If the Vikings are Smart, They’ll Bench Brett Favre

If the Minnesota Vikings have any brains at all, they’ll bench Brett Favre.

Yeah, him. The Brett Favre who threw the last-second, 32-yard pass to Greg Lewis to steal a big win over the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday. The Brett Favre who has a Super Bowl ring, three MVP trophies, and has played in ten Pro Bowls.

That Brett Favre. If the Vikings hope to do anything productive in the playoffs, he needs to be warming some pine right now.

The Vikings, 3-0 so far, are looking good. They’ve added Favre to an offense that already features Adrian Peterson, the best back in the business. Add to that the #5 defense in the league, and this is a scary Minnesota team.

These Vikings are better set to make waves in the playoffs this year than they have been in ten or eleven years—when players named Randall Cunningham, Cris Carter, and Randy Moss were running the offense.

But some people were pretty enamored with the Jets last year too, and we all know what happened to them.

Brett Favre made an impressive showing in the first two-thirds of his one season with the Jets, starting 8-3 and looking much like the Favre of old (er, young). He threw 20 touchdowns in those eleven games, to only 13 interceptions.

Jets fans were giddy. But his late-season falter is now well-documented.

In the last five games, Favre threw only two touchdowns and gave away the family inheritance to the tune of nine interceptions. The Jets lost four of those five games and missed their big shot at the playoffs.

But wait—that wasn’t the first time, either.

The last five games of the 2006 and 2007 seasons, both in Green Bay, were similarly ignominious. It’s easy to see that Favre’s performance dropped off at the end of each season, and that each year that dropoff has gotten worse. In 2006 a 14:10 touchdown-to-interception ratio dropped to 5:8, and in 2007 22:8 turned into 6:7—before 2008′s epic meltdown.

But the better gauge is the team’s record in those games. 2006? 4-1. 2007? 3-2. 2008? 1-4.

They’ve got to put him on the bench.

Say what you will, but it’s clear that Brett Favre doesn’t have a full season in him. He’ll be a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, and he’s still got a rocket arm—but if the Vikings want that arm at full strength, they’ll need him to sit a few games early in the season.

There’s no denying that Brett Favre is an upgrade over Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels, the other quarterbacks on the Vikings’ roster. They combine for 13 years in the league compared to Favre’s 19, and neither has ever even seen the playoffs. But either one could fill in for Favre in a non-competitive game.

The Vikings went 10-6 last year without Favre, but a good portion of that was with Gus Frerotte starting at quarterback, and he’s no longer on the Vikings’ roster. They went 3-3 with Tarvaris Jackson taking the snaps—it’s not an impressive-sounding record, but it did include late-season, playoff-clinching wins over the Arizona Cardinals and the New York Giants.

And there are definitely games that the Vikings can win with Jackson or Rosenfels under center. Favre will definitely be on the field next week to face his old team, the Green Bay Packers. But the following week the Vikings travel to St. Louis to play the struggling Rams.

Sounds like a bye week for Favre.

Now fast forward a few weeks. The Vikes have a real bye the week of November 8th, and the following week they host the Detroit Lions. The Lions might be slightly better than last year but they’re still manageable with a backup QB, and the opportunity to rest Favre for two straight weeks in the middle of the season is extremely compelling.

With those two weeks off, Favre will be set to play out the remaining seven games of the season (though there are a few other games he might be able to skip). If you add in a first round playoff game, a division championship, and a Super Bowl the total still only reaches ten consecutive games.

Considering that in past seasons he’s dropped off after eleven, resting Favre mid-season has to be an attractive option for the Vikings.

As we found out on Sunday against the 49ers, any team that has Favre has the opportunity to win any game. With the old Wrangler-wearing #4 on their roster, Minnesota has enough talent to contend in the playoffs and bring home a champagne-soaked Vince Lombardi trophy.

But if they’re hoping to make the Favre acquisition more than just a ploy to sell purple jerseys, they need to win now. This year. Favre is already on borrowed time, and no one can even pretend to know if he’ll be back next year.

So the choice is theirs. They can let him play it out, and have his arm decide when it’s had enough. We’ve seen that option before, and we know how well it works.

Or they can sit him on the bench where he belongs.