I've Never Favred So Good.

It's 5:20 on Sunday evening and the Green Bay Packers have just beaten the Chicago Bears in the NFC Championship game.  I've never favred so good.


It's been almost three years to the day since the Packers lost to the New York Giants in Lambeau Field on January 20, 2008.

In bitter, sub-zero temperatures (actual temp at kickoff was minus one degree Fahrenheit), Brett Favre played his last snap as a Green Bay Packer after throwing an overtime interception to Cory Webster of the Giants.  The Packers went on to lose 20-17 after Lawrence Tynes kicked a 47-yard field goal after missing his previous two.

After that numbing loss, I kept saying that the Packers would have won that game if Aaron Rogers had been put into the game.  Favre never looked so old, so damaged, so.... cold as in the second half of that game.  It was like his ability to quarterback -- including his thought process, his defensive reads, his check downs and his throwing motion -- had slowed down like oil in his Mississippi lawn tractor abandoned somewhere in icy Wisconsin.

Aaron Rogers, fourteen years younger and with just enough NFL seasoning to not know better, would have found the fortitude -- his antifreeze -- to lead the Packers into field goal territory and victory.  The names of New York's kicker Tynes and cornerback Webster would have remained in the Giant's team program and not on the front pages of our nation's newspapers the following day.

The end result of today's game and the Giant's game-- and the parallels between those two games -- bear out (forgive the pun)  my earlier belief that Favre had passed his prime and that his competitive vigor had evaporated as quickly as the steam rising from Donald Driver's bald head.

Football in the upper midwest, including Soldiers Field in Chicago, can be brutal and ugly when played in January (think frozen tundra with frost bitten fingers and toes).  Sunday's game -- played in single digit temps after accounting for wind chill -- was sold as the "Game of the Century" in Chicago.  While great for attracting high football viewership, the game never lived up to its billing.   Green Bay's Rogers came out firing, completing 8 of 11 for 138 yards and a 114.7 passer rating in their first four series.  The Bear's defense, after shutting down the Seattle Seahawks inept and snow-adverse offense, looked lost and always two or three steps behind the speedy Greg Jennings, Jordy Nelson and James Starks.  But after the first half, Coach McCarthy's offense went into hibernation as was the disturbing norm all season.  Chicago's trio of quarterbacks -- Cutler, Collins and Hanie -- never mustered up much of a challenge to the  Packer's defense until the fourth quarter.  By then Hanie, a third string quarterback, needed a last minute miracle just to send the game into overtime.

Never happened -- end of game, with the Packers winning 21-14.  As the freezing winter air settled into  the joints of every Bear fan at Soldiers Field, the combination of a better offense with solid defense, beat a rudderless offense and inspired defense.

But back to the parallels between this game and the Giant's game.  Many comparisons have been made between Favre and Rogers over the past three years, including winning percentage, game-winning comebacks and touchdowns to interceptions ratio.  What we need is a comparative tool to measure the effectiveness of an aging Favre in cold weather games -- starting with his 2003 game against the Atlanta Falcons in Green Bay -- a 27-7 loss to Michael Vick.  Or the 2007 loss in the Windy City to these same Bears, 35-7.  There was a time when he was the master of cold-weather games (at one time, he was 43-6 in games under 34 degrees), but like UCLA's 88 game winning streak that ended in 1974, all good things eventually come to an end.

Rogers is still too...  fresh to put up such amazing numbers this early in his career.  But as this season's last two games against the Giants and Chicago, and the playoff road games against Philadelphia and Chicago showed, Rogers' record is 4-0 in cold weather games when it really matters.  A significant difference perhaps that was missed in 2008 as two Packer quarterbacks stood with heads hung low following the Giant's overtime kick.

Enough of a difference to believe that the Packers could be going back to the Super Bowl for the second time in three years.  Or, with a little luck, even more in the years to come.  

Let youth be served.