Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - The Vikings Hall of Very Good team

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

Check out the entire list by becoming a subscriber at PurpleInsider.substack.com.  Matthew and Brian discuss why Jim Marshall isn't in the Hall of Fame, Percy Harvin as one of the most exciting players in Vikings history, Ryan Longwell's special place in Vikings lore, Randall Cunningham's magical season and more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you are searching for a podcast that has a deeper conversation about race, my co-host Angel Gray and I will be discussing everything going on right now on our podcast, Random Acts of Podcast on Blue Wire Podcast Network. To find out more, go to ricknow.org. Enjoy the show. All right, welcome in to Purple Insider, Matthew Power, and me from Pioneer Press columnist Brian Murphy.

How are you, Brian? Enjoying my pandemic day by day. Yes, for some without kids, working from home is totally fine and normal and not a bad idea. But you have children and maybe it's a little more nerve wr don't know, nerve-wracking at times, or what? Are you doing okay? Yeah, I'm doing all right. Two working parents. We have a fifth grader and a third grader.

But today, literally June, what is it, the 8th, 9th? Tuesday, right? I mean, it's all been one long day since about March 10th. But, yeah, this is their last official day of school. So this is the last official day that I have to try, make somewhat of an effort to be a teacher and be engaged with whatever problems they're having. And I got to tell you, man, long division, it's not the same anymore. Not that I was any good at it anyway. They've got an entirely new technique. It's kind of like, I don't know, they've simplified it to the point where it's like 2020 NFL versus, say,

1957, what we grew up in. I don't even know how they figure these things out. Math is awful. When they come over with a question, I you know i'm not a i'm not a teacher so uh i just try to muddle through throw them a couple of oreos and then just say fine just go down on the xbox you just kind of you pick and choose your battles these days and uh allowing them to go down the device rabbit hole is kind of the new reality here. And I'm sleeping okay with that probably, but I am at this point, and I have no idea what we're going to do for the next three months to keep them engaged. Whiffle ball maybe in the backyard.

Yeah, yeah. I get out with my son a lot and play a little bit, but, I mean, you know, he'd rather go down into his mini man cave in the basement and play Fortnite for six hours. And, I mean, I have no idea. I mean, he eats his meals down there. He basically, you know, comes up to go to the bathroom and asks for money. Your fifth grader is asking for money already? Third grader.

Third grader asking for money. Okay, well. You're looking for cheap jobs to do, too. Like, if I pick out the trash, can I get a couple of dollars? No. You can take pride in the fact that you're keeping your house clean. What is he spending it on? V dollars, V bucks. It's all virtual BS.

By the way, what's the profanity standard on this podcast? I would say keep it to a limit if you can i'm just curious i i just didn't know how independent or rogue you could go nowadays well i would love to but there's a little button you have to click if you are allowing profanity that i don't want to click so i'm going to keep it okay fcc if we can so all right well i'll keep it old school clean i am the person who's been playing ken griffey jr slugfest for n64 during the quarantine so i am a little lost on b bucks and things like that uh so i wish you the best of luck with your third grader who wants money and your fifth grader whose math is too hard for you. So hopefully this will be a reprieve for you, Brian, to talk about.

It might be, but I haven't done much homework on this. Oh, wow. It's purely riffing. You haven't done the math. You haven't done the long division, the analytics on the Hall of Very Good. So for Purple Insider, the website version, I created a Vikings Hall of Very Good because I was having a conversation with another journalist about just how many Vikings players are borderline Hall of Famers or actually belong in the Hall of Fame

and have not gotten in. Jim Marshall is the best example, and of course he is on our Hall of Very Good team. But at almost every position, there's somebody who either has a case or whose career was cut a little bit short and they never got to really make that case. So I showed you the list. If you want to see the entire Hall of Very Good, it is on purpleinsider.com. But, Brian, I gave you the homework assignment to pick out a couple of players that stuck out to you on the Hall of Very Good for the Vikings that we could discuss. So tell me who is the first person on your list.

Well, we're not necessarily going chronological, but as you already mentioned him, I mean, Jim Marshall, for longevity's sake, for iconic stature's sake, any human being that can play, correct me on the number, but I believe it's 270 consecutive games in the National Football League, starting in 1961 and retiring in 1979. How that man is not just symbolically already put up in a bust in Canton is beyond me. Not to mention the fact that he was an anchor presence on arguably one of the greatest defensive lines in the history of the league, certainly the best nickname of all time, the Purple People Eaters. But for a man to play with, you know, the helmets of 1961 compared

to the helmets of 2020 are a little bit like, you know, newspaper compared to what? Aerodynamic NASA generated Kevlar or something. They have today. And he still seems to have his faculties as well, at least in recent interviews that I've seen too. And he's not all that bitter about it. He knows he has a case.

His teammates and contemporaries all know that he has a case. His gnarled knuckles probably make a case, and I wouldn't want any. Jim Marshall and Carl Eller are the two guys that I've met over the years, just in passing, at various functions. Nothing, maybe a phone call interview here or there. Nothing on a first-name basis with either one of those gentlemen. But they are men that still today, they just have a – there's a presence about them, I think, and there's a sense of – I think they know the value and the impact that they had on the league.

