Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - A March Madness bracket based on Vikings all-time great seasons

Episode Date: March 19, 2022

Matthew Coller and Manny Hill fill out the Purple Insider "Who Did It Better" bracket, which ranks the top 16 individual Vikings seasons of all time and whittles it down to the GOAT. Alan Page's MVP season or Jared Allen's 22 sacks? 09 Favre or 04 Daunte? Moss or Peterson's best year? Go to @Purple_Insider on Twitter to vote for the bracket Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar, Purple Insider special historian, voiceover expert, Hot Routes aficionado, Manny Hill joining me here. And Manny, I'm very excited about this episode because it gives us a chance to take a deep breath and step away from the contract extension talk and have a little fun. So here's what I've got. First, how are you? How are you doing? Are you well?

I'm doing well, man. It's good to see you. It's been a little while since the last Hot Rouse that I did. And yeah, I'm doing good, man. It's good to see you. Okay, you too. And it is March Madness time. Now, back in the day, you and I worked at times during March Madness.

And so we'd be doing shows and watching games and things like that. But now we don't talk about college basketball on the show, but we do have a bracket for you that we're going to go through that I think is a lot of fun. I think there's a lot of cheesy brackets out there, your favorite cereal and everything else. But Jonathan Harrison had this idea i thought it was really good and and you are the perfect person to do it so here's what we've got the greatest individual minnesota vikings of all time so we've come up with how many is there 16 here uh because i didn't want to do 64 that would be a very long podcast and I'm not paying you for this appearance. So, so, so you don't have time for that. Uh, but we've got the 16 greatest and trust

me, it was very hard to whittle them down. Uh, but we have the, here's our four brackets. We've got the quarterbacks, the defensive linemen, the running backs and the wide receivers, individual seasons. And we've got the year and the player. And just, just please, I know we left some out. I know we did. We only picked 16 of the entire history of a great franchise, but Manny, I'm getting the, I'm getting the picks already and we're going to go through them and we're going to break them down. But this, I just felt like you loving the history of the NFL and Vikings history would really get a kick out of breaking down what the greatest season ever is. And just to let everybody know that if you go to our Twitter at purple underscore insider, you can vote on these. We're going to put them out there to Twitter

and that's how we're going to determine the bracket so it's not just you and me talking that's not the final answer for we're having a contest over there giving away some money so go check that out but you and i are going to break it down and come to our answer and then we'll see what the fans think so i'm pumped man i'm pumped see i i already just i'm i've got the sound of the NCAA tournament theme, the CBS theme, like in my head right now. I just got it ringing in my head as we prepare to break these down. Okay, the football is tipped. And let's start out with the quarterbacks.

It's the right place to go. So here are the four seasons in the quarterbacks bracket we have 2004 Dante Culpepper 1975 Fran Tarkenton 2009 Brett Favre and 1998 Randall Cunningham so our first matchup is 04 Dante and 1975 Fran Tarkenton give me your pick and then we'll debate. Well, this is tough. I think that Francis, I think Fran won the, did he win the MVP that year in 75? Well, let me pull this up. This is going to be a research podcast as well. Yeah.

Because I know he won the MVP one year with the Vikings. I think it might have been 75. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 75 is it. Yep, it's MVP. Okay. I think, wow, it's a tough matchup. You know, and Dante was so good in 04.

And people remember, too, you know, that was the year where Randy Moss hurt his hamstring in New Orleans on a Monday night game down in the Superdome. And Randy was kind of in and out of the lineup. There were a few weeks that year where Mike Tice would put Randy Moss in the starting lineup just to kind of keep his consecutive start streak going. But Randy would not be a factor in a lot of those games. And Dante was incredible that year, despite Randy not being not being available for just about half the year. I mean, we saw Nate Burleson emerge as a, as a viable threat in the, in the passing game. And you know,

Jermaine Wiggins became a reliable tight end that could catch passes and whatnot. But Tarkenton, man, I mean, it's, it's hard cause you can't compare the statistics, right? I mean, the, the league, the way the league was back in the 1970s, you just can't compare Dante throwing for 4,800 yards and 39 touchdowns and whatnot to what Targinton did in 1975. But I think when you factor in what Dante was able to do without not just one of the best wide receivers, one of the best players in the NFL for a good chunk of that season. I'm going

