It’s time to pull the plug
by Sam Monson
October 26th 2010
 
Brett Favre is the league ironman. The guy’s played in like 1,000 straight games. He has played through a litany of injuries, the death of his father, his wife’s struggles with breast cancer, and on and on. You just can’t stop the guy suiting up on gameday. Unless you bench him.
 
The Vikings might have to do that very unthinkable thing if they want to save their season. Minnesota is currently 2-4, but they remain only 1.5 games out of the lead in the NFC North, thanks to some wretched play all across the NFC. In any other season the Vikings would be an afterthought, but this year they’re still firmly in the hunt.
 
Brett Favre came out of the game against Green Bay hobbling; barely able to walk, thanks to a stress fracture in his surgically repaired ankle. He suffered the injury when being tackled by Packers linebacker Brad Jones. Jones twisted Favre’s ankle in the tackle, wrenching one ligament free and causing bones to chip within the ankle. According to Dr. Mark Adickes, a former Super Bowl winning offensive lineman for the Washington Redskins, Favre’s ankle sounds gruesome, but will be treated like a sprain, and “He could play this week with the aid of a major tape job & injection.” If there’s one thing Favre has shown down the years is that he’ll play come Sunday.
 
Favre has finally begun to show his age this season. He took longer than anticipated to recover from the beating he took at the end of last season in the NFC Championship Game, he has been suffering from tendonitis in his elbow this season, and now his ankle is barely still held together in the manner in which God intended it to be. He’s 41 years old, he’s been taking a beating for twenty years of Pro-Football, it’s taking its toll, and it looks like it is getting the better of him once and for all.
 
But it’s Brett Favre, and it doesn’t matter how bad the injury, how ridiculous the idea of him playing sounds, he’ll find a way to tape, strap, or glue it up and get out there. The problem for Minnesota is that they might not want him to.
 
Favre leads the league in interceptions right now with ten. Those ten interceptions have led directly to 51 points by Vikings opponents in their opening six games. That’s 8.5 points a game the Vikings are spotting their opponents because of Favre turnovers.
 
Adrian Peterson is currently leading the league in rushing, despite playing a game less than most of the league because of the Vikings’ early bye week. The O-line of the Vikings has hardly been performing well, but Adrian Peterson is playing at another level, yet the Vikings can’t keep the ball on offense because Favre is turning it over.
 
2009 was so successful for the Vikings and for Favre largely because he was as careful with the football as he has ever been in his career. He threw just seven picks in the regular season, three less than he’s thrown in just the first six games of this season. As clichéd a term as it has become, the Vikings need a game manager at quarterback. They have a running back that can carry the offense, they have the D that can keep them in games, and they have the weapons in the passing game to make a few plays a game, but they need someone that can take care of the football and not throw the game away. At the moment they can’t rely on Brett Favre to be that guy.
 
Tarvaris Jackson might be it. Jackson has had a very checkered past as a Viking, with some extremely inconsistent play, and certainly never hit the highs Favre did in 2009, but he has demonstrated the ability to avoid turnovers.
 
In his last 180 pass attempts, Jackson has thrown just two picks. He’s also thrown eleven touchdowns in that time. Brett Favre has attempted just one fewer pass this season – 179 – but has thrown ten interceptions.
 
The Vikings don’t need an All-Pro at quarterback in 2010, they don’t need a guy who can sling it all over the field and make big passing plays. They need somebody that can move the chains enough between running plays, and someone that can accept sometimes punting it away is ok.
 
The Vikings have made no secret about rolling the dice this season on a Super Bowl. They have put off contract talks with several key players, they upped the cash offer to Brett Favre to get him to come back for this year, they made the trade for Randy Moss when the passing game was struggling, they are desperate to win this season, and they’ve made some gutsy plays to try and make it happen. The gutsiest move of all might be the one they have to make – sit Brett Favre down.