But they also just – they have a menacing presence to them. Alan Page is a little bit more of a kind of a softy at heart, playing his tuba for the joggers. And of course, he became a Supreme Court justice. I just feel like these two guys, and particularly Marshall, it's a cliche, but we hear it all the time they could line up and play again today and I just feel every time I see those guys that if they did I think they would still thrive well the thing about Jim Marshall is when you have great teams someone

always gets left out of the party and I with the Buffalo Bills, where I grew up, it was Kent Hall, their center. You know, you get Andre Reid, Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith, they go all into the Hall of Fame easily. And Kent Hall, their center, was the centerpiece of the offense. He was the one that was calling out signals and things like that in a no-huddle offense and was a dominant player at the time. But no one is going to give him the credit that he deserved because the other stars outshined him. And that Jim Marshall has a little bit of that same issue with Alan page and Carl Eller. And also we don't have sack numbers.

And I think if we did Jim Marshall would be among the all timers. And there have been some people who have gone back and tried to count it up and things like that. And he does end up among the best of all time when it comes to sacks, but they didn't start keeping that stat until, what, 1982 or something in that range? 1982, yeah. Yeah. And, look, first of all, I don't know why they didn't keep that stat until 1982, but we still have the video.

We still have the NFL films, and anybody who's gone back and watched it, you see that he is right in the middle of the mix there of the greatest defensive line in the history of the game, and I guess I don't fully understand why he is left out of that with, I guess it is just because Paige and Eller were considered the better players and Pro Bowls, but we'll get into this probably later, that there are some Vikings players who have six Pro Bowls who haven't gotten a sniff of the Hall of Fame, but I think that that's probably it, is that Jim Marshall doesn't have those Pro Bowls, and what other metric do we really have to look back? We do not have Jim Marshall's pro football focused grades to go back and be like, well, you know, he averaged an 87 grade for seasons 1964 through 1972 or something.

We just don't have as many metrics to tell us how good he actually was. But shouldn't all of that be trumped by the 270 consecutive games? I just look at it as a, you know, I don't know what Favre's streak had. Favre had a great streak as well. But when you're talking about a guy that plays in the trenches and also played in an era where, you know, felonies were not only allowed but kind of encouraged to be committed at that time on the defensive line, I don't understand how that is not sort of that, well, this puts him over the top. Why hasn't the Veterans Committee been able to find a spot for him as well? Anybody that, to me, has played in this sport, especially in that era, would have to respect and marvel at the fact that this was a man who never missed a game.

Not in a five- or ten-year career, but in a 19-year career. And that tells you something, too, about this. I'll make a hockey comparison that you could usually figure out a lot about hockey by just looking at the minutes that a guy plays. If some defenseman is playing 24 minutes, he's probably pretty good, unless your team is awful and someone just has to play. But usually, if you're playing that much, and the same would go for Jim Marshall, if you are playing to the point where you can get 270 games and you're not

a kicker, then that must say how good you were at your peak to still be playing late, late into your career and being as good as you were. Pro Football Reference has a metric called approximate value that tries to isolate a player's value within his team. So it's kind of a, the best way I can describe it is kind of a wins above replacement type of stat that they invented. And he is fourth in team history. Carl Eller is number one. And he's among some of the best players of all time. Now, it is a cumulative stat. So Eli Manning's number is pretty good, too, with approximate value because he played for so long.

And maybe that's what it is, is that Jim Marshall didn't have the peak years, possibly, that some of these other guys did. But he has the longevity. I totally agree with your case, though, and I think he should absolutely be in the Hall of Fame. And then just, you know, when you think about the legendary early teams of the National Football League, it's one of the top five things that comes up is Purple People Eater's defensive line.

So to not have someone who is a part of that, a major, major part of that in the Hall of Fame is a mistake, and I don't know why he hasn't been able to get in yet. And he was with the Vikings from day one as well. They had to endure a lot of awful-slash-mediocre-slash-under-the-radar seasons until Eller and Page. And who was the fourth guy? Yerry?

Yeah, not Yerry. Who was the fourth guy on the line? Was it Larson? Gary Larson. Yes. Yeah, not Ron Yerry. Gary Larson. But these guys weren't drafted or acquired until later in the 60s.

I mean, Marshall was sort of a one-man crew for five or six years when the Vikings were pretty god-awful. awful. And not only that, he, he, there's, there's not a, there's a handful of guys that probably don't need too much work on a bronze bust. I mean, they're literally born chiseled. And Jim Marshall is one of those guys that I think was born to be a Hall of Fame bust. When you just look at – I can just see him on the sideline in the snow with his headgear on and his cape and actually peering through a quarterback. I mean, like, you know, like peering through the guy's soul. Those are the kind of images when you think of the beautiful John Facenda and the beautiful NFL films, glory machine, you know, you could see Jim Marshall battling in the cold November mud of Lambeau

field. I mean that, you know, so I, I view him more as a, almost like he was born to be in Canton beyond his playing ability, his longevity, but his features and his visual. Jim Marshall speaks Hall of Fame. But to me, any other stat out there, the man played 270 consecutive games. Nobody's going to come near that. Yeah, he is the defining – he's a defining member of the Hall of Very Good for the Minnesota Vikings. Yeah, I would say that.

