Brett Favre is back, and he brought his fastball

It wasn't a surprise Brett Favre turned around on his way out to pasture.

His unretirement is becoming an annual part of the NFL schedule. Come July, he tends to decide he's not quite done yet.

Favre's turnaround as Minnesota's quarterback, however, is truly astounding.

His right arm looked cooked when he was in Seattle last season for the Jets' 13-3 loss on Dec. 21. Some of the snowballs coming from the Qwest Field crowd that day had more zip than Favre's passes as he threw for 187 yards and was picked off twice.

"He doesn't look like that now," Seahawks coach Jim Mora said. "He wasn't throwing the ball with a lot of velocity at that point in the season, but he is now."

Not only did Favre, the Paul Bunyan of NFL quarterbacks, return for another season, signing with Minnesota after being ditched by the Jets, but he brought his fastball with him. The Vikings are 8-1 and it's clear it wasn't age that affected Favre last season, but an injury. He suffered a torn biceps tendon, which was repaired in the offseason.

"Everybody talked about how he eroded and his play fell off after Game 8," Minnesota coach Brad Childress said. "That's after he had that ruptured tendon. It's like a pitcher having an elbow injury. Yeah, his play is going to fall off."

But now Favre is back, and as Seattle prepares to face Favre for the fifth time in five seasons, it's getting hard to find unique adjectives or story lines to describe him.

His iron-man streak that stands at 278 consecutive regular-season starts has been noted and lauded. His relationship as mentor/friend to Matt Hasselbeck has been recited for eight years and counting, and by now everyone knows how he hopped on Seattle's team plane after the Seahawks played the Packers in a regular-season finale Jan. 1, 2006 and told his former coach Mike Holmgren he was retiring.

Four seasons later, he's still dueling on Sundays and drawling through interviews, though he wasn't available to Seattle reporters because he had already completed his league requirement of five teleconferences this season.

"He's headed to Canton if he ever decides to retire," Mora said.

That means sticking to a decision to retire, because Favre has walked away twice only to come back from the hinterlands of Mississippi before he missed a game.

This time he returned in time to upgrade the most glaring weak spot for a team stocked with running back Adrian Peterson and a rush defense that ranked No. 1 in the league each of the past two seasons.

But at quarterback, the Vikings were choosing between Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels. The situation under center is a big reason receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh signed with the Seahawks this offseason instead of the Vikings, who also hosted him for a visit.

"When it came down to it, I felt like the quarterback situation — which kind of makes a receiver go — it was a better situation here," Houshmandzadeh said of Seattle. "So I did what any receiver would do."

Would Houshmandzadeh's choice have changed had he known Favre would end up in the pocket for the Vikings?

"I don't know," Houshmandzadeh said. "It's hard to say, 'What if, what if?' So you make the decision at the time that was best."

Any regrets now that Minnesota is 8-1 and Cincinnati, his former team, is 7-2?

"As of right now, it doesn't look like it was the best decision," Houshmandzadeh said, "but it's very early in the process, you know. I feel like I can play a lot more years. I feel great, and so you can't just say one year, 'Oh it was a bad decision.' "

By any measure, however, Favre's decision to return has been better than anyone had a right to expect. For the past four years, the quarterback so often called a gunslinger had simply been too cavalier with the ball.

From 2005 to 2008, he was intercepted 87 times, by far the most of any player in the league. Eli Manning ranked No. 2 with 65, followed by Drew Brees at 61.

This season? Favre has been picked off only three times, so it's not just his fastball that's returned. He's a veteran pitcher who's hitting his spots, too.

Notes

• Cornerbacks Marcus Trufant and Josh Wilson didn't practice Wednesday, and Mora didn't address their playing status for Sunday's game. Hasselbeck resumed practicing. He missed the previous two Wednesday practices because of broken ribs and a sore shoulder.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com. The Associated Press contributed to this article.