On the eve of the first Sunday of the 2021 NFL Season, the sport lost one of its great as former Minnesota Viking, Mick Tingelhoff, passed away at the age of 81.

Undrafted in 1962 from Nebraska, Tingelhoff took over as the starting Center for the Vikings, and he never missed a game in 240 contests, starting every one of them.  The former Cornhusker began a six-year streak of Pro Bowls in 1964, with five of them earning him a First Team All-Pro Selection.  

Minnesota retired his number 53, and named him to their Ring of Honor.  In our most recent list of the Top 50 Vikings of all-time, he was ranked at #5.

In 2015, Tingelhoff was finally inducted to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to extend our condolences to the fans, friends and family of Mick Tingelhoff.

Yes, we know that this is taking a while!

As many of you know, we here at Notinhalloffame.com are slowly generating the 50 of each major North American sports team.  That being said, we have existing Top 50 lists out and we always consistently look to update them when we can and based on necessity. As such, we are very happy to present our pre-2021 revision of our top 50 Minnesota Vikings of all-time.

As for all of our top 50 players in football we look at the following: 

1.  Advanced Statistics.

2.  Traditional statistics and how they finished in the NFL. 

3. Playoff accomplishments.

4. Their overall impact on the team and other intangibles not reflected in a stat sheet.

This our first revision in two years, and it has yielded two new entries.  There are no changes in our top five, but as always, we present our top five.  They are:

1. Alan Page

2. FranTarkenton

3. Carl Eller

4. Randall McDaniel

5. Mick Tingelhoff

You can find the entire list here.

Free Safety, Harrison Smith, moved up seven spots to #34.

The two new entries are Tight End, Kyle Rudolph (#48) and Defensive Tackle, Linval Joseph (#49).

In the future, Running Back, Dalvin Cook will likely be on next year’s list if he repeats his 2020 Pro Bowl campaign.  

We also suspect that Quarterback, Kirk Cousins, who has only been a Viking for three years, but has been entrenched in the upper half of NFL pivots could crack the top 50 too.

We welcome your input and commentsand as always, we thank you for your support.

Everson Griffen came to the Minnesota Vikings as the 100^th Overall Draft Pick in 2010 and it was a slow build for him to really find his place in the NFL.  Griffen was mostly used on Special Teams as a rookie and morphed into a pass rushing specialist until 2014 when he became the starting Defensive End. Griffen went to four Pro Bowls over a five-year period, and he had three 10-plus Sack seasons while wearing the horns.  Griffen played for the Vikigs for ten years before he signed with the Dallas Cowboys as a Free Agent.  

Griffen returned in 2021 for another year, bringing his Sack total in Minnesota to 79.5.

Chuck Foreman arrived in Minnesota as the 12th overall pick in 1973 after a college career at Miami that left scouts unsure whether he belonged at fullback or halfback. Coaches at Miami had told him he would not make it as a running back in the NFL, and he spent the early part of his career determined to prove them wrong. The Vikings gave him the chance, and he made the most of it from the start.

As a rookie, he rushed for 801 yards and caught 37 passes for 362 more, good for 1,163 yards from scrimmage. That production earned him the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year award and helped the Vikings reach the Super Bowl. It was the first of five straight Pro Bowl seasons and the beginning of a stretch in which he became the centerpiece of the Minnesota offense. Foreman ran with a low, spinning style that made him hard to square up. He could cut back against the grain or slip past tacklers in the open field, and he was equally comfortable catching the ball out of the backfield.

In 1974, he improved to 1,363 yards from scrimmage and led the NFL with 15 touchdowns as the Vikings returned to the Super Bowl. The next year brought his peak. Foreman rushed for 1,070 yards on 280 carries, caught a league-leading 73 passes for 691 more, and scored 22 touchdowns. Those totals earned him first-team All-Pro honors and marked the highest single-season output of his career. He followed with another strong year in 1976, rushing for 1,155 yards and scoring 14 touchdowns as the Vikings reached the Super Bowl once more. His combination of volume on the ground and consistent work in the passing game made him one of the league’s most complete backs during that stretch.

