Favre's so good, he's bad (and other notes)

That crashing sound you heard while watching Monday Night Football this week (and on pretty much all the talk shows Tuesday morning) was the announcers falling over themselves to explain that Brett Favre's early-season struggles with the Jets were the result of him "still learning" the playbook, terminology, and other associated knowledge after 16 years in the Packers' system.

In truth, Favre hasn't played too poorly: He's completed 70% of his passes, has twice as many TDs as picks (6 to 3) and has a 98.7 passer rating. But he's still doing the things he has, for reasons unknown, gotten away with for over a decade and a half: throwing off his back foot, heaving the ball into double- and triple-coverage, and those have nothing to do with "knowing the system." The reason he's "struggling," of course, is because his team is 1-2, with those two losses coming against the AFC's best team last year (New England) and, despite its 1-2 record, what might be its best team this year (San Diego). So you've got the worst of both worlds: Poor Bretty is being coddled for not being smart enough to figure out his offense and sports pundits are blaming him for his team's allowing 27 points per game.

Yes, I'm sure it's tough to come into a new system and take over as quarterback. But Favre's getting a lot of the same "free passes" he did from the national media that he did over his last so-so decade with the Packers, and it's still annoying. Has anyone got some good New York headlines that get on Favre for his "complete inability" to lead the team to victory?

(Because as we all know, wins and losses are completely the result of the quarterback's play. That's why Tarvaris Jackson is so good, because the Vikings were 8-4 in his starts last year. He's a winner.)

* Mildly unsettling stat: The Vikings' top two receivers are Chester Taylor (7 receptions) and any of Bobby Wade, Bernard Berrian, and Visanthe Shiancoe (6 receptions), for a total of 13 catches through three weeks. 27 players have 14 or more receptions, individually, and Brandon Marshall had 18 in one game.

None of them, however, play for this weekend's opponent, Tennessee, whose team leader is tight end Bo Scaife, with 10 catches. Justin Gage and Chris Johnson have 7 seach.

* Meanwhile, even with Ryan Grant's 54-yard run against the Vikings in week one, the team is still third in the league, allowing only 70.3 yards on the ground per game and fourth in yards per carry, with 3.2.

Of course, a big reason for the Vikings continued dominance against the run is Pat Williams, who's picking up over $7 million a year to jam up the middle. Last year, I floated the notion that the Vikings should seek to trade Williams in the offseason (not knowing that he had signed that big contract earlier in the year) to either shore up the pass defense or, perhaps, to see if he could be included to pry away one of Cleveland's quarterbacks, either Brady Quinn or Derek Anderson.

Well, Cleveland saw the wisdom in the idea, but instead of trading for Williams, they traded Leigh Bodden to Detroit for Shaun Rogers, who's "improved" their rushing defense to the point where they "only" allow 145 yards per game. They allowed 129.5 yards per game last year. Meanwhile, Anderson signed a multi-year deal in the offseason and is about one bad game away from being replaced by Quinn, which means that neither player will be going anywhere soon.

As for Pat Williams, he ideally only plays on "35 to 40" plays per game, or about half the team's defensive stats. Hey, I love watching the guy swallow up a running back as much as the next guy, but should we be paying $7 million a year for a part-time player, even if he is a Pro Bowler? That sounds like the epitome of "sell high" to me. I'm not saying we could have gotten Quinn (or Anderson) for him, but there must have been some other need we could have filled, even if it dropped our rushing defense to, say, 90 yards per game and a 3.6 per-carry average.

I'm just sayin'...

Breaking news!

Brett Favre went to the bathroom in a Jets facility for the first time today. ESPN will have reactions from local sportswriters on the 11:00 p.m. edition of FavreCenter, as well as a roundtable discussion on what it means for the Jets if Brett went #2 instead of #1. Stay tuned for more on this exciting development!

Final thoughts on Favre

At last, our long national nightmare is over. Though some will still lament Brett Favre trading the green-and-gold for the green-and-white, and, even if he throws 30 interceptions this year, will still believe the Packers would have been better off with him than with Aaron Rodgers, this is really a deal that benefits all three teams -- yes, three -- involved.

First of all, the Packers can close the door, fully and completely (until there's talk of the Hall of Fame and Ring of Honor and the like, a few years down the road) on the short-lived Favre/Rodgers QB controversy. As I alluded to in my last post, had the Packers taken Favre back and given him the starting job, that would have guaranteed that Rodgers left as a free agent following the 2008 season. That would have left the Packers with a QB who's not committed to playing past next year (Favre) and two second-year men (Brian Brohm and Matt Flynn), neither of whom were likely to see any action in 2008. If Favre did leave -- for good -- that would have likely put Brohm in the starter's seat. Instead, they now have a much better (though not 100%, one would think) chance of retaining Rodgers. And, say what you will about the Rodgers/Favre comparison, and I do think Brohm will be a pretty good QB, but given the choice between four-year veteran Rodgers (with some playing time) and one-year veteran Brohm (with no playing time), I'd pick Rodgers.

For the New York Jets, Favre represents a serious upgrade over Chad Pennington (who, reports say, will be released shortly) and Kellen Clemens, neither of whom have any real long-term value, unlike Rodgers and Brohm (and perhaps Flynn). Clemens won't represent any real threat to Favre's starting job, and, if Favre just gets the team to the playoffs, it will only cost them a second-round draft pick. And I think you might see a slight uptick in NY Jets merchandise sales over the next few weeks...

