Check out Peter King's original Monday Morning Quarterback, in which Peter analyzes the formula for success shared by the Patriots and Steelers.

Don't ask Brett Favre how he has been able to deal with the recent deaths of his father and brother-in-law and now his wife's cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy. He doesn't know.

Ten months after Favre's father, Irv, died of a heart attack at 58, his brother-in-law Casey Tynes, 24, was killed on Favre's property in Mississippi on Oct. 6 when he crashed an ATV. A week later, with the Packers 1-4 and coming off a loss at home against Tennessee on Monday Night Football, Favre found out his wife, Deanna (Casey's sister), had breast cancer.

Incredibly, the Packers have gone 4-0 since then. And Favre is playing his best football of the year. He's the league's ninth-rated passer, with 18 touchdowns and nine interceptions and a 65 percent completion average.

"I don't know if there's ... I can't give you any criteria for how to manage it,'' he told me last week. "You just do. People say to me, 'It's got to be difficult to to play with what you've been through.' But under those circumstances, it sure beats sitting at home and dwelling on it.''

Eight years ago, I sat with Deanna Tynes (Favre and Deanna weren't married yet) a couple of days after Favre went into rehab for his addiction to Vicodin. It was an emotional period. Brett was a party lad at the time. Drank a lot. Masked some major-league pain with increasing tablets of Vicodin, which he got on the sly from teammates. He had a seizure before ankle surgery after the 1995 season, and his doctors told him to 'fess up about what he was taking. Which, at his peak, was 12 vikes (and I don't means Vikings) at a time. Talk about trying to kill himself. Favre was on the way. That day, sitting with Deanna, as she cried, I could see how desperately she loved this big lug and how much she wanted him to get clean.

Favre believes there's a good chance he would have failed to clean himself up had he not had a rock like Deanna pushing him. Having seen him at his worst, and having seen the devotion and true love of a woman who believed so much in him, I tend to agree.

"I honestly don't believe I'd be here today as a player, and maybe not even alive, [without her]," he said. "I would have given up on me a long time ago. Everyone has different levels of love and caring, and she is at the highest level of those categories."

Deanna's cancer, Favre said, "is as aggressive a cancer as you can have, but it is very treatable.'' He went with her to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York to prep for the lumpectomy she had in October, and now he'll be with her as she goes through the ups and downs of three months of chemotherapy.

My theory after sitting with him last week is that he treats football, more than ever, as game, not bloodsport. I've always thought players play their best in all sports -- from field hockey to football -- when they're having fun, not grinding the proverbial bat so hard in their hands that they're making sawdust. I didn't watch a lot of the Packers-Vikings game, but on the highlights, I saw Favre with the right touch on his touchdown passes, not trying to throw the ball through guys on intermediate stuff, as he's done sometimes in the past.

There was a period of maybe 20 seconds in the 50 minutes I spent with Favre during which I sensed the hair stand up on his neck. I asked him about a Detroit columnist who wrote of Favre, the week the Lions played Green Bay last month, "Someone has to stand up to the living deity and tell him if he really loves this organization he must step away and give way to the future ... when you stick around, selfishness obscures common sense.''

Favre shot back: "Was he saying that after we beat Detroit? I wonder what he says now? 'Maybe he can stick around a little longer.'"

Maybe. My guess (and it is nothing more than a guess) is that Favre plays next year, and probably 2006, if he's performing well as 2005 comes to a close.

THREE QUESTIONS WITH ...

Rehabbing Tampa Bay quarterback Chris Simms, who practiced for the first time last week since injuring his shoulder in his only NFL start Oct. 10 at New Orleans:

MMQBTE: Do you feel like you're almost ready to play again?

Simms: I'm full go. Not 100 percent, but definitely able to play. I can throw fine, but it's the muscles here (he reaches to the back of my right shoulder, just north of the shoulder blade, and presses his fingers into the area) are still sore. Not a problem to go out and play, though.

MMQBTE: Another piece of misfortune in your pro career, huh?

Simms: Unbelievable. I get a chance to start, and this happens. Just my luck. But at least it wasn't anything really bad.

MMQBTE: You're still happy to be here, learning under Jon Gruden?

