Covering For Saint Favre

Predicting the Favre Haggery does not, in fact, make one more prepared to read or listen to it. I realize that I'm days late on this, but there's only so much Pro Bowl prep that I can do. So let's take them in turn.

1) It's all Adrian Peterson's Fault.

The argument: RB Adrian Peterson put it on the carpet three times. Had he simply held on to the damn ball, the Vikings don't need a last minute drive from Favre to win.

The rebuttal: As distressing as AP's performance was, please note that the Vikings recovered all of his fumbles (the play at the end of the second quarter was, in fact, a fumble that was charged to Favre on the botched handoff). Peterson himself recovered one of his errors for a net gain on a 15-yard run. The running back also did wind up with 125 yards on the ground and 3 touchdowns, so it's not as if he had a completely disastrous day.

How distressing, really, is a fumble on offense that isn't lost? Perhaps it makes a coach feel that he can't keep giving the ball to his workhorse back, but from where I sat, it looked like Vikings coach Brad Childress managed this game the way he did any other -- with change of pace carries for talented back-up Chester Taylor. If the stress from the fumbles was really making Childress put too much on Favre, why was AP getting the ball with less than a minute left?

In closing... Peterson has a real problem, one that will cost him the #1 spot in fantasy drafts next year to Titans RB Chris Johnson. Along with his high-contact running style, it doesn't speak to a long and prosperous career in the NFL. But he's still a problem that every other NFL team would love to have, and the past history of talented but fumble-prone backs is that most of them make the problem manageable, if not totally fixed. And in any event, it didn't cost the Vikings the game.

2) It's all Brad Childress's Fault.

The argument: With under a minute left and the Vikings looking at a 50+ yard field goal to win, Childress play-called with a log up his ass and both hands around his throat, ignoring the entire sad postseason of Kicker Fail. By sending Taylor and Peterson into the middle for predictable calls rather than continuing to attack the reeling Saint defense on the edges or in the passing game, he gave the opposition hope. He also is to blame for the chaos that produced 12 men in the huddle on third out of a timeout (!), which forced the final offensive play of the Viking season.

In addition, since Childress comes from the Andy Reid coaching tree, his abilities in any close game or clock management situation are suspect at best. And as a bonus, we can also throw in some personal remarks about his appearance, since all balding white men with glasses are said to be child sex predators. (Not a good trend for a large amount of the audience, but I digress.)

The rebuttal: This one is harder, as I wasn't thrilled with the way Childress called the end of that drive either. If nothing else, I'd have tried a safe bubble screen, maybe a throw to the flat, or a draw.

But it's not as if Childress was calling for Favre to take a knee and kill the clock on first and second downs. The Viking running attack was effective in this game, and you'd like to think that two carries against an exhausted Saint defense in the final minute of play might net you more than, well, no yards at all. I'm not certain that it's all on the head coach for the 12 men flag (frankly, I suspect that's more of a coordinator job, along with the players themselves). And finally, and most tellingly, the rollout call on third was a good one. The Saints had no one spying on Favre on the rollout, and even if you can't rely on a 40 year old QB to run, he might have had someone else open on the play.

3) Favre was just trying to make a play out there.

The argument: When you hire Favre, you have to take the good with the bad. That cross-body pick was a bad one, but it's the same play that he makes against the Cowboys last week, albeit not in the same pressure situation, and that one worked like a charm.

The rebuttal: Why, exactly, do you need to take the good with the bad from a 40-year-old QB who is making eight figures and is the all-time leader in playoff passing yardage? Where does it say that this excuses him from blame, or from making season-ending failures in judgment?

* * * * *

It comes as no surprise to longtime readers of the blog that I've got a personal distaste for Favre. The self-promotion, the flouting of rules that apply to everyone but him, and the media tonguework... well, I hope we can all agree that it's unseemly.

But that's not the point here.

The simple fact of the matter in pro football is that when the team wins, the QB gets too much credit, and when they lose, too much blame. Favre is, by nearly universal media accounts, a stand up figure and a great interview, a man who knows no other way to be with the press than nakedly candid about his feelings. If I were a beat reporter, I'd love the guy; he'd fill my notebook on a routine basis, ensure that I'd always have readers, and maybe give me enough source material to spin off a book later.

But, and this is the thing that is never said... None Of This Matters. Because it's not between the lines, and to the people who watch the games, between the lines *is* the whole game. And, well, should be.

I'm fairly sure, given the way he treated the mother of his first son and his close relationship with one of the more loathsome coaches in NFL history, that Tom Brady is a first-class reprobate. He's also a better QB than Favre. Peyton Manning has appeared in front of the media after a playoff loss and left his teammates out to dry; he is also a far better QB than Favre. Philip Rivers might be the most annoying player in the league for sheer cockiness and over-the-top snottiness; he is a far better QB than Favre. So long as your personality isn't so toxic as to cause men to want to lose to be rid of you, this is all sideshow.

I do not want to meet star football players, just as, 15 years ago when I was a musician and music writer, I didn't want to meet my heroes in that field. Nothing good, really, can come of it; your thinking will be clouded, inevitably, by sentiment, and perspective will be lost. At worst, the personal knowledge gained will ruin your relationship with the entertainment.

And yet, I'm left with one final disquieting thought... is Favre really that good of an interview, that he must (still) be protected like this by his media? After all, he might be retired for real, at which point he's fairly useless as a source. While it's been fun to watch his career (more fun for fans of the opposing laundry for much of the last decade), he's not the only fun QB to watch; if you want an improv QB with an arm, Mssrs. Romo, McNabb, Roethlesberger, Cutler and others don't play wildly dissimilar games. No one likes Favre so much more than football that they aren't going to keep watching the games after he's gone.

So, well, I don't get it. Haven't for years. He's just a player, and one that ends his team's seasons with bad picks with amazing regularity. Had he done this all in a tough media market, he'd be a figure of intense scorn, rather than a man with a top tier stable of advertisers.

His team lost, and the loss has his fingerprints all over it. The fans of the Vikings' opponents are, for the most part, hoping that he returns to stab the Purple people in the hearts again. And if you want to point the finger at others for it, you're ignoring his history, and holding him to a different standard from everyone else in the NFL.

Hope it's worth it.