Flip Side: Farve a Potiential Key Ingredient for Vikings?

It's hard to even imagine Brett Favre not being a key ingredient in a teams success. However does he really benefit the Vikings or will he be another quarterback hindrance on their team this year.

The Vikings as of right now have Jackson, Rosenfels, and Booty all in open competition for the starting role.

Jackson was benched last season for Fregotte who came in and took his job. Jackson however came back to start the postseason game against the Eagles only to go 15-35, have a 45.4 passer rating, and threw one interception. Less than impressive to say the least.

Rosenfels also not very impressive overall last season. He went 116-174 with a 66.7 pct completion, 79.5 passer rating, and had six touchdowns with 10 interceptions with the Houston Texans.

Booty well he hasn't seen very much playing time in his short career so far.

The Vikings do have some new weapons to use though. They have the addition of one of the best playmaking wide receivers in the draft in Percy Harvins to add on with Bernard Berrian and Sidney Rice. Not to mention one of the best running backs in the NFL in the backfield.

So the Vikings have the pieces Brett Favre could use to be successful and lead the Vikings to and through the playoffs. However Brett is no longer the Brett that we used to know by any means.

We saw last year that even though Brett has a strong arm he no longer has the cannon we all looked to see when watching him play. Brett is known for relying on that arm by just chucking the ball up in the air when the pressure closes in. When his arm was still at "cannon" status sometimes he could get away with it and get it over to his receivers. However even then he would get picked off often.

Now his arm is not what it used to be and if he sticks to what he does best when under pressure by throwing the ball straight up in the air, he will have a lot of interceptions. We saw this last year when he had 22 touchdowns, but 22 interceptions to boot.

For all the success he had last year, he had just as much setbacks. In recent years he has not played very well in playoff games. In 2007 he threw crucial interceptions when playing the Giants that basically lost them the game.

In watching his fourth quarter play of that game especially, I sat back and thought to my self I no longer trust Favre in a clutch situation down the stretch. He is older and seems to be getting gassed late in the regular season and into the postseason.

For the Vikings though, he brings better production at the quarterback position which isn't saying much. He has the experience of winning the Superbowl and can pass on a lot of knowledge to Jackson, the supposedly quarterback of the future in Minnesota. Most of all the Vikings will be even more competitive this season with him and in this league all you need to do is at least be competitive to have a chance.

Bottom line Favre does improve what the Vikings have but do to physical ability decrease, shaky decision making at times, and recent playoff debacles, Favre is no longer the answer for the Vikings or any other team in the NFL.