The conventional wisdom after the Vikings added Brett Favre prior to last season was that they were adding a Hall of Fame QB (one who still had plenty of questions about his arm after surgery, mind you) to a dominant running game, the balance would be so devastating that teams wouldn't be able to handle it. The Vikings would still pound and explode on the ground with Adrian Peterson, and when defenses fell asleep on the pass, Favre would be there to make them pay in a way Tarvaris Jackson and Gus Frerotte couldn't in 2008. But it didn't exactly happen that way. Favre came in, started slow while Peterson and the defense took care of business in a couple of routine victories over lowly teams to start the season. He saved the day against San Francisco in Week 3. Then he torched his old team in Week 4 and it was off to the races.

The Vikings threw the ball 54.2 percent of offensive snaps last year -- not an unreasonable number, but certainly quite a bit more than the 46.5 percent of the time they threw in 2008. In those first two weeks, when we thought what we were seeing out of Favre would be close to what we would see the rest of the season, he attempted just 48 total passes for a combined 265 yards (with three TDs, 0 INTs and two victories, albeit against the Browns and Lions). Favre wound up throwing for 4,202 yards, meaning over the final 14 games he had 3,937 of them -- a pace for a 4,500-yard season over 16 games.

Peterson, meanwhile, had 272 yards through two weeks -- again, a small sample size but a pace that would top 2,000 for a season. By the end of things, though, he had fewer than 1,400 yards. More importantly, he had almost 50 fewer carries in 2009 than 2008.

The point being: Along the way in 2009, as everyone could see as they watched the games evolve, the Vikings essentially went from a running team to a passing team -- or at least one that set up the run with the pass instead of vice-versa. There was nothing wrong with this, of course. Favre was unbelievably good, and the emergence of various weapons in the passing game made it hard to look back. Jim Souhan, who astutely wrote about this subject for Sunday's paper, had this quote from OC Darrell Bevell:

"If I had my druthers, we'd be a run-first team," offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell said. "You start to build around the skills you have. All of a sudden last year we had a plethora of receivers and tight ends and backs, and that's what we went with."

With Sidney Rice out for quite a while, with Percy Harvin still battling migraines and with Chester Taylor's valuable third down catches gone to the Windy City, the question becomes this: What is the Vikings' offensive identity in 2010? Do they go back to the preseason 2009 thought process, where Favre was more of a caretaker and Peterson was the show? Do they plug away with replacements and trust Favre -- a year older and perhaps a little skittish behind his offensive line -- will make them look good, just as he did with Rice and co. a season ago?

Our best guess: they meet somewhere in the middle of 2008 and 2009. Without Rice, they don't have the one guy who can go up and consistently win the 1 vs. 1 jump ball battle. That was a huge asset last year. What they have added quickly, however, is a guy in Greg Camarillo (four catches in limited duty in his first game Saturday) who we believe will become a Favre favorite quickly. His short routes are perfect for a QB who doesn't want to get hit, and his sure hands will move the sticks. In fact, it would hardly stun us to see Camarillo lead the team in receptions at the end of the season even if he's on the field less than Bernard Berrian, Percy Harvin and Visanthe Shiancoe.

That said, Berrian will stretch the field. Harvin -- and he's the key -- will do a little bit of everything and keep defenses guessing. Their offense will probably eventually settle into looking much more like we all expected it to look in 2009 -- more short passes, chain-moving drives, an even 50-50 run-pass split. They might score 2-3 points fewer a game than last season (29.4 ppg, second in the NFL), but they might give up 2-3 fewer as well (19.5 ppg, 10th in the NFL).

We watched the first half Saturday. There were encouraging signs in both the running and passing games, though both were far from perfect. The mistake would be to expect Favre and the offense to repeat 2009. A similar mistake would be to say this is back to being Peterson's run-first team. The happy medium -- the one sought a year ago before it evolved -- is the path, in this case, to success.