That's a – should that be a proud card to carry, though? Yes. I mean, what was it – who was the guy in baseball? Was it Ron Santo, who was the best player to not get it? And eventually they put him in after he had passed away, which, you know, why bother? You would almost rather be the guy. He lost two legs to diabetes and died, and then they put him in.

You would much rather be not in and the guy known as the best player not in than be put in posthumously, I think. You're probably right. So for Jim Marshall, I mean, having that designation that everyone who comes up and meets you says, man, you should be in the Hall of Fame, you would kind of take that in a way. I'm sure he'd rather be in the Hall, honestly. But it's not a bad place to be.

Right, right. When you are considered, like, the reason to make a Hall of Very Good team is Jim Marshall. All right, who's the next player on your list, Brian? Percy Harvin. Percy Harvin is one of the few people that, you know, I've covered or watched where you wanted to make sure you were there when you saw him touch the ball. You know, there's hockey players that are like that when the puck is on his stick. There's pitchers and hitters. You want to see those certain confrontations. But the buzz that you would sense either in the dome or even on the road

when he went back for a kickoff, no matter what time of the game, what part of the game it was, it was one of those type things where you don't know what you're going to see. He – and, again, I didn't look up any of the numbers, but he's got to have a half dozen kickoff returns. Five. Over 100 yards, right? And I know there was one.

I can't remember who it was against. He actually ran it back, I think, 103 or 104 yards and didn't get a touchdown, which is also an NFL record, I believe, the longest kick return without a score. And I do believe the Vikings got stuffed at the goal line several times. Of course they did. So they settled for a field goal after Harvin ran for 104 yards. But he was the kind of guy that could steal momentum. And he was, you know, a lot of people viewed him as sort of a miscreant and a little bit of a,

a distraction or selfish player. I never got that sense from Harvin. I got the sense that Harvin didn't like to play the game, uh, the media game, or also, um, he wasn't going to, you know, when, when Harvin spoke and it wasn't often, it was an event, and he had something to say, which I respected him for as well. I think he was misunderstood by a lot of teammates, certainly by a lot of fans. But I don't know. In the last 15 or 20 years, it would be hard to argue that there was a better pure athlete on the Vikings than Percy Harvin. And the way they were able to utilize him in that offense in the early days of these hybrid offenses, I don't think they ever figured out how to use him. And of course, he couldn't stay on the

field because of health reasons as well. But he's just one of those few players where, you know, you did literally move to the edge of your seat when that kickoff was in the air and you saw him settling underneath it because you didn't know what you were going to see before we get back to the conversation got to take a second to thank our sponsors soda stick go to sodastick.com to get your original minnesota sports inspired goods if you have not seen yet the can't stop the feeling hat you got to check out. It's part of an official partnership with Adam Feelin'. If you need to get some new hats for summer, they're having their annual summer hat deal right now.

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One is when I was growing up, Eric Metcalf was that way. Anytime Eric Metcalf was getting the football, you thought this guy is going to go for a touchdown. And now it's Tyreek Hill. Everyone uses the Tyreek Hill. He's the most explosive, fastest player in the league. You can give him the ball out of the backfield. You can run him deep. You can put him back for a kick or a punt return. And if you remember, the Vikings punter was so afraid of Tyreek Hill being

back for a return that he kicked it out of bounds for like 20 yards that set up the game-winning field goal for Kansas City this year. Well, it's the same sort of feeling for Percy Harvin. And I went back and watched every Percy Harvin touchdown. And thank you to whoever the YouTuber was that put it together. And what stuck out to me, Brian, was not just the kick returns, which he had five for touchdown, and almost every one of them comes out of the end zone. And he just blows people away. There are only a handful of players in history that I can remember making everyone else on the field look slow. Like Randy Moss, Barry Sanders, and Percy Harvin belongs in not quite their ballpark, but that same feeling of, is everybody else in slow motion?

Because this guy is just running away from everybody. There's the 40-yard dash fast, and then there's football fast, and he is one of the all-time football fast people. But in his compilation of all of his touchdowns, two things stuck out to me. One, every one of them is from 30 yards or beyond, whether it's a deep pass from somebody or if it's just a screen pass that he takes for a 30 or 40 or 50-yard touchdown. And the other thing was, I didn't realize this, they used to hand it off to him at the goal line sometimes, and he would run over people. So it wasn't just that he was incredibly

fast, but he was strong and he could break tackles like a running back. And I agree with you that the more modern offenses have gotten, I think if they had used him like they do with some of these hybrid type of offensive weapon players now, Christian McCaffrey or Tyreek Hill, he would have been a megastop. Why do you think – do you think he's an underachiever? I think he was a victim of circumstance, that his injuries were a problem, maybe the offenses, maybe the quarterbacks were a problem for Percy Harvin, aside from obviously playing with Brett Favre, but who else are we talking about that was getting Percy Harvin the ball? And then just timing. Timing and circumstance is huge when it comes to

whether you become a Hall of Famer or not. You know, there are only a handful of guys maybe ever who would have been a Hall of Famer for anybody. Randy Moss is probably a Hall of Famer for just about anybody. But even then, he ends up with a quarterback right off the bat who could throw it 60 yards to him in Randall Cunningham and then gets another one in Dante Culpepper who could also throw it 60 or 70 yards down the field to Randy Moss. So that helps him in being that player. Percy Harvin didn't have that, anybody to hit him 60 yards down the field, and then did not have the creativity on offense or the health to continue to play for a really long time. I think if he had even just been healthy, he showed up in Buffalo my last year there before I moved to Minnesota, and he stepped on the field and blew everybody away, even in his