to give Dante the edge here just because the numbers were fantastic. He led them to the playoffs. And even though Fran won the MVP in 75, Dante was in the conversation for the MVP, despite the Vikings going 8-8 that year. I think if they would have won a couple of more games, he probably would have gotten a few more votes. So your pick is call pepper. Yep. I'm going to go with Dante and oh, four. Okay. Let me read the statistics here. Uh, Fran did go 12 and two led the NFL in touchdowns with 25 as one does in 1975, but he had a 91.8 quarterback rating that year, which is kind of wild for the air. I mean, the quarterback ratings, if you were in the eighties, you were playing really good football because dudes threw

interceptions all over the place. And Fran only had 13 that year only got sacked 27 times, which is also really good and led the NFL in pass attempts with four 25, which is what we call the end of October for some quarterbacks in the NFL now. So it is really hard to compare the two. I think that Dante gets the slight edge here because he had to carry the entire team to even be competitive and did it in such an absurd way by throwing for almost 300 yards a game, 110.9 quarterback rating. And the thing about that is even in 04,

there are only a couple of quarterbacks who are putting up numbers like this. And Peyton Manning is the other one. And then it's Dante Culpepper. And I remember looking at this from Culpepper's full seasons before the knee, before everything fell apart, his numbers matched up with Manning. Like Manning was the only other guy who was decidedly better than him by the numbers, which was really impressive. And sometimes their record reflected that. Like when they went 11-5 in 2000, not so much in 2004. That would be the only thing.

But they also, the Vikings, had an incredible overall team in defense for Fran. So I'll accept your pick there. I think what we'll do is we'll just bounce back and forth between the picks. So you make the first one, I'll make the next one. And then we'll, we'll,

if we disagree, we'll fight about it. Cause I agree with you with Culpepper. So I'm going to make this next pick. Oh, nine far versus 98 Cunningham. Jonathan is a bad person for this one. I mean,

just like, come on, man, this one's tough because Cunningham's story and Favre's story are both so incredible. Both go to the NFC Championship game. Both play crazy football. The throw by Favre against San Francisco.

Moss's emergence for Randall Cunningham. I'm going to pick Randall Cunningham because the 98 Vikings offense at that time had a case for the best offense pro football had ever produced in this spinning rock in the stratosphere at that time the 09 vikings were very very good a complete team excellent just like 98 and farve was great but that offense in 98 was otherworldly and And him playing the role of helping Randy Moss emerge with all the deep passes, incredible performances.

And also, Favre made the mistake at the end. I'm just saying, Cunningham didn't. He had them in field goal position. All they needed to do was make it. So I will select the 98 Randall Cunningham here. Yeah, you know what? I'm with you on this one. It's a slight edge for me just because of, you know, I think what's similar about these two seasons was I don't think anybody was expecting either of these guys to perform as well as they did. You know, I think everybody was excited

about Favre coming in. He was a clear upgrade over Tavares Jackson, obviously. So everybody knew the position was in a much better shape than what it was the year before. But I don't think anybody expected Brett Favre to play as well as he did because he was in the MVP conversation too. And that was, of course, funny. Peyton Manning wins it again, you know, keeps another Viking quarterback from winning the MVP. But I'm going to give Randall the slight edge here, too, just because Randall's Randall this season really kind of rejuvenated his career. I mean, Randall had become you know, he was out of football for that year after he left the Eagles. And then he came back with the Vikings in 97, started a couple games, won a playoff game with them. But he came into this season in 98 as the backup quarterback to Brad Johnson again,

and it took Brad Johnson hurting his, I think he broke his fibula or something like that in like week two against the Rams. So it took an injury for Randall Cunningham to sort of revitalize his career and have that great season. And he did, Randall did get some form of an MVP that year. I think it wasn't like the AP MVP because Terrell Davis got it that year, but he got some, it was like the Sporting News MVP or something like that, that Randall ended up winning that year. So I'm going to give, because of that and all the other factors,

I'm going to give Randall the edge here too. Okay, just to make this easier, we'll finish the bracket and get into our final four, or like we'll get our final four candidates for each one. So we'll stick with the quarterbacks here. 98 Cunningham versus 04 Dante, and it is your selection. Every one of these is hard. I know. I know it is your selection. Every one of these is hard. I know. I know it is.

I'm going to go 0-4 Dante for a lot of the reasons that I specified before about his matchup with Fran. The way Dante carried that team in 0-4, and that was a team too, Matthew, that defense in 0-4 was terrible. It was so bad that whole era, you know, Dante never really in his years and his peak years with the Vikings never played on a team that had a good defense that could get stops. And the fact that they made the

playoffs, albeit at eight and eight, and then went on the road in Green Bay and won a playoff game as well, I think that carries a lot of weight. So I'm going to give Dante, again, the slight edge here over Randall, but it's really, really close. Carries a lot of weight is certainly a way to describe Dante Culpepper's season. I'll tell you the reason that I'll give the edge, aside from the Moss thing, which I think is a great point, is that Dante was a serious running threat that year that he didn't have a Robert Smith.

