FRUSTRATING FAVRE

Got a text from the Southern Bureau during the Jets game Sunday, while communicating about Wilmington, North Carolina's own Connor Barth - kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs. It read:

"Watched the first half. Brett Favre must be frustrating to watch."

And the Southern Bureau is right. He is frustrating to watch. But I came into this season eyes wide open on Brett Favre.

I knew that last year was more exception than rule from Favre. I knew that he throws a lot of interceptions. I knew that the bad sometimes outweighs the good. But in the past two weeks, he has put the Jets in position to lose, then led them back to a chance to win (one resulted in a loss, one in a win). (And of course, the problem here is that both games should have been easy wins.) So it's been a whole lot of the bad mixed with the good....which is what I expected, having watched a considerable amount of Favre with Green Bay.

But I've watched Favre much closer this year than I have in the past, because of the uniform he's currently wearing, and I've noticed a couple of things that I'd like to share here:

1) Regardless of the fact that Favre might be hurt, resulting in these subpar performances the past couple of weeks, I've noticed this - after Favre takes a big hit or looks like he might have been hurt in some way, the next pass or two that he throws are absolutely rifled.

I mean, he rears back and throws them about 100-mph. Almost to prove that he's not hurt - even if he clearly is. No one can possibly catch these throws - often thrown inaccurately. But there's that.

2) Favre is not seeing the field well. I don't know why it is - but he's throwing passes that are right to defenders. A couple of times the past few games I'll give him a pass because a receiver fell down, but a couple of times he's thrown to defenders and been picked off, a couple of times the defender dropped the ball.

3) Favre forces way too many throws into spots that he has no business throwing to. He either needs to take more sacks (he's getting hit anyway - it's not like he's doing it to avoid the hits) or throw more balls away and save some face.

4) And this one might be the most important - for every time they show the stat that Favre has 35 (or something like that - my brain zones out the stat every time they show it on the screen these days) 4th quarter game-tying or go-ahead drives, I think even more telling is the one that came on NBC during the Chargers game a month or so ago:

I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was something to the effect of 'Favre has never led a team back from a 14-point or more halftime deficit'. Isn't that something? Probably because of 1, 2, and 3 above - he starts throwing too wildly and things go the other team's way.

As though the past two weeks weren't bad enough - that stat is not much of a sign of pleasant things to come.