a little bit of older years after all the injuries. Goes out to Seattle, doesn't play for a full season. They kick it off to him in the Super Bowl. He runs it back for a touchdown. I mean, it's just like this guy did legendary things and just ended up with the health issues. And it kind of reminds you of a lot of the great Vikings of all time, including Culpepper, where you wonder if he didn't get hurt, how good would he have been? And I think this is coming up, too, I think on 10 years as well in August. It was his second year, and the Vikings had just moved back from Mankato

to Winter Park for their preseason preparation. And it was at that time where the media was still allowed to cover practices full-time, right? Percy Harvin collapsed on the field, returning a kick, returning punts, I believe it was. And what I remember most about the scene was how devastated and how concerned and how chilling it was to watch an ambulance back its way onto the practice field over by the hills, if you remember, by the pine trees. Because people thought he had a heart attack.

People thought he had, I mean, he had a migraine. This was sort of the first time we realized the migraines were not just sort of a catch-all phrase for, Percy don't feel like practicing today, that this was a serious medical issue that he was undergoing, that he literally collapsed on the field and required medical attention. But the level of concern, I think, I remember Brad Childress and his teammates at the time, who I don't think had any sense of how devastating, you know, migraines

can be for somebody who's ever suffered them, especially a pro athlete being in that situation, and how, not only how concerned, but how empathetic his teammates became with him, because I think at the time they kind of thought him as a little bit of a kind of a prickly pear, you know, hard to read. I mean, he obviously had some issues that were chronicled coming out of Florida before the draft. They ended up picking him, you know, 22nd or so, 23rd, 24th. I can't remember what it was overall.

There was that sort of, well, what is, you know, what's his personality going to be? What's he going to be like in the locker room? And I don't think it was until he demonstrated his talent how much his teammates began to appreciate him, too. But he was a genuine guy that I think was one of those kind of misunderstood players. I think people just thought he just had an attitude and didn't care, and that was never the case. Percy Harvin cared probably too much for his own good. And that ended up, you know, I think he set a standard of excellence that, you know, when, when superior, supremely talented people can do things and can't understand why their teammates or coworkers or people close to

them can't do that as well. It's an incredibly frustrating experience for them. And I think that was what happened with Percy Harvin. And anyway, circling back to that day on the field, I think that was one of the first times the Vikings as an organization realized not how talented he was, but how valuable he was and how fragile he was. And I think he won a lot of, certainly a lot of people over in the locker room when that happened. And then, you know, we could spend an entire week talking about the 2010 season and the calamities that occurred for the Vikings. But that was one of those moments that stood out to me is how deathly silent it was on that practice field

as they were contemplating, you know, we may be losing a teammate here. Well, and when you think about some of Harvin's issues too, he's talked since a little bit about some of the mental health issues that he dealt with and also the marijuana use. We used to criminalize players for marijuana use until now we have realized, including the NFL has realized, that a lot of players use it for pain management as opposed to using some of the other synthetic drugs that could be more problematic for you. And I think with Percy Harvin, he was using it in large part to deal with some mental health issues that now are not looked at with the

same stigma that they would have been when Percy Harvin first came into the league. I think now if you go to your front office and you say, hey, I'm having some problems, can I get some help? They will bend over backwards to try to help you. That's not to say that the world is perfect in that regard at all. And the NFL has just started to come around on this. We saw it with what Everson Griffin was dealing with, how they embraced Everson Griffin to come back into the locker room and come back onto the team, and they re-signed him for last year and so forth. They didn't treat him like he was different because he had dealt with something like this.

And I think that Percy Harvin, it would have been the same case in 2020 that if he were dealing with problems like that, they would have worked really hard to find him a solution, as opposed to, like you said, looking at him like he was aloof or he didn't care or whatever it might be to actually get the guy some help. And that could have, you know, aside, there's certain injuries that, you know, there's nothing you can do about. But aside from that, all the personality issues, I think would have been dealt with a lot better now than they were then. Yeah. And I think, you know, he would probably acknowledge some mistakes were made along the way as well. I was taken aback, probably like a lot of people were a couple of weeks ago when, when was it in April that, you know, this video surfaced that he's working out hard and he's going to put himself back out on the market as a viable option.

So he was born in 88. What does that make him? I can't do the math. 34? That would make him 32, I think. 32. That's awful. Sorry for your listeners out there that have to.

Just where we started was you can't do math. I can't do math. I can't do my third grader's long division, and I can't actually add dates of birth anymore, it seems like. What do you make of that? I mean, is this a stunt, and should he be taken seriously? And would Percy Harvin be taken seriously if this had been any other offseason other than the 2020 offseason, which will be like no other.

