A boring Favre equals wins for Minnesota

CLEVELAND -- The joke's on us. All that time and energy, all that emotion -- all that anger -- we spent on Brett Favre for putting us through another offseason from hell -- and that was the result?

That?

That 34-20 victory against Cleveland on Sunday?

Brett Favre isn't Brett Favre. He's Trent Dilfer. But that's all the Minnesota Vikings need him to be. This isn't Green Bay trying to win games, even a Super Bowl, with someone like Dorsey Levens or Ahman Green or Ryan Grant at running back. This is Minnesota, which means Adrian Peterson is at running back.

Which means Brett Favre doesn't have to be The Gunslinger. He has to be The Caretaker. And he was Sunday, staying out of the way while Peterson and the Vikings' enormous offensive line grinded up the Browns in the first game of Brett Favre 3.0.

This version ought to end differently than Brett Favre 2.0, the unmitigated disaster last season in New York that cost the Jets head coach his job and put Eric Mangini here in Cleveland, with a quarter-empty stadium and a completely empty quarterback position. In New York, where the running back was the pretty good Thomas Jones, Favre was asked to throw the ball all over the place -- he attempted 522 passes at age 39, nine more attempts than he had at age 27 in 1997, when he gunslinger-ed the Packers to their most recent Super Bowl appearance -- and by the end of the season his arm and the Jets had crumbled.

•  Vikings 34, Browns 20

In Minnesota, where the running back is the exceptionally good Adrian Peterson -- and the backup is the very good Chester Taylor and the wild card is the outrageously gifted Percy Harvin -- Favre threw just 21 times Sunday. That equates to 336 pass attempts over a 16-game schedule, well below the career-low 471 attempts he had in 2003 at Green Bay.

That won't happen every time, of course. The game will come this season when the Vikings need Favre to throw more than 21 times. But he's like a starting major league pitcher with a mounting pitch count -- his arm has some pitches left, but he needs as many 1-2-3 innings as he can get. Sunday was the first one.

The first of many, you can be sure.

Peterson is that good, which you knew -- he led the NFL in rushing last season with 1,760 yards -- but the Minnesota offensive line is that good as well. Which maybe you didn't know. NFL players are huge, we all know that, but Minnesota's offensive tackles are gargantuan, averaging 6-foot-8, 339 pounds. The guards average 6-4, 314. The center is 6-4, 301. Cuddly little guy.

And they can all play.

"I haven't played with an offense like this," Favre said. "It starts with 28 [Peterson], but I'll tell you what -- that offensive line is pretty impressive."

Peterson used that line, along with his own supernatural speed and balance and power, to run for 180 yards and three touchdowns on 25 carries, including a ridiculous 64-yard touchdown where he outran most of the defense, stopped in an instant to let a safety with an angle coast by, then straight-armed another oncoming defender before outrunning everyone else. Peterson did things on that play that a Porsche couldn't do. He went from zero to 60 mph, back to zero, and then back up to 60. And I've never seen a Porsche throw a straight arm.

"That guy's pretty awesome," Favre said. "That's an understatement."

That sums up Favre's role in Minnesota. After another overstated offseason of indecision that had ESPN reporters stalking him by phone and even by helicopter, Favre's role in Minnesota is to be an understatement. His job is to hand the ball off when needed, call the right audible when needed, and occasionally even drop back and throw the ball -- as short and as straight as possible. Of his 21 pass attempts Sunday, just two of them were more than 10 yards in the air. When he has to, as he did on a 21-yard seam route to Harvin late in the third quarter, Favre still has the arm strength to zip the ball downfield. But the Vikings won't abuse that ability, or his arm, by asking for it unless it is absolutely needed.

Brett Favre celebrates with Percy Harvin after the rookie's first career touchdown catch. (US Presswire)

Vikings coach Brad Childress doesn't plan to overuse Favre's right arm. He doesn't even want Favre throwing the ball away unnecessarily. Teams will blitz Favre as Cleveland did on Sunday, because he has lost much of his mobility, but Childress can live with the occasional negative play.

"I'll take a sack any time," Childress said. "[Be] workmanlike. No blips."

Workmanlike? That word might apply to his blue jeans persona, but that's not the Brett Favre that football fans have come to know after more than 65,000 career passing yards and 465 touchdowns. But that Brett Favre is gone. This one turns 40 next month. His face is wrinkled. His hair has gone from salt-and-pepper to 100 percent salt. He looks nothing, for example, like Browns quarterback Brady Quinn, who has the face of a model and the body of a linebacker and the quarterback rating of Brodie Croyle.

The Browns need Quinn to play like the No. 1 pick he once was -- or at least, to play like Derek Anderson from 2007 -- and to not contribute any more fumbles like the one Sunday that mimicked Garo Yepremian's gaffe from Super Bowl VII. But that won't be easy for Quinn, not with leading receiver Braylon Edwards dropping passes and with leading rusher Jamal Lewis looking like a very old 30.

Quinn doesn't have a line like Favre has, or a running back like Favre has, or the weapons Favre has. Vikings tight end Visanthe Shiancoe is an emerging star, Harvin is a triple threat who will score this season via the ground and the air and the return, and Favre sounds like he really likes third-year receiver Sidney Rice -- who has underperformed after being drafted in the second round in 2007.

"I need to throw it to Sidney and give him more chances to make a play," Favre said.

And he needs to throw it to Shiancoe and hand it to Peterson and find different ways to put the ball into the hands of Harvin. And he needs to do that as boringly as possible. A boring Brett Favre will win a lot of games for Minnesota.

"Not to make it sound like unspectacular is a bad thing," Childress said, "but make the routine play routinely."

We freaked out over this guy. And he's Gus Frerotte.