Too little, too late.

Fumble!

Hey, progress! In a losing effort against the Chicago Bears last night, Brett Favre was sacked three times (leaving him 14 short of the NFL record) and fumbled the ball, bringing his season total to a career-low two, and leaving him three short of that NFL record.

Odds are, those records are safe. This year, at least. One more year, Brett! Come back for one more year!

And maybe drop the ball 50% more than you did this season, fer cry-eye.

Now. At the risk of repeating a vastly over-used but apropos cliché: that’s why they play the games. Just a couple of weeks ago, we figured the top two seeds in the NFC playoffs were locked up. New Orleans, undefeated, would get the top seed. The Minnesota Viqueens, on fire, would get the second.

Then both started losing, and…

Philadelphia is in the driver’s seat for the second seed now. If they beat Dallas next week, they get #2. If they lose to Dallas and Minnesota loses to the Giants next week, then…well, Dallas will have beaten Philly twice, so they get the tiebreaker there, but all three teams will be 11-5 with 9-3 conference records. So I dunno.

On the other hand, if Arizona beats the Packers next week and both Minnesota and Philly lose, it’s entirely possible that Arizona could get the #2 seed.

Phew.

In other news: if the season ended today, the Packers would travel to Arizona for the first round of the playoffs – one week after playing in Arizona to end the regular season. Even if the seedings change between now and next Monday, that could still happen.

That means the two teams will have played each other three times: once in the pre-season, once in the regular season, and once in the post-season. I wonder how many times that’s happened before?