Am I becoming a Favre apologist??

My whole life (mostly, considering I was 7 when Favre joined the league) I've despised the Favre apologists that saturate the national media. His interceptions have always been a side effect of his love of the game, or just good old fashioned "gunslinging". My ultimate fear (and prediction) is that Brett "gunslings" us out of the NFC championship game. I've been mentally bracing for it ever since the dance started this last spring. Hopefully I'm not so saturated with purple kool-aid by that point in time that I can avoid the inevitable catastrophic let down... but now that he is in purple, I have a few rebuttals for the knocks that people are putting on him. There has been a lot of talk this week about the Vikings not having a down-field passing game and here are a few of my thoughts on that.

1. We haven't needed one. We've played two of the bottom five teams in the NFL and have beaten them both convincingly. Despite a stacked box AP has put up 270+ yards in two games. Brett is still adjusting to our offensive system (even though he was supposed to be able to teach it from the get go...) and we're running conservative plays.

2. Our pass protection is very very suspect. Brett has already eaten 7 sacks in the first two games, that cannot continue or else we WILL be seeing Tarvaris back on the field later this season. Not only the sacks, but Brett barely has any time back there for a down-the-field play to develop which really hamstrings our attempt to get the longball going.... and everyone knows that chicks dig the longball.

3. Alluding to point number one... maybe we're saving our long game for legitimate competition. Perhaps (and I know that this is giving WAY too much credit to the Chilly brain trust) we are playing conservative while we can and not expose looks to future defenses. This one is a stretch, but as a delusional fan of a 2-0 Vikings team I can dream, can't I?

Also, the whole thing about people complaining that we don't have enough passing yards is ridiculous. Have we needed them? No. We are not the 98' vikings anymore, we are a defense first team with a phenomenal talent at RB. Passing stats are the least of our worries (except interceptions of course).

Interesting thought though, what would people be saying if T-Jack had the exact same numbers as Brett right now with a 2-0 start? I'm sure there would be a LOT of people out there complaining that he's not doing enough, that he's not a pro caliber QB and that we're not going anywhere with this passing game. Meanwhile with Brett out there he's just being a "game manager". Moral of the story, people are stupid, fickle and contradictory.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that AP is a very physical runner... but there were a couple times during Sunday's game against the Lions that I cringed when he dropped his shoulder instead of going out of bounds. I know it's passion, and I know it most likely cannot be changed, but I could go without seeing him turn his spine into an accordion for just a half yard. I'd like to be watching AP past the 2011 season... which if he keeps this stuff up, I doubt I will be. Not surprisingly, he was held out of practice yesterday due to back issues. He is officially listed on the injury reports. He will play on Sunday, but we might be seeing a little more Chester Taylor than we have so far. AP did have his worst game of his career against the Niners two years ago though, he will probably want to remedy that this weekend knowing him.

So I was not expecting the 49ers to be coming to the Dome this weekend 2-0. Looks like Mike Singletary has whipped them into shape rather quickly. They have actually defeated more difficult teams than us (not that hard to do considering who we played though) so we cannot discount schedule on that. The vikings have a tendency to play down to their competition, so hopefully we see a much cleaner first half this week considering we're playing a legitimate team. Although Fat Pat has appeared to lose a little bit of a step this year, I still think we will keep Frank Gore in check. That leaves Shaun Hill to beat us, and he is essentially a poor man's Sage Rosenfels (an astute observation by Winters). I like the guy, but I have more confidence in our pass rush and linebacking corps. I think the defense has a stalwart performance fueled by the home crowd this weekend. The offense still won't be too flashy, just effective, and we will win rather decisively.