Talking Brett Favre on Sports Overnight America

(Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

Last night, I joined Pat Mauro of Sports Overnight America in the wee hours of the morning to discuss Brett Favre, the Vikings, and the Timberwolves.

In case you missed it—or if 12:40 CDT was past your bedtime—the text of our conversation is below, with a little bit of my excess verbiage trimmed for the sake of brevity.

The Favre and Vikings chatter is covered here. You can read the T'Wolves talk here.

Special thanks to Pat—who was a terrific host—for having me on board.

Pat Mauro: Is Brett Favre going to be a Viking? It almost seems like every fan, everyone involved with the Vikings—unless your name is Sage Rosenfels—would like the sound of Brett Favre as quarterback of this team. Am I out there in saying that?

Marino Eccher: No, I think you’re pretty on-the-ball there, Pat. First of all, to answer your question, I do think barring a major setback with that arm, you are going to see Brett Favre in a Vikings uniform come training camp time.

And for the most part, I think the team is going to feel pretty good about that. Now obviously, that depends on which Brett Favre you’re getting.

If you get the guy who, through the first 11 games of last year, threw those 22 touchdowns, 13 picks, completed about 70 percent of his passes, well, it’s all good and gravy.

If you get the guy, who went 1-4 to close out the season, couldn’t make a throw to save his life, and ended up needing bicep surgery for a torn tendon, you’re going to have some problems with that.

PM: Thomas Jones said, “Hey, we lost because of Brett Favre,” and he ended up eating his words, because of that. He chose not to pursue that a little bit farther.

But the Jets were in pretty good position to go to the playoffs, and if you look at everything that happened those last four or five games, Brett Favre was basically the reason they didn’t go to the playoffs.

ME: I think it’s kind of a double-edged sword, because you look at the first two-thirds of the season, and it was Favre this, Favre that, the Favre experiment’s working, the team is 8-3. People are talking about, “Are the Jets gonna get a first-round bye?” People are mentioning the Jets as a Super Bowl contender.

But Favre fell off the wagon in a huge way in that last third of the season, completed fewer than 60 percent of his passes, two touchdowns, nine interceptions…he was really struggling to make throws that throughout his career had just been second nature to him.

Now, if he comes to the Vikings, you’re probably going to get that same kind of up-and-down feeling. Whether it’s deserved or not, at the end of this season, if you have Brett Favre quarterbacking the whole way, you’re going to say either it was Brett Favre who got them to the top of the mountain, or Brett Favre that could not do it.

PM: With the Jets, they wound up getting rid of Chad Pennington, who went to Miami and wound up having a really good year for them and appears to be their guy. In Minnesota, it was Gus Frerotte last year, it was Jackson, they ended up adding Rosenfels.

It’s almost like, even Brett Favre—and we don’t know what’s up with the shoulder, we don’t know if it’s 100 percent—but it’s almost like, “Brett Favre’s better than all those guys,” isn’t he?

ME: Absolutely…if Brett Favre is anything close to, not even his three-time MVP status, but if he’s anything close to what he was at the beginning of last year, or what he was in 2007 in Green Bay, he’s a tremendous upgrade over Rosenfels, he’s a tremendous upgrade over Tarvaris Jackson.

In regards to Rosenfels, you’re talking about a 31-year-old career backup, a guy who has been distinctly average over his NFL

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