Robert Smith was an incredible running back for the Vikings in 1998. And I don't know, I'm going to have to check here, but I don't know that there was any huge running threat for the 04 Vikings that you would say, okay, you know, this guy's going to carry you to 1500 yards, which running backs routinely did. Like Dante Culpepper was a very serious part of the running operation there. And he did fumble a lot, but that year he didn't. He only fumbled nine times and ran for over 400 yards, added a couple of touchdowns, 31

first downs on the ground for Dante Culpepper. I mean, it is just an unbelievable season and I'm going to, I'm going to agree. I'm not going to try to talk you out of that. And I, and we will have Dante Culpepper 04 coming out of the quarterback bracket. Now let's go over to the running back bracket. And this is, here's the thing about the running back bracket. There's is, here's the thing about the running back bracket. There's one particular human being who stands out so much in the running back bracket. And I know old school people want Chuck Foreman here, but Adrian Peterson's seasons were so unbelievably better than anyone else's that he had to go up against himself. So we've got 2012 Adrian Peterson, 2009 Adrian Peterson, 2020 Delvin Cook, and 2000 Robert Smith.

I want to go through these seasons. I don't want to call it right away. But you can kind of call this one right away, right? Yeah, I know where you're going. 2012 Adrian Peterson is the one seed. Easily wins over 2009 adrian peterson we agree yeah i think so i think you know adrian was great in 09 i think he ran for 18 touchdowns that year um caught passes too yeah he did that was like the one year where he was like a serious threat

out of the backfield as a receiver um you know it certainly helps to have Brett Favre taking snaps and throwing you those passes as well in the in the system that they were running but 2012 I mean almost caller almost 2100 yards rushing 2097 yards rushing on a team that was that won 10 games and was quarterbacked by Christian Ponder. Say no more. Adrian, I think Adrian 2012 wins this running away, I think. Yeah, another pun from you. He led the league in yards from scrimmage with 2,300 that year, rushed for 12 touchdowns.

I mean, the 6.0 yards per carry, one of the few running backs in the history of the entire league to go six yards a carry. And the other guy up there is Barry Sanders. So this is the rare error of six yards a carry. And when you reach six yards a carry, it actually becomes efficient to run the football, which is great. Like with passing games at that time, if you adjust yards per attempt with sacks and interceptions, you know, most passing games are around six yards per attempt unless they're special. And that's what Adrian Peterson was doing with handoffs. Incredible. 2012 season.

So that beats the 09 season, which, like you said, was very good with the 18 touchdowns. And that belongs up there. Now, the other part of the bracket, 2020 Delvin cook versus 2000 Robert Smith, Robert Smith deserves a ton of credit for how good he was for the Vikings. I know that he benefited from defenses playing the pass and playing deep, but he averaged almost five yards to carry for his entire career. And he retires after 1500 yards and 5.2 yards per attempt and averaged almost 10 yards a catch.

I mean, Robert Smith was a great player for them. And I think that I forget it's your, it's your pick on this. I think Robert Smith gets the edge here, but what's your pick? Yeah, I think it's close.

Dalvin in 2020 was really really good but I I feel like Robert Smith just being such a threat as a passer and he didn't catch a ton of passes in 2000 looks like he only caught 36 but to your point 9.7 yards of reception that means he was absolutely lethal on screen passes if you get him a lane his straight line speed was phenomenal and and i think his his ability to and and look dante that year was dante was very good in 2000 but dante was also a starter for the first time in his career he was very young and robert smith being able to to be productive in the running game like that i think really gives him the edge so i'm gonna go i'm gonna go robert smith 2000 here we're kind of in agreeance on all of these so far but um i'm gonna give robert smith

the slight edge but dalvin in 2020 was very very good 1500 yards 16 rushing touchdowns average eight yards a catch i mean the the devil for me is only in the minute details of like Robert Smith averaged a little more yards per touch, only by a little, just by an edge. Now, if you were making the Delvin case, what you would say is they centered the offense around Delvin Cook, whereas they didn't necessarily center the offense around Robert Smith. But I think it's a very easy choice, whether you're pickingith but i think it's a very easy choice whether you're picking cook or smith it's a very easy choice to say that 2012 ap is going to the final four like this is yes this is this is um antoine jameson north carolina back in the day this is

yukon women this one is like cruising through uh to get to the final four so we've got all right so we got oh four dante 2012 adrian peterson on to the wide receivers oh three moss versus 2018 adam thielen and manny i'll make the pick here uh i think it's my turn uh but i want you to give me your assessment of the oh three moss versus 2018 adam thielen i am pretty sure I know which way you're going to go, but let me just read you real quick. Adam Thielen's 2018 stats. Easy to forget. A hundred and 13 catches,

