something we as fans accept and move on. It's only fair.

That said, let's not go overboard here. This is not "the worst NFL scandal yet."

Here's the thing: if the team's reputation for these antics was truly as widespread in the NFL as people like Mike Tomlin and LaDanian Tomlinson have been saying, then shouldn't teams have prepared accordingly? Hell, in that same article in which Tomlin discusses the simmering backroom discussion of the Patriots "family" and their usage of underhanded video, an unidentified Steelers coach says words to that exact effect:

One assistant said the Steelers changed their defensive signals whenever they played against New England because of their suspicions

And, let the record show, that since 2001, the Steelers' video-counter strategies have led to exactly one win over the Patriots. So were the Steelers the only team doing something like this, and poorly at that? We somehow doubt it, especially if the cameraman was as blatant as the photo document suggests.

Compare these hijinks to baseball, in which stealing signs is common. As a result, teams think ahead, and do things like cover their mouths in conferences on the mound (like Joe Kerrigan used to do when he was the Sox' pitching coach) or, more simply, change their signs during the game. Also, consider Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden, who beat the Raiders in the Super Bowl thanks to his advance knowledge of the Radiers' playbook (from when he was the Raiders' coach) - was that somehow unsportsmanlike?

We're not trying to completely exonerate Belichick. Certainly his bending of the rules in this case was a little sleazy, following a pattern of sleazy behavior dating back some time. And we can understand why the legions of Patriots non-fans are enjoying this right now, and we don't blame them for that. But at the same time, any team that wants to blame their losses to the Patriots entirely on some video tape is going to come off reeking of sour grapes. Those teams probably should have prepared better for such things.

UPDATE: King Kaufman says it better than I could.

Deadspin finds an interview with ex-Patriots QB Drew Bledsoe in which he says this:

"The best day of my year was always the day after the season when we landed in Whitefish and I could feel myself exhale. Like the pressure was lifted off my shoulders - a physical feeling when we would get into Whitefish. I always looked forward to that day every year and it never let me down. The worst day of my year was always that last day of my summer. I would sit on the dock at my house on Whitefish Lake with my legs dangling in the water before I would fly back on the plane to training camp."

Now, okay, on the one hand, who can blame him? That sounds like a nice lake and everything. On the other hand, it doesn't make him sound like a guy who's too eager to be playing football for a living. And frankly, to us, that makes his career all the more astonishing: imagine what kind of a career he could have had if he was doing something he actually enjoyed? We sympathize with guys like Bledsoe: it's hard to resist a career in any field when you're actually good at it. There are, one presumes, many voices all pushing you in the same direction. When said career field additionally offers the promise of mind-boggling sums of money, it becomes all the more difficult.

So, hey, good luck with the fishing.

Microsoft officially announced what we've been expecting all along: the 360 will be getting a $50 price cut across the board on all models starting tomorrow. The standard model will now check in at $349 with the "elite" model setting you back $449.

Makes sense that Microsoft would do this now: there are some amazing-looking games coming in the next few weeks and months, including Halo 3, Rock Band, Bio Shock, Blue Dragon, Assassin's Creed, Guitar Hero 3, Mass Effect, Jericho, Lost Odyssey, Half-Life 2: The Orange Box... you get the idea: lots of games with greatness potential.

So, of course, Microsoft's press released focused on Madden:

The fact that we have been able to keep our launch price longer than any other console while retaining our leadership position demonstrates that consumers believe in the value of Xbox 360," said Mitch Koch, corporate vice president, Global Retail Sales and Marketing Group, Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft.. "On the eve of the best holiday games lineup ever and the launch of 'Madden NFL 08,' there has never been a better time to jump into Xbox 360.

Admittedly, yes, Madden is the top-selling game every year. But it just drives us nuts that more people don't actively reject this game when all it amounts to is a roster upgrade with some incredibly stupid bells and whistles that don't enhance the experience in any way shape or form. Remember this?