Apparently, I was wrong. Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings came to play on Sunday at Lambeau and with the exception of a solid ten minutes in the second half, the Green Bay Packers did not. As Packer fans watched their team lose 38-26 to Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings, Titletown was left with two questions on their mind: How did this happen and who’s to blame?

Who would have thought we would have started the game as flat as we did? With all the hype, the angst, the anger, the emotions… The fans were ready for an entirely different ball game than what they saw. Disappointing is an understatement.

Where to begin? First, let’s give a great big thanks to Johnny Jolly for the bonehead of the week award. Seriously, you stop them on a 3rd down and force a field goal, but then get a penalty for head butting that resulted in a TD? This was the first mistake of many in regards to penalties, but this one cost us the momentum and lost us our only lead of the game. Thanks a lot, Jolly.

Then, let’s touch on a few other key numbers of note: six (the number of times Aaron Rodgers was sacked), three (we’re now essentially three games behind Minnesota in the division), thirty eight (our total passing yards in the first half), ninety seven (just another shout out to Jolly and his idiocracy), and good ol’ number four.

Though Favre was predominantly booed by the 71,213 fans that attended the game (the largest regular-season crowd in Lambeau Field history), he still played solid football. He completed 17-of-28 passes for 244 yards with four touchdowns, and he wasn’t intercepted or sacked once. Contrarily, Aaron Rodgers held his own after a slow start in the first, but there’s only so much a quarterback can do when he’s constantly under pressure.

The incessant “who is better, did Ted Thompson make the right call, where do we direct the blame” game will continue, but statistically, both quarterbacks played quality football. In the two match ups Favre threw for 515 yards with seven TD passes and no interceptions in the two games, while Rodgers threw for 671 yards with five TDs and one pick.

The one statistic that is salt to Wisconsites open wounds: Favre wasn’t sacked once while Rodgers absorbed a crushing 14 sacks in the two contests.

Where does my blame lie on this cold and depressing Monday? I hold our coaching staff accountable. Many of the mistakes that we made were errors that should not have happened. Sloppy penalties, mental mistakes–truth be told, the Green Bay Packers simply did not look like a football team that was ready to play their opponent. It was like catching a rerun of the October game, only this time there was a personal and painful twist.

I think most Packer fans would agree with me when I say I just want to put this whole mess in the past. The Favre drama is done. We lost. We lost a quarterback. We lost some admiration for our former leader. We lost some respect for our current management. We lost the game. And assumingly we lost the division.

Right now we need to focus on picking up the pieces of our fallen franchise, and dig our team out of the hole we seemed to have created for ourselves. Tomorrow is a new day, and we’ve still got a chunk of our season left. Ted Thompson, Mike McCarthy, and co… Grab a shovel and get to work.

PS: I do have to give props to my friends who came up with the Brutus-Judas costumes. The picture says it all.