Vikings All-Time Top 5 QBs: Set a Course for Adventure!
The Vikings Love Boat promises something for everyone: lap dances, tequila binges, madcap scrambles ... even a guest appearance by Deadpool! Oh, and (ugh) Kirk Cousins.
Before we get to the Vikings quarterbacks, some huge news: Aaron Schatz’s FTN Football Almanac 2024 is now on sale! It’s the same preseason annual you have known and trusted for 20 (yes, 20) years: DVOA analysis, playoff odds, fantasy projections, in-depth looks at all 32 teams, college football previews and much more! I wrote eight chapters this year, so you can count upon the usual mix of dad jokes, snark, genuine insights and barely-concealed pessimism for every team but the Chiefs.
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1. Fran Tarkenton
Tarkenton was a lot like Russell Wilson, except that his career ran in the opposite direction. Tarkenton, like Wilson, was a diminutive scrambler with a gift for miraculous plays. Each also had/has a head for off-field business and multimedia pursuits. Tarkenton began his career driving his head coach crazy but grew into a respected leader. Wilson did it backwards, which is a story for another segment.
Tarkenton was the first quarterback of the expansion Vikings in 1961. His coach, Norm Van Brocklin, led the Eagles to an NFL Championship at quarterback in 1960 but left the team when they would not make him a combination player/coach. Van Brocklin, a man of the previous decade, didn’t care much for hippies, unions, subversives or (worst of all) scramblers.
"A quarterback should run only from sheer terror," said Norman Van Brocklin a few years ago when he was a non-running quarterback. In his fifth year as a head coach and the Minnesota Vikings' fifth year as a football team, Van Brocklin conceivably could win the Western Conference championship of the National Football League with Fran (Peach) Tarkenton, a quarterback who runs from sheer delight. "I can't change him," Van Brocklin says philosophically. "Scrambling is his style. When it gets to third and 40, I let him call the play."
The Vikings, who open the season next week against the Western champion Colts in the day's big game, probably have the best third-and-40 offense in football—a doubtful but electrifying distinction for a team that rarely gets into that kind of a jam. Their third-and-40 play is almost always the same: Tarkenton takes the ball, retreats hopefully into the blocking pocket, then begins to improvise. He leaves the pocket, tripping nimbly a step or two ahead of 260-pound defenders and confusing his blockers beyond repair. As he wanders farther and farther behind the line of scrimmage, he seems to know exactly where the tacklers are and just how to avoid them. He watches as his receivers invent patterns downfield. Finally he throws, and as often as not he gets the first down and occasionally he gets a touchdown. This may be the single most exciting play in football—exciting to the fans and to Van Brocklin, who is far more active following Tarkenton from the sideline than he ever was as a quarterback on the field. – Tex Maule, Sports Illustrated, September, 1965.
The Vikings were initially terrible but got better quickly; Van Brocklin’s tough-SOB routine paid short-term dividends, and general manager Jim Finks turned out to be a personnel wizard with a gift for finding talent in the Canadian Football League (where he had been a player/coach/GM, sometimes simultaneously). Also, Tarkenton was very good and very dangerous. But Van Brocklin and Tarkenton never stopped beefing; it doesn’t take much reading between the lines of Maule’s Van Brocklin profile from 1965, quoted above, to taste the sugar coating. Van Brocklin even benched Tarkenton after a loss to the Packers in favor of pocket-bound nonentity Bob Berry late in the 1966 season. Berry threw five interceptions, and Tarkenton was back the following week.
Tarkenton issued a resignation letter to the Vikings in February of 1967. A few days later, Van Brocklin also resigned. The temperamental coach had quit in a huff in the middle of the 1965 season but soon returned, which may explain why Tarkenton did not rescind his resignation until the Vikings traded him: Van Brocklin was the kind of movie monster you could not turn your back on until certain he was TRULY dead.
When the Minnesota Vikings were just starting out as an expansion team, a decade ago, Van Brocklin was the coach and Tarkenton the quarterback, fresh out of Georgia. The coach had strong, “hard‐nosed” ideas about exactly how each game should be planned and called, and how quarterbacks should stay in their pockets. Tarkenton, just as firmly, believed in creative improvisation and the avoidance of being a stationary target for on‐rushing monsters.
Their personalities, as well as their ideas, grated so much that Tarkenton actually decided to quit football rather than continue in Minnesota. With a lot of outside businesses going for him, he could afford to, even then. It was this demand that he be traded that led to his becoming a Giant. – New York Times, November 15, 1971.
The Giants traded two first-round picks and two second rounders to the Vikings to liberate Tarkenton. Two of the draft picks became Ron Yary and Ed White, star offensive linemen of the 1970s. But that doesn’t mean the Giants got robbed. “The Giants? The truth was, they immediately became watchable again,” Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post wrote decades later. “Tarkenton was a fearless player, and in many ways was the forerunner, by almost 60 years, of the kind of quarterback play we see routinely now — from Josh Allen to Lamar Jackson, Daniel Jones to Jalen Hurts.”
