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Sports Interaction betting analyst Frank Doyle considers the possible effect of Brett Favre on the Minnesota Vikings.
More importantly for gamblers, how will a Brett Favre move to Minnesota impact the betting odds?
I am convinced that Brett Favre will be wearing horns on his hat when Minnesota opens its 2009 season at Cleveland on September 13. Nothing else makes sense.
The Vikings have been as coy as all get out about the Brett Favre rumours, but the fact is that Tarvaris Jackson looked like nobody's idea of a quarterback last year. The Vikings needed an upgrade badly at quarterback during the offseason but they didn't move at all during the winter and took nobody in the draft. Now why was that?
The only possible explanation was that they already had a quarterback in mind, and Favre was it. Nothing else makes sense. The only other possibility would be that they had full faith in nine year veteran Sage Rosenfels who's arrived from Houston, but batting corporate eyelids in Brett Favre's direction isn't going to do much for Rosenfels' confidence in being anything other than a clipboard holder come Fall.
So can Favre make a difference? Well, yes and no. Sports Interaction currently offers +2000 on the Vikings to win the Super Bowl and +1000 to win the NFC, one of five fourth favorites behind the Giants, Dallas and Philly. So even without Favre, the Vikings are pretty good.
What the Vikings would be like with Favre depends entirely on what they're asking him to do. If they're asking him to turn back the clock to his gunslinger MVP days of the mid-nineties they can forget about it. That will cost them games.
But if they're looking for a quarterback who won't get them beat, but will put the team in the best position to win that he can, then Favre isn't that outrageous a choice. Any quarterback with Adrian Peterson in the backfield just has to hand it off to Peterson and get out of the way. Peterson ran for 1,760 yards last year, the most in the league. You can't ask for better.
