Brett Favre to Join the Minnesota Vikings
Favre Set to Make an Impact the NFL's Best Rivalry Once Again
Jun 16, 2009
Lying on his back, Antonio Freeman makes a ridiculous, historic, circus-worthy touchdown catch in overtime to beat the Minnesota Vikings on Monday Night Football in November of 2000.
Following a touchdown reception, Randy Moss pretends to drop his pants and moon the Lambeau Field playoff crowd in 2005. He riled up the crowd with his stunt, but then quieted them the rest of the game as the Vikings did the nearly impossible by winning a road playoff game in Green Bay.
And that's just scratching the surface.
The Minnesota / Green Bay Rivalry
Over the last decade the Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings have formed one of the league's finest rivalries. In many ways, the teams' cutthroat competitiveness started in 1992 when the Packers traded a first round pick to the Atlanta Falcons in exchange for Brett Lorenzo Favre. Favre's passion and cannon arm fueled the fiery rivalry for the next sixteen years.
Judging by Favre's recent comments on "Joe Buck Live," NFL fans will be treated to a seventeenth year of Brett Favre headlining the border bitterness. And it's his seventeenth year that officially turns the rivalry into the NFL's best.
NFC North Daydreaming
Brett Favre, wearing a purple #4 jersey, leading his Minnesota Vikings through the tunnel and onto historic Lambeau Field will prove to be the most surreal image in NFL history. And if that mental image doesn't have your head swimming, the media hype leading up to and surrounding the teams' two meetings will do the job.
Minnesota fans can't wait to have Green Bay's longtime golden boy under contract. In their eyes, Favre is the final piece to their Super Bowl puzzle. No possible excuse could then be made to justify the team falling short of a trip to Miami for Super Bowl XLIV.
Lifetime Viking fans will die happy if the team wins the trophy named after a Packer legend by enlisting the help of another Packer legend, resulting in the ultimate salt in the eye moment for cheeseheads everywhere.
But it's not February yet. What do Packer fans have to say about the Favre situation?
Some wish the future Hall of Famer would simply and finally go away. Some wish the man the best of luck.
And yet some of the more competitive spirits say "bring it on." They think their team is simply better than the Vikings, Favre or no Favre. And they have a point. The Packers have a deep, talented team and arguably the division's best present quarterback in Aaron Rodgers. So, yes, bring it on.
Gunning Down the Enemy
With Favre leading a bonafide Super Bowl run, the Vikings can make Packer fans feel the most intense pain a football lover can experience.
But there is a flip-side to that coin.
If the Packers do what they historically do best, play smart, hungry, inspired football, they could make Viking fans feel that same pain. Nothing could possibly make a Viking fan feel more helpless then witnessing the Packers outplay Brett Favre and the Minnesota "Super Bowl on Paper" Vikings on their way to an NFC North Championship.
So, who's right, who's wrong, and who will be playoff bound? No one knows. The Chicago Bears or, gulp, the Detroit Lions could even spoil the party. That's the beauty of the NFL.
Forty-year-old Brett Favre will once again have the biggest say in the outcome of the NFL's best rivalry, though. For better or worse.
