Is Super Favre Invulnerable?

The question was innocently posed to the Green Bay Packer quarterback, just as it was probably posed to his predecessor almost three decades ago after their last NFC championship.

So, somebody asked, what are you going to do during the next couple of days?

“Party!” Brett Favre shouted.

If Bart Starr once responded in a similar manner, nobody said.

Beginning with Paul Hornung’s sprint to the midfield coin toss in one-degree chill with neither hat nor coat, the Packers’ achievements of 78 seasons rattled from the walls of Lambeau Field on Sunday.

But when darkness fell upon hundreds of townspeople sticking the Super Bowl date on their refrigerators, it is important to note what the Packers have not done.

They have never won a world championship with a quarterback whose goatee is sometimes thicker than his brain.

They have never won a world championship with a quarterback who still sometimes mistakes a lined field for a rock-strewn playground, and foolishness for courage.

Brett Favre is a two-time NFL most valuable player, the best player in football.

As he showed Sunday, he may also be the only thing that can beat the Packers.

His city may be Titletown again, but in title games he is not much closer to Bart Starr than Green Bay is to New Orleans.

“All you guys think Favre is Superman,” Carolina Panther linebacker Lamar Lathon said with a laugh. “Well, he’s very human.”

A Packer victory over the disciplined New England Patriots on Jan. 26 will hinge on whether Favre realizes the difference.

For the first 20 minutes against the Panthers, he did not. The results were a fumble, interception and Panther lead.

In the last 40 minutes, he was placed in restraints as a reminder.

His final numbers were solid: 19 for 29 for 292 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.

But the final impression was that if Dorsey Levens doesn’t run 66 yards with one of his screen passes . . . if Levens and Edgar Bennett don’t run 187 yards with his handoffs . . . and if a two-handed frantic, forward shovel pass doesn’t work . . . then Favre has some explaining to do.

“I thought I was done with some of those plays,” he said of his mistakes. “Apparently, I’m not.”

Oh, but he is. So said Packer Coach Mike Holmgren, twice, as if hoping to convince himself.

“I think he is beyond that. . . . I know he is,” Holmgren said. “He has been the MVP two years in a row. . . . He is beyond that.”

The statistics give that the scent of wishful thinking.

In the final game of the Packers’ previous two seasons--both playoff losses to the Dallas Cowboys--Favre combined for three touchdown passes and three interceptions, completing barely 50% of his passes.

Considering this season’s upcoming final game will be played down the road from his Mississippi hometown, in front of a nation of Packer fans, against a smart defense. . . .

What is to stop Favre from trying to be Superman in the Super Bowl?

“I think I’m a little more patient now,” he said. “What happened to me today, if that happened in the past . . . I may have thrown three more interceptions.”

In those first 20 minutes, Favre tried to force passes against a blitz, to run where there was no room.

“No, he wasn’t tight,” Holmgren said. “The only thing he gets is too excited. Maybe at first, he was too excited.”

Those 60,216 who turned Lambeau into a steel mill with all their steam and clanging, they were excited.

Favre, he was nuts.

He threw an interception with his back against his end zone, flipping the ball directly into the hands of tiny Sam Mills, and two plays later the Panthers led, 7-0.

He lost a fumble when he tried to pull off a fancy scramble, and seven plays later, the Panthers led, 10-7.

The Packers’ first score came on a pass thrown behind Levens that the running back turned into a touchdown by leaping and grabbing it from Eric Davis.

At one point, Lathon walked up to Favre, pointed at his facemask and growled, “It’s going to be a long day.”

Favre stood there, shrugged and said, “It may be.”

It wasn’t, but only because Holmgren immediately took the game out of his quarterback’s hands.

The Packers regained the lead by rolling downfield in a 15-play touchdown drive that featured 37 of the 71 yards on the ground, and the rest on short passes.

The remainder of the 30-13 victory was an odd sort where the Packer running backs had long receptions and receivers made long runs. Favre? He mostly tried to avoid mistakes.

While mixing in only occasional moments of brilliance.

He contributed a scrambling 23-yard pass to Andre Rison to set up a field goal at the end of the first half. And his two-handed shovel to Levens on third down in the third quarter set up another field goal.

“The guy still makes the plays when he has to,” Panther defensive tackle Greg Kragen said, shaking his head. “Just when you think you’ve got him, he somehow gets the pass off.”

But to win a Super Bowl, the Packers need more.

Unlike many other quarterbacks in this league, it is not Favre’s job to keep his team from losing. Simply, it is his job to make it win.

In possibly the biggest sporting event involving the Midwest in three decades, the Packers need a two-time MVP quarterback.

They do not need an excitable kid worried about returning home to a place he has never been before.

And how Brett Favre has worried.

“When I was at Bay St. Louis Elementary School at my first football game, and my Dad showed up late with me in the truck. . . . I had butterflies that I haven’t had again until this week,” Favre said. “It was hard to sleep. My wife and I would be going back and forth. . . . I didn’t know who was going to throw up first.”

He has two weeks to settle his stomach, find his composure, steady his arm.

Lombardi help him.