Jets make a big splash with Favre

The general manager grew up locally, and as a youngster paid close attention to the way Red Auerbach constructed some great Celtics teams. He remembered how the headlines in the late '70s and early '80s seemed to be all Celtics, all the time.

Mike Tannenbaum, a Needham guy, once noted that he admired how Auerbach always seemed to have a plan - from drafting Larry Bird as a junior eligible to crafting those offer sheets with the Knicks in response to New York going after Kevin McHale. He said it seemed Auerbach was always a half-step ahead of everyone else, and watching that play out during his youth sparked his desire to run his own team.

Tannenbaum ended up in the football business, now the New York Jets' general manager, and late Wednesday night he pulled off one of the more sizzling, headline-grabbing moves in NFL history by acquiring legendary quarterback Brett Favre from the Green Bay Packers for a conditional fourth-round draft choice.

Landing Favre could be a slam dunk that puts the Jets in position to challenge the beast of the AFC East, the Patriots. Maybe it only makes them a wild-card team, which isn't bad, as the Giants proved last season.

Then again, Favre very well could be a desper ation half-court heave, an attempt to steal New York headlines from the Super Bowl champion Giants and provide a short-lived injection of life into the Tannenbaum/Eric Mangini regime that went from 10-6 in 2006 to 4-12 last season.

That's what makes the Favre-to-New York story line so compelling.

Can a quarterback who turns 39 in October - and retired in March, only to change his mind - turn the Jets' fortunes around?

The answer will be forthcoming over the next six to seven months, but this much can already be said about the Jets' approach: Like Favre, they're letting it rip in true gunslinger style.

And to their credit, they realize that in a division with the mighty Patriots - and a future Hall of Fame quarterback, Tom Brady, who is in his prime - that's the only way to go. Much like the teams that gave New England the most problems last season - the Eagles, Ravens, and Giants come to mind - the Jets are getting after it.

First, they had one of the NFL's most aggressive offseasons, bingeing in free agency and the trade market to reshape their roster with more experience and size and power at the line of scrimmage in left guard Alan Faneca, right tackle Damien Woody, outside linebacker Calvin Pace, and nose tackle Kris Jenkins.

While it was easy to focus on the exorbitant price tag of those four players - they received guarantees and bonuses of $54.2 million - more important was this figure: 1,252 pounds added to the roster. The beef-it-up approach was taken, in part, with the Patriots in mind. The Jets were tired of getting run over.

But all the while, both Tannenbaum and Mangini knew those moves - plus the selection of chiseled Ohio State defensive end/outside linebacker Vernon Gholston with the sixth selection in the draft - would mean little if they didn't get better play out of their quarterbacks. In the end, a team's success is contingent on one position more than any other: quarterback.

So they entered training camp with an "open" competition between 32-year-old Chad Pennington and 2006 second-round draft choice Kellen Clemens. But even Pennington acknowledged that Clemens had the upper hand going in, his point being that teams don't draft players high in the second round with the idea of having them ride the bench. Yet Clemens, who was been slow to develop, was outplayed by Pennington.

That unwelcome development - and the opportunity to replace the weaker-armed Pennington (who was released yesterday) with the laser-throwing Favre - boiled down to this: Favre makes the Jets better this year and much tougher to defend because he make throws to all parts of the field.

Yes, there are questions that make the Favre-to-New York transition a bit dicey.

How will Favre adjust to a new offensive system after playing mostly in a West Coast system the last 16 seasons? Is his conditioning up to par? After saying in March that he wasn't of the mind-set to put in the work from Monday to Saturday, will he do that now? Is he committed?

In the end, it might blow up on the Jets, but considering the reasonable price to acquire Favre - and the team they're chasing - why not? It's a move that's good for the NFL - having a star like Favre in New York - and one that should have reverberating effects here because the AFC East just got much more interesting.

Teams looking up at the Patriots are in an unenviable position, with no easy answers as to how to close the gap. Acquiring a legendary quarterback, however, certainly adds an intriguing twist to the chase.

Mike Reiss can be reached at mreiss@globe.com.