On Favre and Blame, or We Interrupt This Comedy Blog For Some Cutting Sports Commentary

Yeah, this blog is supposed to be about my attempt at stand-up comedy. But my other passion is sports, and I feel the need to get this off my chest after Sunday's NFC championship game. My Saints won the game and are going to the Super Bowl (OH MY GOD), yet for some reason all I can think about is how the Vikings blew this game and how mad I'd be if I were one of their fans.


With apologies to Joe Posnanski, the best sportswriter on the planet, for biting on his style. Here we go...

Let me be clear at the start that I am not a Brett Favre apologist, even though you may think me one because I am from Mississippi and have rooted for him for most of my life in the way that I root for success for all Mississippi athletes. I’m not saying this to help him avoid scrutiny, I just come to speak the truth: The Vikings loss in the NFC Championship game is not Favre’s fault.

Yes, that was a poorly-timed interception, and yeah, the pass probably was forced, and Favre has a history of doing that kind of thing in that scenario, so there is precedent, but he is not to blame. To blame him is to blame Obama for the War in Afghanistan. Yeah he’s made mistakes, but he’s not the one that put us there in the first place.

The Vikings lost this game because their coaching staff got conservative at the worst possible time. The Vikings lost because their coaching staff went against the first rule of winning football, as so eloquently stated by Herm Edwards: “You play to WIN the game!”

When the Vikings made it to the Saints 33 yard line after a 14-yard burst by Chester Taylor, they had 1^st-and-10 with 1:06 left to play and two timeouts in their pocket. Field goal range yes, but not a chippy. 50 yarders are a little better than a 50% proposition at best, and we’ve already seen several kickers get a case of the shanks during these playoffs.

You get the ball at your opponent’s 33 with a chance to go to the Super Bowl on the line, you gotta play to win. You gotta stay aggressive.

But that’s not what Brad Childress chose to do. On first down, the Vikings ran the ball with Chester Taylor for no gain. Ok, that’s not terrible, he’s played well, the Vikings have run well all game, and he’d just gashed the Saints for a nice gain.

But Taylor got stuffed, and now the Vikings are in second and long. Still, they’ve got two timeouts and arguably the greatest QB of all time at the controls*. Nothing is lost, Minnesota can still make some plays and set themselves up for a easily-makeable field goal and a Super Bowl berth. But the Vikings chose to let the clock run. That’s Childress Big Mistake #1.

Actually, that’s more than a Big Mistake. That’s a Giant Mistake. That’s, well, if not the Mount Everest of Mistakes, it’s still in the Himilayas of Mistakes. Everything that comes afterward is partially a result of this original blunder, in the same way that every run that scores after a two-out error is considered unearned. If the Vikings don’t make this first gaffe, the rest of the mistakes don’t happen and maybe Favre and his Wranglers saunter down to Miami**.

*You can argue Favre’s merits if you like – all I am saying is if they’d won this game and gone on to win the Super Bowl, he’d have an awfully strong argument to that claim. I don’t think he’s the best, but a Super Bowl win at the age of 40 would be a mighty nice bullet point on a resume.

** I’m not saying other mistakes might not have happened, especially given Favre’s history. I’m just saying the specific ones that did were all a result of the Vikings letting the clock run after running the ball on first down. I’ve said mistake a lot. Mistake.

The Vikings let the clock run down all the way to :25 seconds before they snap the ball on second down, a run this time with Adrian Peterson for another no gain, and now the first down run doesn’t feel so defensible. Now we have a pattern. I’ve read this script before. These are the two running plays you run when you are playing to kick a game-winning field goal. You run the ball, try to get a couple yards if it happens, but most importantly you hold onto the pigskin and then put one through the uprights and it’s time to pop champagne. That’s Childress Big Mistake #2.

An aside: As a Texas fan, I watched this exact scenario play out during the Big 12 title game against Nebraska, only the mistakes of the Texas coaching staff will be swept away with the tide of history because Hunter Lawrence made the game-winning field goal.

