Say Cheese! It’s a Packer Meltdown

How hot was it Sunday in Arizona?

It was so hot, tailgaters outside Sun Devil Stadium huddled around their portable Webers and Hibachis in order to cool off.

It was so hot, Brett Favre, who thought he’d never work in Hollywood again after “There’s Something About Mary,” had to wonder how his agent managed to book him in the starring role of “My Life as a Bratwurst.”

It was so hot, the Arizona Cardinal fans who hadn’t already fainted held up a sign for the benefit of the visiting Green Bay Packers that read: “We’ll Have the Grilled Cheese.”

Grilled cheese? This was fondue weather -- 102 degrees at kickoff, 106 by the start of the third quarter.

The Packers had never played a league game in temperatures so high.

As they say in Wisconsin, aged cheddar and aged quarterbacks don’t travel well in this kind of heat. This was confirmed in the final seconds of the Packers’ 20-13 loss to the Cardinals, when Favre had three shots inside the Arizona 10 and misfired on each of them, his final attempt intercepted in the end zone by Dexter Jackson.

An All-Pro for so many seasons, Favre is not quite a man for all seasons. Consider:

Favre’s record in games played at 34 degrees or colder: 35-1.

Favre’s record at 70 degrees or higher: 12-18.

Favre’s record at 106 degrees: 0-1.

Yes, Favre lost a regular-season game to the Arizona Cardinals, who began this game 0-2 after losing, 38-0, last week to Seattle.

Arizona is where lots of old folks relocate to retire. Emmitt Smith, for example, made the move during the summer.

Three weeks after this defeat in Arizona, Favre will be 34.

What were they trying to tell him?

Last season, his 12th in the NFL, Favre passed for 27 touchdowns and nearly 3,700 yards. He finished second to Oakland’s Rich Gannon in the league’s most valuable player balloting. He won 12 of 16 regular-season starts. He lost in the playoffs to Michael Vick, but that’s going to happen to many quarterbacks, young and not so, over the next decade and a half.

Three starts into his 13th season, Favre is 1-2. One loss came at Lambeau Field, which isn’t supposed to happen. The other came at Arizona, which isn’t supposed to happen.

Is Favre just having a bad month, or has the slope on the far side over the hill started to turn slippery?

Worth noting: The Packer receiver corps is so riddled with injury, Favre spent most of Sunday throwing to mirages. But that doesn’t dilute the sting of the NFC North standings, which today have Minnesota in first place at 3-0 -- all three victories against division rivals -- and Green Bay already two games behind.

The Vikings completed their Green Bay-Chicago-Detroit September sweep with a 23-13 road victory over the Lions. Last season, the Vikings had three wins at Thanksgiving. Now they’re undefeated in their last six games, with Daunte Culpepper running free again, all the way to a team record, at least until his back started acting up.

Culpepper’s second-quarter touchdown run was his 23rd for the Vikings, moving him past Fran Tarkenton for most career rushing touchdowns by a Minnesota quarterback. Culpepper bruised his back on the play, initially encouraging news for the Lions, but then Gus Frerotte came off the bench to throw for 181 yards and a touchdown and the Vikings were one-fourth of a highly improbable 3-0 quartet.

Also stepping up to 3-0 Sunday were:

* The Seattle Seahawks, who beat the St. Louis Rams, 24-23, the way the Rams used to beat everybody in the NFC West not so long ago. Trailing by 13 points, the Seahawks rallied to set up Matt Hasselbeck’s game-winning scoring pass to Koren Robinson with a minute to play.

* The Indianapolis Colts, who defeated Jacksonville, 23-13, to move to 3-0 for the first time in the Peyton Manning era. The Colts haven’t been 3-0 since 1996, when their starting quarterback was Jim Harbaugh. Before that, the Colts hadn’t been 3-0 since 1978, when their starting quarterback played his home games in Baltimore.

* The Kansas City Chiefs, who hammered Houston, 42-14. That’s 110 points in three games for the Chiefs, which is the way the Rams used to play, at least when Dick Vermeil last coached in St. Louis.

Quick Missouri quarterback update:

Kurt Warner: Lost his last seven starts. Lost his starting job.

Marc Bulger: Lost to the Seattle Seahawks.

Trent Green: Closer now than either Warner or Bulger to Super Bowl XXXVIII.

Denver (2-0) gets the chance to keep pace tonight when it plays host to Oakland, an old rival with some old issues that aren’t going away. Carolina, also 2-0, was idle Sunday with a home game against Atlanta up next.

Suddenly, everywhere the Falcons turn, the schedule has turned against them. After winning at Dallas, Atlanta is 0-2 at home, following last week’s loss to Washington with a 31-10 loss to Tampa Bay that was much more embarrassing than the final score indicated.

In fact, can it possibly get more embarrassing than watching Warren Sapp elephant-hop in the end zone, celebrating a touchdown reception in, ahem, unprecedented style inside your own house?

What was that, exactly? Sapp claimed he was stealing a move from Beyonce Knowles. Really? Does Beyonce know this? Have her lawyers been notified? Should we head into the film room and break down the videotape?

On second thought, let’s not go there.

Of course, every glassy-eyed pro football viewer knows that Sapp’s real inspiration was Tracy Morgan, who can be seen around the clock annoying Sapp in that video game commercial. Sapp had to sit through that act countless times on the set. That sort of ordeal does things to a man.

So Sunday, Sapp, who weighs 303 pounds, give or take the next team buffet table, got to play bust-the-pogo-stick with all of America looking on. Painful, yes, but especially so for Falcon Coach Dan Reeves, still stuck on career coaching victory No. 199.

Reeves’ quest for 200 has been placed on hold ever since the Falcons pulled out of Dallas. To borrow a few words’ worth of inspiration from Favre, this is starting to get old.