He's baaaaaack....

If there's an upside to Brett Favre un-un-un-unretiring, it's that at this point his primadonna tendencies have become so self-evident that even his longtime defenders have started to recognize them. The man was, at one time, a great quarterback, but his diminished skills and lack of regard for his teammates will make him an increasing competitive liability (he wasn't exactly hot stuff with the Jets last year, either). Football is the ultimate team game, and for Favre to wait until the middle of August to announce his comeback because he didn't want to go through training camp is the ultimate me-first move. For a quarterback to be fully effective, he needs to be in sync with his offensive teammates, and without practicing together, that doesn't happen - while Favre may not need to practice the plays he's going to run this fall to execute his role effectively, the Vikings' offense as a group needs to, and he's deprived them of that opportunity. And that's without even getting into the distraction his antics have created.

The team will suffer for it. I didn't happen to think the Vikings were serious contenders this year anyway, partially because of their quarterback situation, and Brett Favre is not going to change that. Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels are nothing more than mediocre quarterbacks, but Favre at his age is not enough of an upgrade to be worth the disruption signing him creates. I doubt the Vikings will make the playoffs even with him. I will say, however, that his signing has made one more NFC team a lot of fun to root against - go Bears in the NFC north.