Would he be taken seriously if this were 2018, 2019? I think when Percy Harvin tells you he wants to play football, you take him seriously because 32 in today's world is still in your prime if you don't have the mileage from years past. He hasn't played for four years. That's a lot of miles that aren't on that body. I mean, it would be one of the great all-time stories if he came back and was a pro bowler or something or returned a few kicks for touchdown or became somebody's decent weapon that they use. Even if he caught 40 or 45 passes and scored a couple of touchdowns, it would still be an incredible story. But there are certain human beings that just have this capability to do things that nobody else can. And Percy Harvin, I think,

falls in that category. If I were the Vikings, I would check in. I would want, as soon as things are more opened up as they're starting to be now with the pandemic, I mean, that's what makes this kind of hard for Percy Harvin is because he can't fly from team to team and run a 40 for them or work out in front of them. He can only videotape it. They're going to want to see it in person. And I wonder if he does get a few phone calls. If he's still been working extremely hard on it, I don't think it would take him that long. Think about Michael Vick.

Michael Vick literally goes to prison. And when he came out, he was a little bit lacking in the burst for the first couple of games. But then once it clicked back in for Michael Vick, where it felt like he was light on his feet again, he was one of the best athletes and best quarterbacks in the NFL. And that was in his 30s too. And even Randall Cunningham, an all-time great athlete, goes from, what was it, a flooring company or something that he had started or whatever it was, and then he comes back and he wins a playoff game, a very wild one in 1997 if you've never

watched it, and then he comes in the 98 season, has one of the best years ever. So it's not unprecedented for somebody to try and restart their career, and if Percy Harvin was going to do it, I'd want to see it. I think it's one of those that, you know, I don't think he's as much of a distraction anymore as maybe people would like to think, and this is the year of a distraction. I think, if anything, you should be as open-minded as you can. You're right if Percy Harvin's 32 and says, you know, I'm thinking about coming back and playing. You know, you segued to something.

You mentioned Randall Call cunningham because he was number three on the list that you had sent me that i find um a fascinating you know for in the in the history of the minnesota vikings he was here about a half hour but that half hour in the context of what this franchise has accomplished or almost could have accomplished, but didn't quite accomplish. Randall Cunningham's 1998 season in marriage with Randy Moss has to go down as one of those great, burned brightly for such a short period of time. And Oh,

what might've been, we can go down the litany of things that happened in the 98 championship, NFC championship game. But the numbers that he put up, the way he helped introduce Randy Moss to the football world, when people look at Randall Cunningham's career, I don't think anybody even remembers the hiccup here in Minnesota. But the people here in Minnesota remember the impact that he had

coming in off the bench for an injured Brad Johnson and literally helping change the way the game is played. I think that counts for as much as what he did in Philadelphia and how he changed the game when the game wasn't ready for somebody like Randall Cunningham in the late 80s. What he did here in 1998, I'm not sure fans necessarily appreciate, because I think they think of Randy Moss, they think of 15-1. They don't realize how it was Brad Johnson's team. And Randall Cunningham was as forgotten a figure in the NFL as anybody at that point. I mean, he was a relic.

And he came back and had arguably one of his best statistical seasons. Yeah, really. I mean, as a passer, by far his statistical season. And when he did it at that time, it was a top three season in NFL history when he did it. Like now I think it still is a top 10 season, even since Peyton Manning and Tom Brady and everybody has come into the league when it comes to his quarterback rating. But at that time,

you're talking about one of the best seasons by a quarterback in NFL history. And I put Randall Cunningham in the category of Hall of Very Good for the entire NFL. And so I wanted to put him on this list, even though he's not considered a Viking. And there are other guys who have been, you know, Vikings briefly that I did not put on the list because I didn't really consider them a Viking. But this one is very, very different. You're talking about a player who, like you said, was way ahead of his time in terms of a running quarterback, who again, with today's game, he probably performs even better as a passer with the Eagles. They always wanted to throw it deep down the field all the time back then. When I was looking up some of the numbers for Hall of Very Good, I mean,

Anthony Carter averages like 16 yards a catch. If you average 16 yards a catch in the NFL today, that means you are considered a deep threat. That used to be everybody was averaging that much, and they would only complete 48% of their passes, right? Unless you played for Bill Walsh. So with Cunningham, he was often using that arm and throwing it down the field, or he was just taking off and running. Now you've been able to design a lot shorter passes, quicker completions, and things like that that would have helped Cunningham. So I wonder what his numbers would have been had he come into the league now. But a revolutionary quarterback who maybe is a little short of the counting numbers, and he had some injuries mixed in there to be a Hall of Famer. I tend to think that he should be,

but that 98 season to come off the bench and to just start hucking it deep to Randy Moss and have the games that they put up together I mean it does go down in all-time great Vikings history that even if you just even if he didn't have that past with the Eagles I might still put him on this list just for that I mean with Culpepper I also put him as the other Hall of Very Good quarterback he really only had two good seasons but they were so good that I think that's kind of how I would define a Hall of Very Good is either our Jim Marshall that played for a long time but was not considered the best player in the league, or somebody who briefly was the best player in the league, and for that year, Cunningham was the NFL's best quarterback.