Simms: Definitely. Draft day hurt a lot, obviously. [Simms wasn't selected until the third round in 2003.] Now I wouldn't trade my situation for the world. I'm in the best place possible for me. Playing for coach has been great, even though he tries to embarrass me as much as he can. Like he'll have me get up in front of the team and call an audible, to test me. He stays on me pretty hard, which I don't mind.

FROM THE E-MAIL BAG

A good question that makes me think, then some other good ideas from this week's Internet offerings.

WHO WINS PATS-STEELERS? From Kainne Hansbury of Medway, Mass.: "If the Steelers and Patriots squared off in Week 11, let's say at a neutral field, who do you think would win? Why?''

	MAILBAG Peter King will answer your questions each week in Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Steelers, 23-16. I just think the Steelers are relentless on defense right now --  relentlessly unpredictable. And on offense, any team that tells you it's going to run and then runs and then runs some more ... that kind of team is dangerous because the running game is one thing that doesn't often go into slumps. However, let's keep one thing in mind: If these teams meet again, Bill Belichick is going to have plenty of time to think about how to attack the Steelers, offensively and defensively. He's brilliant, as are his coaches and team leaders (Tedy Bruschi, Tom Brady, etc.), at figuring why a play didn't work and fixing it to make sure it works the next time. All I know is this: I will pay my boss for the privilege of covering this rematch if it happens in late January.

LEAVE PIOLI ALONE. From Dianne of Providence, R.I.: "Hey, don't suggest Miami hire Scott Pioli, our personnel czar. We want to keep him up here!''

I didn't have to suggest it, really. Wayne Huizenga is already asking around about him, and if Cleveland and New Orleans have openings at the end of the year for people to run front offices, you can bet they'll be investigating Pioli too.

BIG BEN FOR MVP. From Chris Lindsay of Ann Arbor, Mich.: "Why isn't Ben Roethlisberger getting any consideration for MVP?''

He might. There are seven games left, and you never know how the season would go. Right now, he is not even close to being the MVP. No team in the league has a more lopsided run-pass ratio than Pittsburgh's 71-29 the last three weeks. They're running 71 percent of the time. How can the quarterback be the league MVP under those circumstances?

HE HATES THE FLEX SCHEDULE CONCEPT. From Dave Herron of Erie, Pa.: "Doesn't the NFL care about the ticket-holder? If I have tickets to a Cleveland game in November that's on a Sunday, the four hours of travel doesn't matter because it's a Sunday. But if they move it to Monday, Dad and sons are screwed because the 9 o'clock start makes it logistically impossible.''

Dave, an excellent e-mail. Thanks for writing it. This is something the NFL has to think about before putting this plan into effect. I think it'll happen, though.

AND VERMONT CHECKS IN. From Geoff Hewitt of Waterbury, Vt.: "I know the TV beast ate the NFL whole years ago, but they could at least show the fans who support the teams that they thought about them.''

Geoff, you have every reason to be angry. The one thing I would say to you is this: Only five games, at most, per year will be rescheduled, so the odds of your team being moved in a given year is maybe 15 percent. But if a game you were planning to attend is switched, obviously that's of little consolation. Write the league. They listen. They probably won't change. But they should hear your anger.

YOU CAN GUESS MY ANSWER. From Joe of Cincinnati: "You didn't like the Bengals' white uniforms. How about the orange ones?''

The orange uniforms are to football what Jerry Springer is to TV. In other words, a shameful debacle that should not be visited on the American public.

TWO THINGS (FOR TUESDAY) I THINK I THINK

1. I think you all know what I think of the job John Fox does. But for him to basically be fielding a Triple-A team without almost all of his stars (Stephen Davis, Steve Smith, Kris Jenkins, DeShaun Foster) and winning a game on the road by 10 points ... that's a heck of a job.

2. I think ABC Sports should be absolutely, positively ashamed of itself for the opening to Monday Night Football, in which Desperate Housewives star Nicolette Sheridan dropped a towel to the floor and jumped naked into the arms of a fully uniformed Terrell Owens. And that's a really nice example Owens -- who talks of being such a God-respecting, religious man -- is setting, letting a naked woman jump into his arms on national TV.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space every week.