Favre will keep eye on Sharper

When Brett Favre comes to the line of scrimmage today, he will look for an old friend lurking on the other side. However, it won’t be a “Hi, how’s it going?” search for safety Darren Sharper.

Favre instead will be trying to figure out what the son of a gun is going to do after the ball is snapped.

That could be a deciding factor on whether Favre and the Minnesota Vikings or Sharper and the New Orleans Saints move on to Super Bowl XLIV. The cat-and-mouse game between the Minnesota quarterback known for crisp passes and the New Orleans safety known for intercepting them will be one of those games-within-the-game today at the Louisiana Superdome.

This matchup is dripping with irony. The players were teammates for eight seasons in Green Bay and shared a Super Bowl locker room after Sharper’s rookie season in 1997. After the 2004 season, the safety moved on to Minnesota, where he spent the next four seasons. Then he left just before Favre arrived in preseason.

“It is ironic,” Sharper said. “Before (Favre) signed with Minnesota, I told him they had a good team and a team that, if he went there, was going to be in the running for getting to where they are now. He understood that. I believe that was part of his decision to return.”

It’s not surprising Favre sought out Sharper’s advice. They became close friends during their eight seasons with the Green Bay Packers, during which the safety had 36 of his 63 career interceptions.

Sharper, 34, added 18 more interceptions in his time with the Vikings, when he faced his old friend six times. Favre launched 252 passes in those half-dozen games and Sharper came down with one of them. His lone theft of Favre came Dec. 21, 2006, during a 9-7 Green Bay victory.

His defensive mates still bugged him all week for any edge they could get going into today’s game. “I give them the information that I have, any extra tidbits, tendencies, anything that I know,” he said. “I always want to help any of our guys out on defense, offense and special teams.”

As for Favre, Sharper reminded his teammates the play isn’t over until the whistle is heard. “The main thing to know is that the play is always alive when he’s got the ball,” he said. “And he can make any throw from any position on the football field. He trusts his receivers and will put the ball up in areas that a lot of quarterbacks will not.”

That’s also why Favre has thrown his share of picks – 317 during the regular season – during his 19-year career. Sharper did not get a single return yard on the one he snared, unusual for a guy who has a career 22.4-yard average per return.

That figure was a stratospheric 41.9 yards per theft this season after returning three of his nine interceptions for touchdowns.

His 376 return yards set an NFL single-season mark boosted by a career-long 99-yard touchdown return off an interception of the New York Jets’ Mark Sanchez – two weeks after he returned a Kevin Kolb pick 97 yards for a score against Philadelphia.

Sharper has been to the Saints’ defense what Favre has been to the Vikings’ offense. Sharper would have liked to remain in Minnesota, but knew after the Vikings had given safety Madieu Williams a big contract and drafted safety Tyrell Johnson in 2008 that his time was coming to an end.

New Orleans called the free agent and invited him down for an offseason visit. He was wined and dined at Emeril’s Restaurant by a recruiting team that included new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and linebacker Jonathan Vilma.

The result was a one-year, $1.7 million contract that has been worth every penny to the Saints.