He remained productive in 1977 with 1,112 rushing yards, but the production began to fade after that. Knee problems limited him in 1978, and his numbers dropped further in 1979 as the injuries took a lasting toll. By the end of that season, the Vikings traded him to the New England Patriots. He spent one limited year in New England and then retired. With Minnesota, he finished with 5,887 rushing yards, 3,057 receiving yards, and 8,944 yards from scrimmage across seven seasons. Those numbers, paired with 75 total touchdowns, ranked him among the most productive dual-threat backs of the 1970s.

The Vikings placed him in their Ring of Honor in 2007. The honor recognized a player who turned early doubts about his position into a career that defined the Vikings’ offense during their most successful stretch of the decade.

As of this writing, Harrison Smith has played all 13 of his seasons in the National Football League, with five straight (2015-19), and a sixth (2021) seeing him go to the Pro Bowl.

Gary Anderson made a lot of history as a Place Kicker, the first of which was becoming the first South African to play a game in the NFL.  Anderson would not just play a game or two; he would play 353, which, as of this writing, places him third all-time.

Obviously, when you play that many games, you are a pretty good player, and Anderson was.  Consistently considered among the better kickers since he debuted in 1982 (with Pittsburgh), Anderson would be a four-time Pro Bowl Selection.  His best year (and as will be discussed, most infamous) came in 1998 when, as a Minnesota Viking, Anderson became the first Kicker to go perfect in both Field Goals and Extra Points in a season.  Anderson played until 2004, and at the time of his retirement, he led the league in Points and Field Goals Made.

What hampers Anderson's Hall of Fame candidacy badly is that Place Kickers are known for their clutch kicks or critical misses.  Despite the vast amount of field goal attempts he had, Anderson will always be remembered for missing a 38-Yard Field Goal in the 1998 NFC Championship (the year he was perfect in the regular season) that would have put them in the Super Bowl. 

When you are a Kicker, that is all it takes to keep you out.

A First Round Pick from Washington State in 1984, Keith Millard made the team that drafted him (Minnesota) wait a year, as he went into the USFL for one season with the Jacksonville Bulls. 

Playing his entire NFL career with the Minnesota Vikings, Matt Blair was one of the quickest players in football, using his speed at the Outside Linebacker position to bottle up opposing offensive stars.  Blair had a six-year streak of Pro Bowls from 1977 to 1982, with 1980 earning him a First Team All-Pro Selection.  Blair was not just a star Linebacker, but a beast on Special Teams, as he blocked 20 kicks over his career.  He is a member of the Minnesota Vikings Ring of Honor.

There was a time when Joey Browner was considered the best Cornerback in the National Football League, and this wasn’t just an opinion in Minnesota...it was thought throughout the country.

A star at USC, the Minnesota Vikings brought him in as a 1^st Round Pick (17^th Overall) in 1983, and by 1985 he was a Pro Bowl Selection, an accolade that the Safety would achieve in five more consecutive years.  A four-time selection to the All-Madden Team, Browner was a vicious and efficient tackler, so much so that you felt bad for anyone who escaped the Vikings' defensive line.  He would record 37 Interceptions over his career.

Browner was also named a Second Team 1980 All-Decade Team and was also a three-time First Team All-Pro.

2025 Pre-Season Rank #38, 2024 Pre-Season Rank #50, 2023 Pre-Season Rank #72, 2022 Pre-Season Rank #79, 2021 Pre-Season Rank #90, 2020 Pre-Season Rank #72.  Peak Period: 2015-19.

Harrison Smith has been the top Safety for the Minnesota Vikings for 14 years, and despite being over 35, he looks to have a lot left to give.  A six-time Pro Bowl Selection, Smith entered the 20-20 Club (37 INT, 20.5 Sacks), and he is the current active leader in Interceptions (39) and Interception Return Yards (510); however, as we are writing this…is he active?

Vikings were waiting to see if he will return to them, or to anyone at all, but before Week 1, he signed a one-year deal to come back.  A six-time Pro Bowl selection, Harrison has a solid Hall of Fame resume, but as we have noticed for Canton, they have a very high bar at Safety, though that 20-20 club he has sure looks good on him.

