Give me a wink if you heard this before. The Vikings are an okay team but will try for a Super Bowl push by adding a high profile gray beard quarterback.
We’ve devoted this spring and summer waiting for confirmation on Brett Favre’s future with the Vikings. This franchise used a similar strategy in the 1990s. Not once but twice.
It seems all but certain that Favre, 39, who won a Super Bowl quarterbacking the Packers, will soon be in training camp with the Vikings trying to win another world championship. If Favre and the Vikings even reach the Super Bowl the team will have accomplished more than when Warren Moon and Randall Cunningham were quarterbacking in purple.
Moon was 37 when he arrived here to play for coach Dennis Green in 1994. The Vikings had been 9-7 the year before and lost in the first round of the playoffs. With Moon, the team went 10-6 and made the playoffs again. The Vikings qualified in 1996, too, Moon’s last season here but both years the team was one and done, losing wild card games.
Moon, who is in Canadian and American pro football halls of fame, was a well traveled player when he reached Minneapolis having played for two other pro teams in North America dating back to 1978. His skills were still effective, though, and he made the Pro Bowl in 1994 and 1995.
While Moon’s teammates weren’t good enough to qualify for the Super Bowl, Cunningham’s were. At least in 1998 when the 15-1 Vikings produced the best record in franchise history and lost in the painful to this day NFC title game to Atlanta, 30-27.
Surrounded by some of the best offensive players in the league, Cunningham, 34, had come out of retirement to join the Vikings the year before. He was brilliant during the 1998 season, throwing 34 touchdown passes and being named All-Pro. He and players like wide receivers Cris Carter and Randy Moss, and running back Robert Smith, helped the Vikings go from a 9-7 playoff team to one that could have been Super Bowl champions.
The next year, though, Cunningham was throwing more interceptions than touchdowns and was replaced by another veteran whom the Vikings had acquired, Jeff George, then 31 years old. The team finished 10-6 and lost in the second round of the playoffs. For Cunningham, who some believe should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it was his last year with the Vikings.
What will happen with Favre? The Moon and Cunningham experiments show it’s dicey to expect much in high performance and longevity from an older quarterback, even a great one. Favre is older than either Moon and Cunningham were when they came to town but he’s been the better player, too, statistically one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.
Favre’s football I.Q. and gun slinging (if healthy) arm are a welcome addition to a team that has some issues (see other quarterbacks and parts of the offensive line) but also boasts the NFL’s best running back in Adrian Peterson and a top defense led by linemen Jared Allen and Kevin Williams. Will it be enough to make the Super Bowl? All Favre has to do is lift his team to overachievement, beat “Father Time” and overcome the will of 31 other teams in the National Football League. Oh, and also go beyond the performances of the Moon and Cunningham teams.