1,373 yards, almost 1,400 yards and nine touchdowns for Adam Thielen in 2018. Really one of the great Viking seasons of all time for theolin in that year so uh i'll give you a randy stats in a second after you tell me your pick hey everybody i've been making my meals from hello fresh and i have to tell you i cannot make enough of these things and if i can make them literally anyone can with hello fresh you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip the trips to the grocery store.

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I'm going to go Randy here. I mean, Moss, you know, and again, I think the thing to remember about when we think about these Vikings teams from, you know, 2000, well, let's say 98 all the way till the end of the Mike Tice, Dante Culpepper, Randy Moss era, a lot of those teams just really couldn't stop anybody. And those offenses were so high powered and Randy Moss being so productive, being sort of the centerpiece of those offenses, I think gives, gives, gives him the edge here. And Adam Thielen was really good in 2018. That was also Vikings team that I think you and I both agree kind of underachieved that year. That was a team that should have made the playoffs.

They were coming off an NFC championship year. Kirk Cousins' first year there. It was a team that had a really good defense still, and they ended up not making the playoffs. So I kind of wonder, even though Thielen was really productive that year, unfortunately, it just didn't really lead to a lot of wins on a team that really should have done better overall over that season Randy doing what he did in 03 again having to do that week in and week out because they couldn't stop anybody I think really gives them the edge here so So 1,600 yards, 111 receptions, 17 touchdowns,

which was his Viking career high. Of course, he had 23 while playing with Tom Brady. But this is, like, earlier in his career, he was such an incredible deep threat that he was averaging 18, 19 yards per reception, but he wasn't getting as many receptions. His first 100-reception season was in 2002, which was, of course, it's wasn't getting as many receptions. His first hundred reception season was in 2002, which was of course it's Randy Moss. Very, very good. But in oh three,

he's averaging 15 yards catch and getting 111 receptions. This is not just one of the best Vikings seasons. This is Moss's best season and one of the best seasons in the history of the entire NFL. So that one, I think, wins out pretty easily. Also, Thielen was not necessarily always the centerpiece of the offense. You still had Stephon Diggs. Randy Moss was not splitting the role at that point of centerpiece. Now, he might have been in 1998, but by 2003, that team belongs to entirely Randy Moss. And so even though he's averaging 15 yards a catch, everyone's trying to stop him. He's still catching 65% of targets. Every team, their entire strategy is to stop Randy Moss and he's catching 65% of targets.

So he moves on. Now the next one is 95 carter versus 2021 justin jefferson and let me just let me just get some boos in here for uh not getting the record for uh justin jefferson just because i know fans are still maybe a little salty about that mike zimmer i don't play for i play for wins not stats like well you won't be winning any more games um so okay uh this would be this would be my pick and what justin jefferson did last year was marvelous i don't think i can pick justin jefferson over 122 receptions in 16 games and 17 touchdowns for Chris Carter. I mean, just the most unbelievable hands that maybe has ever existed in the NFL, Chris Carter. And I remember those offenses in 94, 95 back-to-back seasons of 122 catches in the early nineties. That is that's doing stuff

that you see guys still not accomplishing today with 17 games and offenses that throw all over the place. I'm going to go 95 Carter here pretty easily, though Justin Jefferson played great last year. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, I think, you know, you think about that era in the mid 90s where you had Carter with 120 plus catches Jake or um Jerry Rice with 120 plus catches Herman Moore I think with the Lions uh had a couple of seasons a season or two with you know 115 120 catches that was kind of an era where teams were kind of forcing the ball to their top guy as you should we saw the rams do that with cooper cup this past season throw the ball to your best guy and uh brian billick and 95

and warren moon they they did that they threw the ball to chris carter and still even with all of the catches chris carter had it goes to show you how productive that offense was. You still had Jake Reed with 1,100 yards receiving on 72 catches. Ampley had 71 catches that year out of the backfield. That's kind of a third down pass catching back. And then Chris Carter just being at the forefront of that offense, I think, was everything. And again, you know, it was kind of a defense that struggled at times that year, they put up a lot of points that year. So yeah, I'm going to give CC the, the, the win for this one.