The Longhorns got the ball back trailing 12-10 against Nebraska with 1:44 left at their own 40. They got a completion to Jordan Shipley over the middle and an additional 15 on a facemask that put them at Nebraska’s 26 with over 1:30 to play in the game. That’s a 43-yarder. Not a gimme, not the hardest FG in the world, but certainly with timeouts remaining a place on the field where you’d like to get it a little bit closer to make it easier on your kicker.

Texas ran three unsuccessful plays without ever taking a timeout, even losing three yards in the process to make the final kick a 46-yarder. Only by the grace of God and instant replay did Texas even get to kick a game-winner after Colt McCoy threw the ball away and nearly let the clock run out to end the game.

In many ways, McCoy and Favre are the same. Each made a bad mistake on third down with the fate of the game potentially hanging in the balance. But while Favre’s legacy may hang for his interception, McCoy will instead be known only as the guy who missing out on a national title because of a pinched nerve. And he had a roommate.

The point is, Texas got lucky that their field goal kicker came through for them, because the coaching staff’s conservative strategy in an end-game situation was ill-advised and could have cost them dearly.

/Aside

Back to the Vikings. Childress should have called a pass play on 2^nd-and-10 if he wanted to stay aggressive and play to win. He chose to play it close to the vest though, and as a result the Vikings now faced 3^rd-and-10 at the Saints 34.

The clock is still running, and the Vikings are forced to call timeout to stop the clock with only :19 seconds left.

Here comes Childress Big Mistake #3, and in my opinion, the timeout here is what makes CBM #3 ***so inexcusable. A timeout should be, if nothing else, a chance for a team to discuss exactly what to do and then send the personnel out to go do it. So how could the Vikings let 12 men go out to the huddle for third down, drawing a 5-yard penalty that made it 3^rd-and-16 and pushed the Vikes back to the 39-yard line?

***If it turns out it is someone other than the coaching staff’s fault that the Vikings had 12 men on the field, then I will shift the blame for this mistake. But it seems to me there are several assistant coaches for each side of the ball – surely someone is responsible for making sure the right guys are heading out on the field. If this isn’t directly Childress’ fault, it’s at least on his staff. But again, if Childress doesn’t choose to go conservative, maybe they never put themselves in this situation in the first place.

With a 56-yarder looming**** now the Vikings have to get some yards. Now they must pass, to give themselves a decent chance at a field goal. And now Favre drops back, heads out of the pocket to his right, and throws back across his body looking for his tight end Visanthe Shiancoe but finding Saints CB Tracy Porter.

*** Let’s say Favre throws incomplete on third - could Ryan Longwell have kicked a 56-yarder to win it? It’s possible. It’s been done. Pete Stoyanovich famously made a 58-yarder in a Dolphins-Chiefs playoff game, though it wasn’t a game-winner.

Longwell has been a good kicker for a long time. His career long is 55 yards, and he made at least one 50-yarder in all but three of his 13 NFL seasons, and in two of those seasons his long was from 49. According to his bio, he’s been perfect from 50+ over the last two seasons (a total of 8-8). Plus it was in a dome. Still, I wouldn’t have bet on him.

Did Favre’s interception cost the Vikings? Yeah, it did. He had a little real estate there in front of him, and had he tucked it and run he might have picked up 3-4 yards and gotten it back to a 51- or 52-yarder. At that point, maybe Longwell makes the field goal, and Vikings fans start looking for hotels on South Beach. Favre’s interception cost them that.

But Favre’s gunslinger mentality never comes back to haunt them if Childress don’t lose his nerve there instead of circling in for the kill, starting at first down with 66 seconds left to play and two timeouts in hand.

If I’m a Vikings fan today, if I’m mad at Favre I’m mad at him like I’d be mad at a friend who knew my girlfriend was being unfaithful and didn’t tell me. Yeah he did me wrong and I need to address that, but I've got bigger fish to fry.

Maybe you need to avoid Favre for a few days and not answer his calls. But Minnesota, Childress is the one you need to break up with.