And he deserved the recognition that he got, I think. It was kind of a, you know, I wasn't here yet, so I was watching it from afar. But I seem to remember the narrative being Randall Cunningham was underappreciated in Philadelphia, both by fans and by the league in general. And what he was able to, you know, and he kind of transformed himself from, you know, a hard partying guy to, you know, a Christian-based, you know, father and sort of, you know, by the time he got to Denny Green and the Vikings in 98,

he was a different player and a different person. And I think you appreciated his raw talent a little bit more. He was more of a drop-back guy that year. A, he had age working against him, but he didn't need to run around and make things happen when you had Chris Carter, Randy Moss, Jake Reed, let's not forget him. And he had Robert Smith running for 12, 1500 yards out of the backfield as well. He had plenty of tools around him. He didn't have to make it happen for him. But I got the impression that that season there was a general appreciation around the league for really how good of a passer he was and a thrower.

I mean, this is a guy that could throw the ball 80 yards in the air from a dead stop, you know, not necessarily even on the run. You know, you see a lot of those highlights of him rolling out, chucking it down the field. But from a pure drop back standpoint, Moss allowed him to, I think, rehabilitate, maybe not rehabilitate, but maybe reinforce his reputation as not just a scrambling black quarterback, but a solid dropback quarterback who reinvented himself along the way. It was kind of an interesting story. It's too bad he didn't get a chance to do it in the Super Bowl or at least get to the Super Bowl and kind of show what he could have done.

Again, we could go down the litany. You know, every NFC Championship game lost for the Vikings, there's 15 things that went wrong in that particular game to bring you to a certain point. That was one of those games that had a laundry list of mistakes, including him getting sacked and fumbling at the end of the first half as well. I just remember him, it was a redemption story as well as a coming out story for Moss,

and it was kind of neat to see those two reconnect for that one moment in time. You know, but I think it's a great point, Phil, because when Randall Cunningham's at his peak, you would only have seen Randall Cunningham a handful of times if you're an NFL fan, not in Philadelphia. And you would think of him, the perception would be, this is a running quarterback. You see the NFL films highlights and he's running around doing

crazy things but when I wrote a piece a few months ago about how Cunningham belongs in the Hall of Fame I went back and looked at some of his best passing games and certainly he was not Joe Montana when it came to the accuracy all the time but his pure passing you could see how it happened he would have games where he threw for 350 yards and four touchdowns and led comebacks with his arm and not his legs and things like that. He was always capable of that. And I think when they put him in the exact right situation, like you talk about what someone's ceiling is to show that your ceiling is a passer at that age after all that he had been through with his career to show that your ceiling is a passer under perfect circumstances is one of the great seasons of all time it kind of makes you wonder about you know what it could have been had he even been more of a passer or if offenses had come along a little bit farther in the late 80s and early 90s but it also is one of those very rare circumstances I don't know I can't

think of almost any other example where a quarterback maybe Rich Gannon would be like this where somebody was thought of as being like kind of meh or you know I had this shortcoming or that shortcoming and then proves it late in his career that he can be an MVP-level player. And for that season alone and for that story alone, I wanted to include Randall Cunningham in the Hall of Very Good for the Vikings. Do you think, because we're both outsiders too, I didn't have to endure as a fan the pain of that disappointing finish in the NFC Championship game, or as a journalist

sort of chronicle how devastating it was. You know, we're 22 years on from that now. If I'm average Vikings fan and I'm listening to this podcast, has the pain of that worn off at least enough to appreciate what that season meant how fun it was how dominant it was how shape-shifting it was and then when you look back at the personalities that emerged from that team um that came together at that time is there enough of an appreciation for a 15-1 just dominating the league offensively? On the cusp of greatness, it ended painfully, but still there's value to look back on this season. Yeah, I think so.

The Rams embrace it a little bit more. No, I think that they do now. Of course, I'm sure anybody who still thinks of Gary Anderson's kick, it hurts inside. But the farther you get away from something like that, it kind of reminds me of Favre having his number retired in Green Bay, that at the time with Favre leaving and going to the Vikings, I'm sure that Packers fans hated that more than anything.

But you get a couple of years separated from what happened, and you go, okay, you know know what the guy was the best and the same thing with that season where when you get separated from it a little bit more you look back and you say no rookie wide receiver has ever done anything like this no quarterback has ever been out of the league and then come back in and had one of the great seasons of all time no No receiving core, maybe in history, ever competes with Randy Moss, Chris Carter, and Jake Reed. And not only that, but they had a lot of good defensive players too. And to go 15-1 is truly, truly special.

And you don't see it very often. How often do we see anybody go 15-1? There's one 16-0 team in the New England Patriots. And then aside from that, I mean, maybe Peyton Manning was 14-2, 15-1. But you just – I mean, that's a once-in-franchise history type of season. And with Randall Cunningham at the head of it, that made it even more exciting. And then plus, you know, Randy Moss is one of the best players in the history of the game, one of the most exciting players in the history of the game,

and his emergence there is something that's unforgettable. So I think that, yeah, people do appreciate that and think more about Randy Moss' emergence and how great it was in the legendary games, like on Thanksgiving Day or against the Packers, than they do about Gary Anderson's kick. But you'll never get rid of that. I mean, I can say from my experience in Buffalo that people have the greatest appreciation for the teams that lost four straight Super Bowls. At the time, it was just the worst.