How hilarious are the Vikings defenses largely out of their history that so often are horrible. Like they're known for the purple people eaters. And yet only in a handful of seasons, have they ever eaten anybody since then? Like the 2017 and the early Zimmer, but Denny Green's teams usually had bad defenses. Mike Tice's teams had horrendous defenses. I mean,

they had some stars, of course, you know, John Randall and so forth, the Williams wall and all that. Oh nine. They're very good, but there's a lot of amazing offensive seasons where you're like,

just stop anybody. Fourth ranked scoring offense in 95, 27th in points allowed. We should say though that Justin Jefferson doing it at the age that he has done it. And we were talking about the yards per catch, and this would be your case against Carter is that his yards per catch were closer to 11 and Jefferson's 15. 108 catches, 15 yards a catch with 10 touchdowns. And catching, for his career, he's caught 67% of his passes

while averaging 15 yards a catch. It's just wild. I mean, that's just, you know, Kevin O'Connell's talking about lining him up in the slot. That'll lower his yards per catch probably. But the fact that he's been able to have so much success down the field, Kevin O'Connell's talking about lining him up in the slot. That'll lower his yards per catch probably. But the fact that he's been able to have so much success down the field, for someone this young, comes into the league and just does it right away,

I don't know what it is with the Vikings franchise and being able to identify not just good receivers, but unbelievable wide receivers. Great ones. It's wild. So Jefferson gets a pat on the back here, but Carter moves on. Now, 0-3 Moss versus 95 Carter. I know that everyone loves Moss, but what do we think here? A hundred and twenty-two receptions, Manny.

Yeah, it is it is really really hard and it what makes it so difficult is both of these seasons basically every time you threw the ball to either of these guys carter 95 moss in uh 2003 they were going to catch it i mean you just you just knew it just throw it in their direction they were going to catch the football oh man i'm gonna go i'm gonna go moss okay yeah i think that's fair i think that's fair um 122 is a lot of catches moss went down the field more 15 yards to catch and wasn't that far behind 122 at 111 um truly dominant seasons neither team reached the super bowl either team went deep in the playoffs or anything so um right no wait am i getting that wrong what i know both both teams that year missed miss okay vikings missed in 95

and the viking or um they missed in 03 to oh two was the, or I'm sorry. Oh three was the Nate pool catch in Arizona that knocked them out. I was trying to remember the also the moon, like one year they make the playoffs one year they don't. So it's anyway, but neither team we could say, Oh, they went to, you know, NFC championship or something. So that gets the edge. I will agree with you. I think Moss is sort of maybe goes a little bit above and beyond in terms of his yardage total and where that puts him in the echelon of all time NFL seasons.

So we've got 04 Dante, 2012 Adrian Peterson, 03 Moss. Now this is one of the trickiest. It was one of the hardest to just pick out who belonged in this conversation the defensive lineman we have jared allen from 2011 allen page 1971 chris dolman and keith millard for 1989 these are our four seasons uh i don't remember whose pick it was so i'm going to let you select between jared allen from 2011 and Allen Page from 1971. Well, Jared Allen's the number one seed in this region, right? And Allen Page is the number four. I'm going to go with an upset here just by the, just by the seating. I'm going to go with Allen Page here. Allen Page in 1971 won the league MVP for context right there a defensive lineman a defensive tackle

winning the most valuable player award in the NFL and back then it was it was hard to really measure the numbers because they weren't keeping sack totals back then although I think that year I think he had like 12 or 13 sacks when they go back and revisit all the footage and everything um but him winning the mvp jared allen he was great that year 2011 but that was a bad vikings team um that went 3 and 13 and leslie frazier's first full year as head coach um and you know alan was really close to breaking the single season sack record. I got to go with Allen Page, though, just because I think his his presence led to wins on a team that was really that was not a great year for the Vikings in 1971. And the fact that he was as productive as he was on defense, I think really gives him the edge. Jared Allen, to me,

in 2011, it was great. I'm not trying to knock him, but it also just kind of felt like the guy on a bad NBA team that averages close to 30 points a game on a team that wins 22 games, goes 22 and 60 or something. That's where it kind of feels like with Jared Allen in 2011. So they have filled in the sack statistics for pro football reference, this project that they did, putting them together based on all the old film, which is really wild and ambitious, but cool to go back and look at those seasons. He had nine sacks that year, including two safeties,

