National Football League

Packers fans coping with return of Brett Favre

Published Oct. 29, 2009 10:33 p.m. ET

foxsports

The forecast for Sunday here is partly cloudy. Or is that partly sunny?

Those darned meteorologists just can't make up their minds.

As for what will be raining down from the bleachers at Lambeau Field, sports' Mr. Indecisive is bracing for a mixed bag of showers — cheers intermixed with or perhaps drowned out by jeers.

"I've heard boos in that stadium before. Honestly. Numerous times. But, it was obviously different," Brett Favre said this week.

Indeed, Favre's 129th game at Lambeau will have an air unlike his first 128 regular-season or playoff appearances at the NFL cathedral. Instead of throwing on the green jersey with gold helmet and pants and emerging from the big tunnel in the southeast corner of the stadium, Favre will be decked out from head to toe in purple and white and making his entrance out of a narrow walkway behind the south end zone.

If it hadn't already, a previously inconceivable truth will sink in for the more than 70,000 in attendance and hundreds of thousands more watching the featured Week 7 game on FOX: Favre, the hero of 16 action-packed seasons with the Packers, is the enemy on the archrival Minnesota Vikings.

Favre was eased into his first meeting against his former longtime team just three weeks ago by having a newfound and boisterous fan base behind him at the Metrodome. The Vikings won 30-23 in that Monday night game Oct. 5, putting Favre ahead 1-0 in his unspoken personal vendetta to stick it to Green Bay general manager Ted Thompson for jettisoning the three-time league MVP after he came out of retirement in August 2008.

While Favre might be trying to convince himself that facing the Packers a second time won't be so bad and it's just another of 16 games on the Vikings' schedule, at least one ex-teammate foresees a rude awakening of a homecoming come Sunday afternoon.