I mean, I was a little kid, but it was the worst. Like, they're in the Super Bowl again against Dallas. I think they lead in the first half, and then it falls apart. It turns into a complete bleep show, and at the time, you know, people wanted Frank Wright to start over Jim Kelly and things like that. But now, you know, you get a few years separated, and you just have a much greater appreciation for how difficult that actually was to achieve. Same thing with the 15-1 season.

All right, who else is on your list? This is a random one because, you know, people are going to think, well, really? You know, I'm surprised it was on your list, but it was intriguing enough for me to bring up Ryan Longwell. And I bring up Ryan Longwell because of course, Vikings fans are haunted by specialists and the lack of, or the, the general perception of the clutch, but not when it matters. And that's what Gary Anderson's probably going to have to take to the grave

after being perfect in 1998 I I bring up Longwell because he was such a nemesis with the Packers and had been the author of so many painful last second defeats and and even not with game-winning field goals but just the the constant reminder of what a steady, accurate, reliable kicker in awful conditions, usually at Lambeau, what that can do for the confidence of a team. So when he came to Minnesota, it was as if they had signed a skilled player. Like they got Ryan Longwell. They've got a proven, hardened, reliable kicker. And it ended up being he was basically Favre's bag man for a couple of years

too. I mean, his value was even more pronounced just getting Favre in town. But I bring up Longwell because of the, like I said, the timing of his arrival, the reputation he had built in Green Bay, and he had been able to remind Vikings fans of what they were lacking. So I say Longwell because I think he was, you know, before Blair Walsh, I mean, he was a beacon of consistency and strength and stability, and he also, I think,

reminded Vikings fans of what they were missing just over in Wisconsin. And then then again, his impact in getting Favre into town without Ryan Longwell, Brett Favre does not come to the Vikings. So that's why he stands out in my mind. And I also want to bring it. You can follow up, but I wanted to throw something else out there for people to consider as well about Longwell.

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But the other part of it is that we all agree he makes the field goal in 0-9, right? If they don't have the two minutes. And that's where I was going to go. Go ahead. We'll go with that in a second. But I want to circle back on that. I mean, even though it would have been a bomb, you are inside of a dome. And if you hand it off and get four yards, or if you run a screen, or if Favre takes off and runs,

or if he checks it down to Bernard Berrien or whatever and you get a couple yards or if they just don't put you know too many men in the huddle but Ryan Logwell coming out of a timeout right out of a timeout he makes it I mean he is one of the great kickers of all time during that era if you were over and it's really changed because now you need to make like almost 90% of your kicks to be any good. But he was making about 85. And at that time, he's one of the best kickers ever who's ever played in the NFL. And he had the range to do it.

He had the consistency and the clutch factor to do it. I also wanted to, before you get to that point about 09, I will send you $50 out of my wallet if you can guess the number one kicker of all time in Vikings history in field goal percentage. In percentage? Yes, percentage. Of any seasons?

The kicker would have had to play multiple seasons, put it that way. Blair Walsh. It way. Blair Walsh. It's not Blair Walsh. That I would not have bet $50 on. It's Kai Forbath. Kai Forbath? Yes.

Who is sort of the bridge between Blair Walsh and wherever we're at today. Dan Bailey, yeah. He and Daniel Carlson mixed in. But Kai Forbath makes one of the great field goals in Vikings history. It gets totally forgotten about a 52-yarder in the divisional game against the New Orleans Saints that then leads Breeze down the field for New Orleans to take the lead and then the Minneapolis Miracle and so forth. But I thought it was funny as I was looking it up, you know, because everybody knows Fred Cox. He's the all-time scoring leader for the Vikings.

Yeah, and he's like 20% accuracy. Yeah, 60, but yeah. I mean, it is just funny to look it up because that's why I decided to put Longwell on this list is because, you know, he was one of the most accurate kickers in Vikings history, but he is just edged out by Kai Forbath. All right, anyway, back to Longwell. Why do we think – why does – because I think the prevailing opinion

is the one that you expressed, that all the ifs of the waning moments of the 2009 NFC Championship game, they had driven to, I believe, the 30-yard line at one point. And then the penalty backed him up. I know it was going to be a 55-yard attempt if he was going to make it. A far throw is incomplete on his rollout instead of getting picked off by Porter. Wasn't it Terry Porter? Yeah.

It's going to be a 55-yard attempt. Everybody in town seems to think Longwell was going to bury that kick. I'm not saying he wouldn't. He was clearly, as you said, he had strong numbers. He's inside. But he had never made a kick over 52 yards that season. Why is it the prevailing wisdom that that's a gimme? Because it was a gimme for Gary Anderson in a dome from 35 yards, and he missed.

Is this people's revisionist history? Like, they want to believe that he would have made it. Therefore, the painful interception isn't as painful. Well, I think that there's evidence. And I'm getting dangerous here because we're drilling into the psychology of Vikings. I know. And Ryan Longwell was different, though, because he was not raised in the psychological mind belief that is the Vikings. He was a packer.

Now, he went from, I've got this up here, from 50-plus in his Viking career. So it's a little harder with Green Bay because you're talking about kicking 50-plus outside. So inside with the Vikings, 11 for 17 with a long of 55. That was as long as a Viking. So, yeah, it would have been a bomb, and it would not have been easy, and it's a very tough circumstance. But 11 for 17 and career 24 for 39 from 50-plus. I mean, he can hammer it home from deep.