which is funny, three fumble recoveries. Those are the stats that they've been able to come up with. But there's also a stat that pro football reference has called approximate value, which is very similar to a wins above replacement. It sort of tries to estimate the impact from an individual on his defense, like what his role was. And he led the NFL actually three years in a row in approximate value. Alan Page did. And that year led the NFL in approximate value. So a deserved MVP statistically his 1970 season was a little

better, 10 and a half sacks and seven fumble recoveries. But, um, I agree with you that if you win the MVP as a defensive tackle, when the fact is what is Lawrence Taylor, the only other player defensively to win the MVP. I think that's I mean yeah yeah I think that um I think that he is deserving of that so I will agree with that now Dolman versus Millard is pretty tough because Dolman was also a freak but Keith Millard did not have a very long career in the NFL. Maybe modern science could have saved his body. 18 sacks, though, as a defensive tackle, defensive player of the year.

I'm going to pick Keith Millard for this over Chris Dolman. Also, I watched one of those games with Dolman with his insane sack season. They gave him some help. That's all I'm saying. The scorebook, the scorebook gave him a little help because I remember I'm saying. The scorebook, the scorebook gave him a little help because I remember he's going into this Monday night game and I was watching it. Maybe

it's like at the end of the season and he comes away with four or five sacks. One of them's pushing the quarterback out of bounds for one yard loss. Another one is like a fumbled snap and he touches the guy and they're just like, and another sack for Chris Dolman. I'm not taking away. Dolman's a legend, but I think millard again from the defensive tackle position to get 18 sacks he he gets this one also returned an interception 48 yards that's crazy he gets this one for being defensive player of the year yeah i think anytime an interior i mean we're just talking about this with alan page anytime an interior defensive lineman is racking up sack totals, like this is part of what makes Aaron Donald such a legend, right? It's his ability as an interior lineman to just always apply pressure, even when he's

being double teamed. We saw it with John Randall for so many years with the Vikings in the 90s. I think anytime an interior defensive lineman is as much of a force as what Keith Millard was in 89, I think that wins in any conversation, certainly against Chris Dolman in that year. And Dolman was great, to your point. But I think Millard doing what he did, winning the defensive player of the year. And I think that's, when you look at that too, to your point about Dolman kind of getting aided with a couple of extra sacks maybe that he probably

shouldn't have gotten credit for, I think the voters back then when they voted Keith Millard defensive player of the year, I think they were kind of thinking the same thing. So the final game, I looked it up, the final game of the season against Cincinnati, Monday Night Football, he had four sacks. And maybe one of them was legit.

If I remember from watching the game again, not taking away from him because a 17 sack season would have been incredible as well. And he finished third in defensive player of the year. You know, what I think here is, Oh wait, no.

Did they already have Herschel Walker? I was going to make the joke like, man, they just need a running back. They're like, really running. That was the year they traded for him. I think it was in the middle of that season.

Yeah. Okay. So because now I'm remembering the broadcast is talking about like, why are they running an outside zone type of scheme with Herschel Walker when he's a downhill runner and all this stuff? And they were completely confounded by the usage of Herschel Walker. So funny. and they were completely confounded by the usage of Herschel Walker. So funny.

But, yeah, you had two of the top three defensive player of the year candidates, and the Vikings end up with a 10-6 season. That sounds about right. I think Millard finished in the top three or four in the MVP voting, too, if I'm not mistaken. He got a lot of MVP votes, too. What a crazy season. And he was all pro. Yeah, third.

Yep, third in the MVP. So that's going to be a tough one to decide who goes to the Final Four, Alan Page or Keith Millard, two defensive players of the year, 1971 Page, 1989 Keith Millard. I don't know, man. It's hard to go a different direction from alan page what do you think yeah alan page is such a legend man uh thought thought of by many people to be the greatest viking ever and again just actually winning i know we were just talking about millard getting mvp votes but actually winning it at that position you just can't you can't put a price on that man and you know that

was not a that was not a you know it was a good vikings team but you know you look at that defense in 2000 around 2071 good grief where's my mind right now 1971 uh you know the league was different back then but you know they didn't even allow 10 points per game as a defense just on just a shade under 10 points a game 130 they allowed in 14 games 139 points and alan page again being at the forefront of that winning the mvp i think gives gives him a slight edge over keith millard who was great in 1989 by the approximate value so what he was worth to his team according to pro football reference and no metric is ever perfect but you know we're trying to look for anything that gives an edge here this is the eighth greatest season of all time of any nfl player and tom brady's 2007 year has the same

approximate value as alan page uh oh actually no that's his alan page is 1969 this is funny page actually has two seasons that are higher than 71 um but uh his 71 is right behind that so they were very similar all three of those seasons. So this is, I mean, his three-year stretch there is one of the greatest ever played by any human being playing football. And I'm going to have to move him into the final four. And I agree with you. So we've got 04 Dante, 2012 AP, 03 Moss, and 71 Alan Page. The final four. Is that the right song?

