Charlie Neibergall / AP

Running back Ryan Grant (25) runs past Seahawks cornerback Kelly Jennings during the first half of the Packers' 42-20 rout Saturday.

Favre, on the other hand, can handle anything that the weather or the Giants throw at him. If circumstances demand that he take over, you figure he’ll be up to the challenge. And though he hails from Mississippi, few people seem more at home in the muck and the grime and winter’s icy blasts than he.

Even so, the Packers have gotten where they are by having a balanced attack. The reason they’ve won so much this year where they haven’t recently is because they haven’t relied on Favre flinging the ball all over the field willy-nilly. When they tried that in recent years, he inevitably started trying to do things that even he couldn’t do, he threw a lot of interceptions, and a whole bunch of us mistakenly decided he didn’t have it anymore.

It turns out he’s got as much as he’s ever had — in some ways more. What he’s got most of all is a balanced attack that doesn’t require him to do everything himself. It’s turned him back into what he’s been all along — one of the all-time greats.

To win it all, you’ve got to stay with what got you there. And for both these teams, that’s stern defense, taking care of the ball, not making mistakes, forcing the other team to worry about your running game, and then falling back on your quarterback to make a few big plays.

No matter what happens, this game won’t turn into a duel of gunslingers with three of every four plays a pass. One quarterback or the other may be forced into that mode, but that will mean that his team is way behind and there’s no alternative. And at that point, the game will already be lost.

Quarterbacks will be big in this game; they are in every game. But don’t think for a minute that it’s going to be a battle of gunslingers. It can’t be and it won’t be. It’s a game that features two quarterbacks — the greatest legend still playing and the kid who’s trying to live up to his name. But the team that wins is probably going to be not the one that passes most, but the one that runs best.

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