Chad Greenway announced that after 11 seasons in the National Football League, all of which were with the Minnesota Vikings, that he is calling it a career.

The former 1st Round Pick (17th Overall) from the University of Iowa would become a two time Pro Bowl Selection (2011 & 2012) and would start 144 of his 156 Games at Linebacker for the Vikes.  Greenway would record 18 Quarterback Sacks and 11 Interceptions.  He was named one of our top 50 Minnesota Vikings when we put that out last year.

Greenway is not likely to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he will be eligible in 2022.

We here at Notinhalloffame.com would like to thank Chad Greenway for a memorable career and we wish him the best in his post-playing career. 

Yes, we know this is a very slow process!

We have another Top 50 All Time to announce and we have returned to the National Football League, specifically the NFC North, where we tackled the monstrous legacy of the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions previously.  This time we look at their division rival, the Minnesota Vikings.

Minnesota went to four Super Bowls in the 1970’s, all in losing efforts, but to get to that many title games you know that team was loaded with talent in that era.  Not surprisingly, that is where many of our Top 50 come from.

This was a very hard process for us, perhaps the hardest one to date!

The entire list begins here:

We invite you to click through to see where Fran Tarkenton, Adrian Petersen, Cris Carter, Alan Page and Randy Moss are, but we will tell you who we ranked #1, and we know it will shock you a little.

It is Hall of Famer, Carl Eller.

We bet while you weren’t expecting that one, were you?

This list is up to the end of the 2015 Season.

We look forward to your feedback and remember the intent is to change this annually, so your opinions and comments do matter!

Henry Thomas (AKA: Hardware Hank) came out of LSU and shortly took over the starting Left Defensive Tackle slot.  Thomas would go to the Pro Bowl twice as a Viking and record 56 Quarterback Sacks for the team.  Thomas was a Viking for eight of his fourteen years in the National Football League.

A Second Round Pick out of Grambling State, Sammy White made an immediate impact in the NFL winning the Offensive Rookie of the Year and earning the first of two Pro Bowl Selections.  White never left the Vikings and caught 393 passes for an even 6,300 Yards.  Too bad he is most known for taking a vicious hit from Jack Tatum in the Super Bowl!

Already a star Offensive Lineman when he signed with the Vikings, Steve Hutchinson would rattle off four straight Pro Bowls as well as three First Team All-Pro nods when he joined the team.  Hutchinson was only a Viking for six years but there was no doubt who led the O-Line when he played there.

Hutchnson was selected by the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020.

A four-time Pro Bowler, Ahmad Rashad (the one who really had Mrs. Huxtable) always seemed to secure clutch passes.  Rashad would finish in the top ten in Receptions five times and had well over 5,000 Receiving Yards for the Vikings.  Most notably, Rashad caught a Hail Mary pass in 1980 that won Minnesota the NFC Central Division Title.  We guarantee that this reception alone has earned him many free drinks in Minneapolis!

The popular player entered the Vikings Ring of Honor in 2017.

After he began his professional career in the USFL, Anthon Carter would find a home in the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings.  The former Michigan Wolverine star would go to three Pro Bowls and rattle off three consecutive seasons where he would go over 1,000 Yards Receiving.  Carter would also lead the NFL in Yards/Reception in 1987.

After bouncing around with limited success with the Detroit Lions and Pittsburgh Steelers, Wally Hilgenberg found a home with the Minnesota Vikings.  Hilgenberg would become the permanent starting Right Linebacker in 1969 and would become part of the famed Minnesota defense of the following decade.  He would play in all four Vikings Super Bowl appearances in the 1970s.

Drafted as the successor to Fran Tarkenton (no pressure!), Tommy Kramer would have a thirteen year run as the Vikings Quarterback.  Kramer would battle injuries throughout his career but “Two Minute Tommy” would battle it all and would have an excellent 1986 season where he would win the Comeback Player of the Year and lead the NFL in Passing Rating.

Daunte Culpepper has always been a polarizing Quarterback for some.  Culpepper put up some excellent statistics but he had Randy Moss to throw to.  The counter is that he was a man who could beat you with both his arm and his leg.