I really can’t believe that I’m coming off like a Brett Favre apologist, but the floodgates of denouncing the 10-time Pro Bowler have opened so swiftly and angrily in the mainstream media that I can’t help but be annoyed by the hypocrisy. Don’t get me wrong, I think Favre is a smug little bastard, but the difference between me saying it and ESPN saying it is that I’ve been saying it all along.

The media’s sudden shift in temperament toward Favre was on full display last night, when Favre went out wide in the Wildcat with Percy Harvin taking a shotgun snap. Favre executed an illegal crackback block on Houston’s Eugene Wilson, which was correctly called for a 15-yard penalty. ESPN’s Mike Tirico, who was calling the game, launched into a rip of the 39-year-old QB with “Even if you’re Brett Favre, that’s not cool.”

But apparently, it is cool if you’re Trent Green, the former Rams/Chiefs/Dolphins/Rams quarterback who executed a nearly identical block on the Texans’ Travis Johnson on a broken play in 2007. The only differences there were (a) Green was under center, meaning that his block could not legally be called a crackback, and (b) Green got himself a concussion on the play, and would never start in the league again.

So was Green scorned by the media for threatening another man’s career? Oh, hell no. There certainly were mitigating reasons: Green’s injury, Johnson’s subsequent demonstration over Trent Green’s limp body after the play. But Green was even defended by Peter King, who had this to say following a text message exhange with Green:

King to Green: 9:08 p.m.: “hey — how about johnson calling your block a malicious hit? feel better. peter.”

(And this is the one I found interesting.)

Green to King, 9:12 p.m.: “He outweighs me by over 100 lbs. Where shld I blk him? TG.”

The bottom line: The only way Green knew he had a chance to get Johnson on the ground was by taking his legs out. via.

Again, my gripe is not with Favre’s treatment in the media. It’s with the media whose bias toward Favre has spun from one extreme to the other in less than a month’s time. And that sudden, seemingly across-the-board shift in policy has been the most flagrant crackback of all.

Brett Favre vs. Eugene Wilson.

Trent Green vs. Travis Johnson.

Favre vid.