I think he makes it. You think he makes it? I think he makes it. I've never talked to who thinks he makes that kick. He's a great kicker. I mean, that's the thing is you look over this guy's career, and it's remarkable how accurate he was, how great he was from deep, and how consistent.

I mean, we're in a world where kicking has never been more scientific, and you have kids raised from seven years old to be kickers, and yet still they're all over the place. And even some proven kickers will have these big dips in their career. Not Ryan Longwell. Last guy on your list. Ahmad Rashad. And I bring that up because we are in the post-Last Dance era here,

where I'm sure a lot of modern sports fans, younger sports fans, really only think of Ahmad Rashad as sort of Michael Jordan's buddy and the guy on NBC during NBA coverage. And maybe didn't he marry somebody from the Cosby show, that old stupid show from the 80s. But I don't think they realize what a game-breaker he was during his career in Minnesota. And again, we're comparing eras, which is dangerous, because early to mid-70s offensive passing,

certainly in the NFC and certainly in the NFC Central with Bud Grant, nobody was stretching the field, right? But Ahmad Rashad was their playmaker. And Ahmad Rashad also made one of the great Hail Mary receptions of all time to beat the Cleveland Browns and the season finale in 80 or 81. I've seen the highlight of a bunch of times where, you know, he basically, having run, I don't know, two or three downfield routes, had no breath left at him and somehow made the catch at the goal line, snuck in. One of the great moments in Mets stadium history to win the Vikings the division. But I'm just wondering, you know, because of his post-playing entertainment career slash

broadcasting career slash, you know, MJ's henchman, so to speak, for NBC, if that many people realize how talented and he walked away from the game at a young age, too, how good of a football player, good of a wide receiver Amandusha was. So he went to four straight Pro Bowls, and he really didn't get opportunities early in his career either until he got to Minnesota. He had a couple other stops. One was definitely in Buffalo and I want to say maybe the Jets, but he ends up in Minnesota after a couple of years of sort of bouncing around and then it just takes off. And I would say that that catch against Cleveland, when the Vikings play Cleveland, we all just get sucked into a black hole, right? Just like who's, yeah, like I don't know.

I mean, who's freaky, outside, weird, crazy, cosmic forces are going to succeed when the Browns play the Vikings. But, you know, I have to admit that I fall exactly into the category that you described. When I was growing up, Ahmad Rashad was NBA inside stuff. And I will admit to this that in 2017, now I was aware that he played in the NFL and that he had even, I think he played a preseason game with the Philadelphia 76ers too, so that he was this tremendous, tremendous athlete. I knew that from his past

history and times that it had come up, but it wasn't until 2017 when I was covering OTAs that they made the announcement that Randy Moss and Ahmad Rashad were going to be put in the team's ring of honor that I realized how good Ahmad Rashad was at football because he shows up at Winter Park. I was like, NBA Inside Stuff guy? Jordan's buddy? Why are you here? This is amazing. You know, like sign my NBA Inside Stuff shirt or whatever.

And then you go back and look and, oh, okay, I did not realize that he made four straight Pro Bowls as a Minnesota Viking and was a really dynamic player. And I had to include him on this list, I guess, for my own not really realizing, but also he's just on that borderline of guys who were great for a section of time but would have needed to be better for longer if they had wanted to make the actual Hall of Fame. Well, and again, he played two, you know, I think he transitioned with Tarkenden and Kramer.

Kramer seemed to be, I mean, everybody knows Tarkenden was a renegade with his legs, but I think Kramer was more the traditional downfield passer. If he'd have had a few more years with Kramer, he might have put up some more yards too. But then again, that Vikings team after 1980 pretty much fell apart for the next seven or eight years until the late 80s when Jerry Burns took over. That was sort of the, I think, in the timeline of the franchise when you look at that game against Cleveland, that was pretty much the last hurrah of the 70s. And there are teams from there.

From 1981 to 86, they were pretty much in the toilet and transitioning out of the bud grant era into the less steckle era i don't know how many more uh big seasons he might have had after that but it was sort of an interesting exclamation point uh to put on there too and then you know for anybody there listening, I'm sure the diehards will know, but do you know what his real name is? I do not. Bobby Earl Moore. Oh. It's not a bad football name if you think about it. No.

That's kind of a name that goes on a Hall of Fame bus, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it sounds like somebody from that era or somebody from the 70s. There's no Bobby Earl Moore who's playing in 2020. No. Only pre-1980. And the three-name, I mean, the three-name, you know, you could, yeah,

boy, if we could get a player like Bobby Earl Moore, we're going to win some games. That's right. Perfect way to end it, Brian. Well, if you want to see the entire list, then become a subscriber at Purple Insider. You go to purpleinsider.substack.com is where you can go right to sign up and see the entire list, the Vikings Hall of Very Good. And I put that

together because it's June and we're trying to have as much fun as we can. So Brian, it was great to catch up with you. I hope that we get a regular Vikings training camp and we get into a normal season and get things going. Nothing is normal these days, but that's my hope and that we can continue to catch up, man. This is fun. Yeah, it'd be great. I mean, these sports journalism muscles have kind of atrophied as I've entered the corporate world. So this was nice to kind of get back on the bike. All right. Well, work on that math homework and we will talk again soon. All right.