No, that's like NBA on ESPN. You're close. Whatever. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, you're the jingle guy. Where do you want to start here we the final four matchups are 04 Dante versus 71 Alan Page

and 2012 AP versus 03 Moss how about we start with the running back versus the wide receiver yeah uh how do we contextualize this oh man I'm gonna go I'm going to go AP because I think carrying that team to the playoffs, when everybody knew he was getting the football, I mean, when Christian Ponder is quarterbacking your offense, you're not scared of that. No defense is scared of that. Everybody knew Adrian was getting the ball, you know, 60% of the time. And they still couldn't stop him.

Nobody could stop him, really. So he's going to get the edge there. Randy, I mean, what Randy did in 03, you know, when you look at who the other Vikings targets were in 2003, I think like Dwayne Bates was one of the guys that was like the second leading receiver for the Vikings that year with like 50 catches. So in both cases, you knew both of these guys were going to get the ball as much as possible.

I think with Adrian almost setting a record and that team actually getting to the playoffs, whereas the 03 Vikings couldn't quite make it, I think gives Adrian the edge there. This is a hard one. And by using approximate value, it's almost the same. There's no way to say whose highlight reel was better. The one thing that you might say is that value to yards gained per play, yards per attempt, yards per pass in Randy Moss' direction is going to be higher

because he's a wide receiver and the value of that position is higher. But we are talking about the second greatest season of all time, only to Eric Dickerson. That's what makes it hard to say that Randy Moss is oh three belongs here. But Randy Moss is oh three is not hard to find on the all time list. It's 19th in terms of yards ever for anybody. So it's way up there, but I, I will, I will accept that that we should go with AP because we're talking about

somebody who has the second greatest individual season ever at his position. So we're not like weighing, we're talking about somebody who has the second greatest individual season ever at his position. So we're not like weighing, we're not doing analytics here. We're not like weighing positional value necessarily. And even by the approximate value, carrying that team is something very rare for a running back to a playoff spot.

I will give the edge there, but I mean, my gosh, like there's, there's three, four seasons for each of these guys that you put head to head and you go i don't know flip a coin one way or the other so i'll agree with you adrian peterson and he goes to the uh to the championship defeating moss maybe that's an upset

and now page versus oh four dante culpepper which i know, I mean, by our numbers at least and by our assessment is the best Vikings quarterback season ever. Hmm. Oh, yeah. What do you do here, Manny? It's – I'm going to give Paige the edge because the team went 11-3. They didn't go to the Super Bowl that year. But I think, again, you know, Dante's numbers were incredible. And, you know, he carried that team. But I just think the way Alan Page was such a force that year,

leading the charge on a defense that was as good as they were. And the team, I mean, they won a ton of games, largely because nobody could score on them. Whereas Dante really had to do a lot to try to keep the Vikings in games. And they just didn't really win a whole lot that year, aside from the playoff game in Green Bay. So I'm going to give it to Alan Page. And again, I think that MVP award carries a lot of weight too.

So I'll give Alan Page 71 the edge there over Dante. But it's really close. It's really close. I don't mind it. I don't mind it. I think that the fact that there was one other player who was better in 2004 versus no other players who were better in 2004, or I'm sorry, in 1971, that gives Alan Page the slight edge uh

the fact that you know the defense had to entirely carry that vikings team because if i recall they did not have very good quarterback play at that time there's a couple years where it's pretty dark in terms of the quarterback play while fran is playing for another team if they had only hung on to him you know first mistake the vik Vikings ever made with quarterbacks in their whole history they never made another quarterback mistake the rest of the way not even the other day not even the other day uh so um I'll go with it and that brings us to our final then 1971 mvp alan page versus 2012 nearly record setter and one of the all-time great rushing performances at six yards to carry adrian peterson um let's let's uh i'll make the case for page and you make the case for peterson

