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Brett Favre said the only team he's talked to about a potential return is the Minnesota Vikings. (AP)

Brett Favre might as well have showed up to the set of Joe Buck Live in all purple for his first public interview in months. The former Jets and Packers quarterback said he is seriously thinking about playing for Minnesota this season if his arm is healthy. Considering Favre has already been through the hard part – shoulder surgery and the embarrassment of admitting he wants to play again – it's hard to imagine he won't follow through and suit up again this season.

Favre handled Buck's questions well, but underneath the surface it's clear Favre relies heavily on denial to drive this retirement-unretirement roller coaster.  Leading up to the interview Buck ran a package with relatively tame criticism of Favre, and the veteran quarterback seemed surprised by negative comments from radio and TV pundits.

Favre said that his wife Deanna has read him several emails urging him to return to the game and doesn't share the negative ones with him, although he assumes he gets some. What else is Deanna hiding from him about the public frustration over his waffling?

Favre's heavy reliance on denial once again led to his second premature retirement last February. Favre said his arm hurt at the end of the 2008 season and he didn't want to get surgery. You would think he might have realized that he'd feel differently in a few months. After all, that's his thing. But Favre clearly doesn't like to look at the whole picture and operates more on instinct, just like he does on the football field.

Favre made a very reasoned argument to Buck about why he may want to return to football this year. He said he recently heard some advice from John Madden that made sense to him: "When you're gone and you're away from this game, you can't go back.” Huh? Didn't he say something like that last year? He's living proof that maxim isn't true.

The only way Favre's actions would make complete logical sense is if he engineered this whole situation so he could leave the Jets to play for Minnesota. As Favre pointed out to Buck, he knows the Vikings' offense so well he could coach it, and they have Adrian Peterson, a great offensive line and a good defense.

Favre may be many things, but he's certainly not that smart. More likely, he lives in a bubble and just doesn't care too much if he frustrates the rest of us by coming in and out of retirement. Whatever his motives, the key indicators point to Favre's return. So if you're sick of the Favre circus, too bad, it's probably coming to a stadium near you before long.

Are these innocent, pensive looks or are Tom Brady and Bill Belichick practicing squinting to see the other teams' signals? You decide. :: Getty Images

As you'd expect, SI.com's Don Banks pretty much nailed it in his 2000s NFL Team of the Decade rankings, but I have a few questions …  

1. Does anyone else feel uneasy about calling the Patriots the team of the decade even though they were caught illegally taping opponents' signals despite explicit warnings from the NFL? Does this call for an asterisk?

2. Of the metrics used to determine this list, number of winning seasons could be the most deceiving because it rewards mediocrity. Isn't one Super Bowl trip and nine losing seasons better than 10 years hovering around 8-8?

The Broncos had only one losing season this decade, but were they ever a threat to win it all? The 2000-2005 Dolphins always piled up wins in September and October, but disappeared late in the season.

3.  The Giants' and Ravens' Super Bowl wins should catapult them over the Eagles. What did Philly really accomplish if they didn't get a ring?

4. Would the Steelers have won two Super Bowls this decade if Tom Brady hadn’t gotten injured last season? Then again, things would be a lot different without the tuck rule and David Tyree’s helmet as well.

5. Would anyone have a problem putting the Bengals at No. 32 because of their pathetic off-field legacy from this decade?

What do you think of Banks' rankings?

Could Mark Sanchez be in for a bumpy rookie season?
AP

An NFL breakdown that heads in the opposite direction of your average pro football analysis.

1. Draft report cards are almost always backwards. Teams with the high picks get good grades, when they should all get C's, D's and E's. How could anyone congratulate the Lions for having to guarantee $41 million to an unproven player? The dominant teams of the decade, New England and Pittsburgh, benefit tremendously from never having to make that kind of  investment. The Steelers have been trapped in the top 10 once in the last 19 years (Plaxico Burress at No. 8 in 2000), and the Patriots have been there only twice this decade (Jerod Mayo at No. 10 last year and Richard Seymour at No. 6 in 2001). So even if I've never heard of some of the guys Pittsburgh and New England took, based on history and financial positioning I'm giving them strong A's.

New Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton threw 18 touchdowns and 12 INTs last season for the Bears.  :: AP

The Bears mortgaged part of their future to get Jay Cutler, but the Broncos will suffer very little in the short term with Kyle Orton as their new quarterback. In fact, if Orton wins the starting job – which isn't a certainty --  he'll throw more touchdowns than Cutler in 2009.

While throwing more touchdown passes wouldn't mean Orton is better, you'd still think if a team gives up two first-round picks for a QB, they'd at least get more points out of him. Here are five reasons Orton could out-score Cutler:

1. Receiving Corps: The Broncos' Brandon Marshall is a bona fide No. 1 receiver. Like Terrell Owens, Marshall is the kind of target that helps any quarterback bolster his stats. And the speedy Eddie Royal is the perfect No. 2 guy. The Bears need to do something to improve in this area. Cutler will have a hard time getting the ball to wideouts Rashied Davis, Earl Bennett and Devin Hester consistently.

2. Offensive line: The Broncos kept Cutler's jersey very clean all last season (11 sacks all season), whereas Bears' QBs had little time in the pocket last season. Chicago added Orlando Pace, but there's a lot of risk with the injury-laden 33-year-old left tackle, and overall the Bears still aren't strong up front.

3. Defense: The Broncos didn't do enough to fix their sieve-like defenses, and Orton could be racking up numbers from a couple touchdowns behind all season. Even though the Bears' defense has lost a little of its ferocity, coach Lovie Smith wants to play ball control offense and win with stout D.

4. Josh McDaniels – The offensive wunderkind didn't seem to have any interest in running the ball in New England. And he has no one to run the ball in Denver anyway. McDaniles should go to the air as much as he did with the Patriots the last two seasons. Meanwhile, the Bears will try to establish running back Matt Forte as one their primary offensive weapons.

5.   Orton is underrated: Orton looked very good until he hurt his ankle last season in Chicago. He may not have Cutler's arm strength, but he has a stronger arm than Matt Cassel, who looked pretty good in McDaniels' offense. Orton probably just gets a bad wrap for having playing in the QB vortex that is Chicago.

Let me know what you think. If I'm wrong, don't hesitate to let me know this Fall.

The Broncos intend to trade starting quarterback Jay Cutler before the NFL draft due to irreconcilable differences.  :: AP

Jay Cutler’s success in Denver has been blown way out of proportion, and new coach Josh McDaniels was right to have questions about the fourth-year quarterback.

Cutler earned a Pro Bowl berth in 2008 based on his 4,526 passing yards. But in more important metrics, namely wins (8-8) and TD-to-INT differential (25-to-18), Cutler came up short.

Many of Cutler’s biggest yardage games ended up in the loss column -- the Broncos were 3-4 when he threw for more than 300 yards. Denver’s turnstile defense upped the tempo of the game and gave Cutler plenty of opportunities to gain yards in between the 20s, even if those yards didn’t do much to help the Broncos win.

Cutler also benefited from a defensively challenged schedule last season. Thanks in large part to his porous AFC West competition, Cutler faced defenses that ranked in the NFL’s bottom 10 in a majority of his games. The highest-ranked defense he faced all year was No. 9 Tampa Bay. Cutler may think twice about wanting to leave Denver when he looks at the schedules of the teams interested in him.

Cutler also might find life tougher outside of Mike Shanahan’s offense. Shanahan’s offense regularly landed near the top spot in total yardage throughout his years in Denver. Cutler gained more passing yards than his predecessors, but that’s mainly because all the injuries to the Denver running backs over the last two seasons forced Shanahan to go to the air more than he would have liked. While Cutler did a decent job in that offense, Shanahan probably could have found a lot of quarterbacks capable of putting up big numbers.

McDaniels may be young, but he’s been around a fantastic quarterback his whole career and knows what it takes to succeed at that position. If he wasn’t sold on Cutler, that should make other teams around the NFL nervous. For all the highlight-worthy passes Cutler made, McDaniels had to wince at the mental mistakes and forced throws that burned the Broncos last season.

It’s probably not an accident that the teams reportedly interested in Cutler all have iffy track records when it comes to evaluating the position -- take, for example, the Bucs, 49ers, Jets, Lions and Redskins. Big arms or big stats have fooled all of those teams in the recent past. Now, as they try to put together the right offer to land Cutler, they’re lining up to make the same mistake again.