Finally, there's the third team "involved" in the Favre negotiations, and that's the Minnesota Vikings. It's no surprise that I'm not the biggest Tarvaris Jackson fan around, but I'll admit the kid's got at least some potential. Acquiring Favre would have ruined that potential, sending a clear message to Jackson that the team doesn't believe in his ability to lead the team -- which, considering how tenderly he's been handled by the coaching staff and how often they've gone out of their way to prop him up, shouldn't take much. In exchange, the Vikings would have gotten a quarterback who might play for one more year, maybe -- and I do mean maybe -- two, whose "me-first" attitude would not be what was needed on a team that prides itself on its running game and defense.

And here's the kicker -- Favre may not be that good in 2008. I know, I know, he's Brett #&^$ Favre, and I'm just being a sore Vikings fan by suggesting. But think about it: two years ago, after throwing 29 interceptions, Favre was "washed up." Last year, after throwing 18 TDs to 18 interceptions, Favre was "mediocre." Now, after his fine 2007, he's [pick your favorite: reborn, revitalized, back on the right track, ready to lead a team to the Super Bowl]. Basically, you're looking at a guy who's had one good season out of his last three and turns 39 in October. Would I want to sacrifice the future of my team's QB position for that? The Jets had no future at the position, so it makes sense for them to take a shot at it. The Vikings and the Packers are a different story.

My prediction for Favre in the Meadowlands: something in the vicinity of 3,500 yards, 24 TDs and 18 interceptions. Pretty good, and far better than Chad Pennington or Kellen Clemens could have hoped for -- and, for that matter, better probably than Tarvaris Jackson will do in 2008 -- but I wouldn't bet that he'll throw for more touchdowns in 2009 than I will.

Now, can we please talk about something else? ESPN, I'm looking at you.

(PS: Don't you love the "poison pill" the Packers put in the trade? If the Jets trade Favre to the Vikings, the Jets give the Packers three first-round draft picks. It's similar to the provisions made by the Vikings for the players they dealt to the Cowboys in the Herschel Walker trade, a stipulation Dallas dodged by arranging a three-team deal with the Patriots that shipped one of the players from Dallas to New England and then to Green Bay. If Favre still demonstrates that he's a valid QB in 2008, and for some reason the Jets don't want him, and Jackson falls flat on his face...well, don't rule out seeing Favre in purple just yet...)

The worst running games in NFL history

Since my posts about the worst teams in NFL history seemed so popular, I thought I'd try and revisit the topic. But since I've already covered some of the worst teams ever, I didn't think I could top my previous efforts. Instead, considering that the Vikings had the best running game in the NFL last season, I thought I'd go in the opposite direction and try to find some of the worst rushing teams in NFL history. They say that today is the era of the passer in the NFL, and, consequently, the earlier days were dominated by the running game. If that's true, then these teams need a history lesson.

* The NFL Record and Fact Book lists the 1940 Philadelphia Eagles as having the fewest rushing yards ever in a season for an NFL team, and it's hard to argue with that. In the Eagles' eighth season, they managed a paltry 298 yards on the ground all season. Adrian Peterson alone rushed for just two yards less than that in one game in 2007. True, the season was only 11 games back then (and the Eagles went 1-10), but that still averages out to just 27 yards per game.

There might be a catch, though. Note that quarterback Davey O'Brien is listed has having 100 carries for -180 yards. Since sacks wouldn't become an official statistic for another 40 years, I'm guessing that his sack yardage is counted among that negative yardage. Even so, there are probably some legitimate runs in there, and, if you removed all of O'Brien's negative yardage, you'd have just 478 total rushing yards for the team. My Record and Fact Book lists the 1946 Detroit Lions and the 1944 Boston Yanks as #2 and #3 in fewest rushing yards for a season, with 467 and 471 respectively, and that's including negative rushing yardage for likely sacks. I think that cements the 1940 Eagles as the worst rushing team of all time. If only Donovan McNabb had been born 60 years earlier (and, being black, allowed to play in the league).

* The last team to rush for less than 1,000 yards in a non-strike year? You have to go all the way back to the AFL and the 1963 New York Jets, who managed a paltry 978 yards on the ground (while giving up 2,129). Even for the pass-happy AFL, this is the only team in the league's history with such an anemic rushing game. Fullback Mark Smolinski led the team with 561 of his career 1,323 rushing yards, and his reasonable 3.7-yard average would make you think they should have given him the ball more. Then again, when you have a quarterback named Dick Wood on your team, you probably want him going long...

...to the tight end...

...as long as it isn't man-to-man...

...OK, I'll stop now.

* When I got my first Strat-O-Matic football set in the late '80s, it included cards from the 1986 season. A friend and I took five teams each and played a kind of mini-season. I took the Jets, Bears, Bengals, Giants, and the New England Patriots, just because the Patriots had been so bad for so long (by my reckoning), I wanted to see if I could win with them. And the '86 Patriots were a pretty good team overall, winning their division at 11-5 and making the playoffs.

Then I took at look at the team's running back cards. Here were the average yards per carry for each of the team's backs:

Craig James: 2.8
Robert Weathers: 2.8
Tony Collins: 2.6
Reggie Dupard: 2.6
Mosi Tatupu: 2.4

I passed a lot with that team. When I did run, it came as such a surprise to Ted (my opponent) that he would likely be in some sort of prevent, three-man rush, six DB defense -- and I'd get maybe four or five yards. With a good roll.

As a whole, the 1986 Patriots only managed 2.9 yards per carry, and that's including quarterback Tony Eason's 4.9 average on 39 runs. All this came just a year after the Pats' 1985 Super Bowl run, where James and Collins average 4.7 and 4.0 yards per carry on the season. Maybe they were still sore from the pounding the Bears gave them in Super Bowl XX.