Brett Favre might be good

Now that's the convincing win over a subpar team that everyone was looking for...

Even the most die-hard Brett Favre-backers couldn't have predicted this kind of season. 21 touchdowns versus 3 interceptions and a 112.1 passer rating makes folks like me look pretty silly for dissing him early in the season. And after seeing Tarvaris Jackson play for a quarter-plus and look like the Division 1-AA quarterback that he is, it's pretty clear that Favre's not only an MVP candidate for the league as a whole, but he's probably the most valuable player on the Vikings. I could live with Chester Taylor for a while if Adrian Peterson went down, and Ray Edwards has stepped it up enough to make me feel good if the team lost Jared Allen, and the defense has weathered the loss of Antoine Winfield for the last month or so. But right now, Favre is playing as well as he ever has in his career and Tarvaris Jackson (not to mention Sage Rosenfels) would be a huge step down.

It doesn't hurt that Sidney Rice and Percy Harvin are both also looking like stars, and Visanthe Shiancoe has quietly become one of the better pass-catching tight ends in the league. The only negative in the passing game is the looking-like-a-bust Bernard Berrian, who's a distant fourth option in the passing game. I'm also a little concerned at the lack of explosive plays from Adrian Peterson, but I think that's more the fault of the offensive line, which rarely seems to open up holes these days, and some iffy playcalling -- could we please stop calling that stretch play? I'd rather we passed to Naufahu Tahi, that's at least a guaranteed three yards.

One down, six to go. Remember the "poison pill" contracts the Vikings and Seahawks exchanged four years ago? The Vikings' offer to Steve Hutchinson required the Seahawks to make him the highest paid offensive lineman in the league if they retained him. In retaliation, the Seahawks offer to Nate Burleson -- a seven-year, $49 million deal -- would only pay out the full amount if Burleson played seven games in Minnesota during the length of the contract. This was his first game in Minnesota, so if he can manage six more games there over the next three-plus years...

(Really, not that I'd want it to happen, but I sort of hoped that, if the Vikings did move then the Seahawks would move to Minnesota and Burleson's contract would be paid out. I know, they'd release him first, but it would have been cute.)

Next week is the third of the Vikings' three post-bye home games. As I laid out a little while back, the Vikings can practically wrap up their division with a win against Chicago next week. If Chicago beats Philadelphia tonight to go to 5-5 and the Packers win next week against Detroit to go to 7-4, then a Vikings win next week would make them 10-1 with five games to go and in control of all tiebreakers in the division. Chicago would be 5-6 and effectively six games back, putting them out of contention, while Green Bay would be essentially four games back, meaning they'd have to go 5-0 while the Vikings go 1-4 (or worse) or go 4-1 while the Vikings go 0-5. I like our chances.

Of course, if the Bears beat the Vikings, that changes things a bit, but let's not dwell on that...