and then we'll finish it off by deciding okay uh now we've talked about this page season a couple of times already but i think uh the iconic nature of alan page and what he meant to their defense for years i know it's individual seasons but the accumulation of the league's most dominant player in 1971, taking over game after game, winning games by himself. I mean, this doesn't have even like tackles for loss, quarterback pressures. My gosh, can you imagine? And I think that that's the part that I want to lean on here is the approximate value is higher. And that's the best statistical measure that we have because we don't have tackles. We don't have tack that's the best statistical measure that we have because we don't have tackles we don't have tackles for loss the fact that we even have sacks is

you know just a thing that happened not too long ago with those performances back in the day but everybody who was there and watched him and the writers they sat down and said this is the best player in the league and um adrian peterson was great in 2012 but was he the best player in the league. And Adrian Peterson was great in 2012, but was he the best player in the entire league in 2012? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's one of the great running back seasons, but there have been a lot of running back seasons that push this number

that are not thought of and not super revered as holy cow. This took your team to a completely different level. Jamal Lewis went 2000 yards in oh three. You know, Derek Henry in 2020, I think we kind of barely blinked when Derek Henry went over 2000 yards, Travis Davis. So I think the nature and the special part of him winning that award,

along with the approximate value that it is truly one of the great seasons in NFL history. I'm going to make my case for Alan Page. What do you think? Give me give me your Adrian Peterson. Well, I agree with you. I agree with everything you just said. But I will for the sake of the conversation, I will make a case for Adrian. I think I go back to Christian Ponder quarterbacking this team for 16 games.

And I mean, they didn't win any games because of him. You know what I mean? It was all Adrian Peterson running the football, averaging 131 yards on the ground per game, six yards a carry, like you mentioned before. And then you look at the targets, the receivers that Christian Ponder was throwing to that year. Now, Percy Harvin, and this might even be more of a case for Alan Page to win this, Percy Harvin, if you remember, caller,

for the first half of that season, he was actually kind of more so in the MVP conversation until he had an ankle injury, ended up missing the rest of the year. And then Adrian kind of emerged second half of the year and became the MVP. But, you know, after Percy Harvin went down with the injury, a young Kyle Rudolph, Michael Jenkins, Jerome Simpson. I mean, you know, a very young Jarius Wright who ended up, you know, a few years later becoming a pretty reliable third or fourth wide receiver for the Vikings. But, I mean, the guys that, you know, Devin Aroma should do, my goodness.

Like, the guys that Christian Ponder had to throw to and the fact that it was Christian Ponder, I think what Adrian did that year to win 10 games like that is unbelievable. But truthfully speaking, I mean, I agree with everything you said as far as Alan Page goes. Just, you know, the value and Alan Page sort of being the face and the identity of really one of the great defenses in the history of the NFL. I mean, Jim Marshall was great and he was the team captain for all those years, but Alan Page was kind of the identity of that defense.

When you think about the Purple People Eaters, Alan Page is the first name that you think of. And I think 1971 really kind of epitomizes that. I'm going to agree with you and make that our decision, but let me throw you one crazy stat first about Adrian Peterson 2012. Okay. Christian Ponder. Now this is factoring interceptions and sacks. So pro football reference gives negative 45 yards for an interception just to

kind of factor in field position things like that adjusted net yards per attempt so a guess of like what uh you know Christian Ponder was worth per play in terms of yards was under five yards per drop back oh my god so so not only was handing Adrian Peterson the football better, it was much better. Oh, my God. That's hard to do. I would love to see a list of teams that it was actually much better to hand the ball off to your running back than it was to drop back to pass.

That team won 10 games and went to the playoffs with that as their quarterback my god what a good time though what a good time uh do at our march madness or bracket or our march are we we're not allowed to use march madness are we march the thing um we're calling it our who did it better bracket challenge and if you go to the twitter it's at purple underscore insider, because someone else had purple insider. So we made purple underscore insider on Twitter. And it's a good follow. Jonathan Harrison is always working super hard, putting out clips, fun stuff on there.

So he's going to be putting these out each day and you can vote for them. You can give us who you think will be the winner. We just gave you our picks, but the picks by the fans could be very different for a winner. So it's not that that's the answer. The fans are going to pick this. And so you can tweet us your pick and we're going to pick one random person who gets it right. Send them some money, you know, that kind of thing. We'll have fun with it. So Manny Hill, you are the best, sir. And I texted you the other day and I said, look, there's only one person in this world that I want to do this episode. And it is you, sir. And I'm you the other day and I said, look, there's only one person in this world that I want to do this episode. And it is you, sir. And I'm glad we can do this. It's a lot of fun.

As always, whether it's things like this or hot routes, it's always a pleasure to be on with you, my friend.