Favre falls short again

Thoughts on the NO/MN game last night:

• Gritty effort by both teams. The MN defense showed some serious heart in the second half by stuffing NO and doing their best to withstand the turnover barrage by their own offense.
• Favre should have run on that 3rd and 15 play. I absolutely disagree with Mike and Mike in the morning ESPN radio who rejected this option out of hand saying it’s the QB’s job to look downfield for the pass. I reject that. Like happened a number of times in his last 6-7 years in Green Bay, Favre chose not to run when he could have. I understand that by moving toward the line of scrimmage typically, a QB can open up pass options because defenses usually then have to shift from thinking coverage to thinking about tackling the QB. But with Favre, nobody has to worry about him running because he never does. What Mike and Mike left out of their conversation this morning was the simple fact that even 5 yards there would have gotten the Vikes back to reasonable FG range for Longwell (50-52 yards). But Favre tried to squeeze one in there instead of thinking about picking up just a few yards. Mistake.
• Favre’s interception was a bad one and frankly his overall not-good performance last night (though not a terrible one) lends some credence to the rumors that TT wanted Favre out because he didn’t believe Favre could win the big game anymore. (A rumor came out at one point during the 2008 controversy that TT decided after Favre no-showed in the huge 2007 regular season game at Dallas that he’d had it with Favre’s lack of mental strength in big games.) Well, in 3 of the last 7 years (2004 to present), Brett Favre has thrown costly interceptions in the waning minutes of big playoff games: 2004 at Philly, 2007 against NYG and 2010 at NO. Favre was certainly helped by his teammates and their fumbling last night to be sure, but his inability to execute or do something special in the bigger games has become characteristic of him. For sake of contrast, look at what Peyton Manning did to rally his team in the second half.
• That said, the really costly penalty was the 12 men in the huddle penalty. An incredible failure on the part of the coaching staff – incredible failure. It took them out of realistic FG range (though again, Favre could have easily run for 5 yards to get right back into FG range).
• That penalty against Ben Leber on TE David Thomas in overtime was a bad call. Unless I missed a certain camera view, he didn’t touch Thomas – whether the pass was catchable or not was not the issue – the issue was that he didn’t touch Thomas.
• Garrett Hartley’s FG may have been good from 95 yards.
• Drew Brees looked jittery out there – nervous.
• Sean Payton made a tough decision in overtime to go for it on 4th and 1. Sure it was the sensible thing to do at the opponent’s 40 yard-line, but in a game like that, with a failure meaning you’d give the ball to a strong offense at their own 40, it took guts. That’s why I like Sean Payton – he was ready to take the heat for that decision. But interestingly, even before the delay for a measurement before the play, Payton clearly had already decided to go for it. Chances are, because he’s a good coach, he’d probably already considered the possibility of a 4th and short and had already decided he’d go for it back before 3rd down if it came to that. Nicely done coach.
• Last night, I found myself rooting hard for the Saints. Not only do I just like the Saints as a team, I didn’t want to see Favre go to the Super Bowl. It’s interesting to me that I can go from loving the guy like I did, to rooting so hard for a team opposing Favre – I agree with reader theChoj who said it he found himself rooting almost as hard for the Saints last night as he roots for the Packers.
• Quality, quality Super Bowl coming up. These two teams are going to play a tough, fast game that will be really exciting. And both deserve to be there.