The Packers and bears did not have similar fortune with opponents injury-wise. The bears were much more fortunate with the key injuries that kept occurring to their opponents the week before the bear games, and all the third-string QBs they faced. In the meantime, the Packers had SEVEN opening-day starters on IR, as well as 2 others (Al Harris and Johnny Jolly) that didn’t even make it to opening day. That doesn’t include all the starters that were significantly impacted by injuries, such as Donald Driver and Cullen Jenkins.
The fact that everyone thinks Favre cost the Vikings the win in the Saints game is typical of why sportstruths.com is so necessary. Let me recap the situation:
1. The Vikings never came close to the Super Bowl before Favre got there, and he led them, via an MVP and record-setting season, to the point you feel they got to. Since they didn’t let him throw this year, they again didn’t come close.
2 Favre is the reason the Vikings were where they were, and the players recognized this, which is why they begged him to come back.
3. Favre was the best QB in all of the playoffs, and played a GREAT game against the Saints. He led the Vikings to many scoring drives, and many others that didn’t happen due to others’ mistakes.
4. He played the entire game with the Saints taking cheap shots on him, trying to hurt him and get him out of the game. They basically broke his ankle at the end of the third quarter, and he led them to the Saints’ 10 on the first drive of the fourth quarter (Berrian fumble), a TD on the second drive, and, WITH LITTLE TIME LEFT IN REGULATION, led them into possible winning-FG range before the 12-men-on-the-field penalty.
5. While Favre was playing GREAT the entire game until the last 30 seconds, other Vikings were making very costly errors. For example, Berrian’s fumble cost them the game. Childress’ running cost them the game. The 12 men on the field cost them the game, when Favre had already gotten them into potential winning-FG range. It would never have come to the interception at the end of regulation based on what he did all game if others didn’t mess up and if the refs didn’t steal the game.
6. Let’s not forget that Favre led the Vikings to victory in regulation, but the officials stole the game. This was basically admitted to by the NFL, as the V.P. of Officiating felt he had to put out a video showing some of the bad calls. So, Favre did win the game in regulation. He also would have won the game in OT, but the officials gave the Saints a first down on 4th-and-2 when they were clearly a yard short, then gave the Saints 13 critical yards on a pass interference call where the receiver wasn’t close to being touched.
Here’s another example of why people just looking at one aspect of a situation leads to what I consider to be incorrect conclusions. Everyone (as you say, “I can’t think of one other person”) talks about how great Brady is for his 4-interception season and something like 319 straight passes without an interception. That’s all people focus on. I watched 2-1/2 Patriot games this year. I saw the second half of the Colts game, where at the end of the game, he threw a pass right to a Colt with no one else even close. This would have cost his team the game, but the guy dropped it. I saw the bears drop about 3 interceptions, and the Packers dropped at least 2, I think. These were the only 2-1/2 games I saw! So, people can talk about the stats all they want, but Brady had nothing to do with all those guys dropping interceptions.