Whoever lost the game here was going to feel it for a long time, but the fact that Minnesota may have lost on a 12-men-in the-huddle penalty, followed by a horrendous Brett Favre interception in the last pass of his season (career?) ... I don't know how the Vikings will sleep for a while.
Oh, and I'll have an opinion about the overtime rule too. And an interesting conversation with Tim Tebow about the first day of the rest of his life. But let's start with the beaten man at his locker in the bowels of the Superdome, and the odd end to this game.
The most compelling player of the era is broken.
"Poor Breleigh,'' Brett Favre said almost inaudibly, after hugging half of his organization and getting emotional with a few fellows, mostly Sidney Rice. Breleigh's the daughter who urged him so strongly to come back last summer, and now Favre was thinking how distraught she must be. "I'm sure her heart's broken.''
Pause.
"Of course, so is mine.''
No matter what you think of Favre
you have to admire how he bleeds in front of us. He goes out and gets the snot knocked out of him ("We were determined to hit him over and over and make him feel it,'' said none other than his old friend with the Packers, Saints safety Darren Sharper), somehow survives, then makes a throw he never should have made. And he stands there for the inquisition and answers the questions as honestly as I think a man can in these circumstances.
Before he went to his postgame press conference, he talked to me quietly for a couple of minutes, then to a couple of others in a growing group around his locker.
"I thought when I got hit [the high-low Saints sandwich late in the third quarter], my ankle was broken,'' he said. "I felt a lot of crunching in there.''
I told him I thought it was a late hit, with the lower hit a good example of why the Tom Brady rule was put in this year. Favre released the ball and was hit high by one rusher and low by another; the low hit looked like the kind of hit below the waist that deserved a flag, but the 'Dome was still ringing with boos from a roughing-the-passer call four plays earlier when New Orleans lineman Anthony Hargrove drove Favre into the ground (a textbook call for driving a quarterback from the air into the ground with the force the rusher's body). And it's human nature to wonder if a good referee, Peter Morelli, was inclined to let this hit pass because he'd just called the big one on the Saints. Whatever, Favre limped off. He'd been nailed by Sharper in the first half, then by Hargrove, and now this one.
"Tomorrow,'' he said, "the whole foot will be purple. My thigh, right there, will be purple. My wrist [with a chunk of skin missing] will be purple. Other than that, I'm OK.''
He said all the requisite stuff about his future, that he'll go home and think about it and talk to his family about it. (My feeling is he'll be back for another season because he feels at home in Minnesota, as Tim Layden wrote so well in Sports Illustrated this week, and because he likes his teammates so much, but I have no inside information on it. And as most of you know, my inside information on Favre playing or not has been as solid as vanilla pudding over the past three years.)
As for the question all of America is asking this morning -- how in the world could you have thrown that pass? -- this was his explanation: When the Vikings had third-and-10 at the New Orleans 33 with 19 seconds left in a 28-28 game, they planned to call a running play to get a couple of yards closer. Then Ryan Longwell would trot onto the field for a field goal of between 45 and 50 yards. But the Vikings got a five-yard penalty for 12 men in the huddle, which is illegal because an extra man or men would create unfair confusion to the defense. Incredible it would happen at such a big moment. "The communication was obviously lost [between the sideline and the field for the play that was called],'' Favre said.
Now, instead of running and forcing Longwell to try a field goal of up to 55 yards (he told the coaches he thought his range was about 53 yards), Favre had to throw. He rolled right with at least five yards of open field in front of him, and made the kind of decision that still haunts him from his last throw as a Packer. Against the Giants in the 2007 NFC Championship Game, he threw a careless pass that was intercepted by the Giants' Corey Webster, and the game-winning field goal followed. As did his divorce from the Packers. Here, he locked onto Sidney Rice and threw a pick right into the hands of cornerback Tracy Porter.
"I probably should have ran it,'' Favre said. "In hindsight, that's probably what I should have done. It was just late to Sidney.''
As Favre said to me: "You try to say it's just a game, and of course it is. You know that's the case. But it still hurts.''
This one will, for a long time
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
interesting read from msn sports