Level-headed, soft-spoken Bud Grant arrived from the CFL to replace Van Brocklin. After a year of culture shock, the Vikings grew into one of the NFL’s best teams, winning the league championship in 1969. Quarterback became the only weak spot on the roster; Joe Kapp led the Vikings to an NFL championship and a loss in Super Bowl IV, then left in a contract dispute. Replacement Gary Cuozzo lacked Kapp’s tipsy-gunslinger qualities.
As fate would have it, just as the Vikings were souring on Cuozzo, Tarkenton was bickering with Giants ownership over money – he wanted a business loan of a half-million dollars from Wellington Mara – and openly pining for a chance to play for a contender. So the Giants traded Tarkenton back to the Vikings in 1972 for Norm Snead, some other players and a pair of high draft picks.
Tarkenton and the Vikings soon established a pattern. Each year, Tarkenton led the Purple People Eaters defense, an offensive line featuring Yary, White and center Mick Tingelhoff, and a playmaker corps featuring Chuck Foreman, John Gilliam, Ahmad Rashad (in later years) and others to the playoffs. They often hosted playoff games in open-air Metropolitan Stadium, where some warm-weather foe like the Rams would nearly freeze to death like Napoleon’s Grande Armee in Russia. The Vikings would then reach the Super Bowl and get hammered by the Steelers or Raiders. It happened three times on Tarkenton’s watch, four times overall. History would repeat itself – icy homefield advantage and all – a few decades later with Jim Kelly’s Bills.
“Fran Tarkenton looks better right now in his 15th season than ever before. His Vikings are the only undefeated team in the NFL, and he is getting ready in the next 15 or 20 minutes to break every meaningful record available to a passer. And he still hasn't come close to being seriously injured, despite those journeys into the unknown. Also, he hasn't always benefited from brilliant receivers, and he calls his own plays, and he can see the whole field better than anyone, and he has an amazing touch, and he can throw long and short and medium, and he's a leader, and he doesn't panic, and he can make things happen. But mainly he is going to own all these passing records, and the critics can just shut up.” — Dan Jenkins, Sports Illustrated, November, 1975.
Tarkenton won the MVP award at age 35 in 1975. The “critics” Jenkins mentioned in the quote above did not like Tarkenton’s scrambling; mobile quarterbacks have been a new and controversial tactical development for the last 70 years or so. The records Jenkins wrote of were inevitably shattered. Tarkenton retired as the all-time leader in passing yards, touchdowns and every other category of substance. He led the NFL in attempts, completions and yards in 1978, his final season and the first season of 16 games and modern, pass-friendly rules.
Tarkenton retired to both entrepreneurial and broadcasting careers, including a stint as the co-host of That’s Incredible, an early-80’s variety show.
Russell Wilson and Ciara have hosted a few television events. You could totally see them, with their Sonny and Cher vibe, hosting some primetime talent competition upon Wilson’s retirement in six months, couldn’t you?
“You cannot measure what Tarkenton brought to a football field,” the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote upon his retirement. “He delighted us and he drove us to the verge of despair.” He also carried the NFL and the Vikings from the dawn of the AFL era through the start of the truly modern era, becoming one of the most durable and consistent quarterbacks in history, despite being only slightly taller than Cathy Lee Crosby.
Tarkenton’s career arc now looks like an anachronism: he doesn’t belong among the wild men with short careers and meager stats of his time, but with the CEO-type quarterbacks of today. And his scrambling would still drive some old-school hammerhead coaches crazy.
2. Daunte Culpepper
The season forgot Daunte Culpepper, just passed him by. He completed 69 percent of his passes, threw 39 touchdown passes and only 11 interceptions, threw for a Vikings-record 4,717 yards, had the fourth-highest passer rating ever, yet was virtually invisible.
Culpepper didn't mock-moon anybody like his teammate Randy Moss. He didn't set records like Peyton Manning, didn't appear on the cover of People Magazine or do an episode of "The Simpsons" like Tom Brady. No hot actress jumped into his arms before Monday Night Football, as happened to Terrell Owens. Eli Manning won one game, went 1-6, and got more attention than Culpepper, who had no chance to outrun the quarterback shadow cast by undefeated rookie Ben Roethlisberger and three-time conference finalist Donovan McNabb. Michael Vick had a lower passer rating than 20 quarterbacks, yet Vick got one more MVP vote than did Culpepper.
Even in his biggest victory, Sunday in Green Bay, Culpepper was No. 3 on the marquee. Brett Favre threw four interceptions and began mulling retirement. Moss pantomimed a moon and became the subject of national debate. And Culpepper, once again an afterthought, had to settle for throwing four touchdown passes, no interceptions, and laying waste to the Packers in Lambeau.
It's the greatest season nobody knows. – Michael Wilbon, Washington Post, January 13, 2005
Culpepper’s 2004 season was the best quarterback season in Vikings history, per DYAR. His 2000 season, when he led the NFL with 33 passing touchdowns in his second year after not throwing a pass as a rookie, ranked second. Passing and rushing statistics are included in these rankings.
The period between those two outstanding seasons was complicated. Culpepper signed a huge contract after the 2000 season. He needed knee surgery late in a disappointing 2001 campaign. He took another step backward in 2002 and was briefly benched.
Daunte Culpepper, the Vikings' 25-year-old starting quarterback, once as heralded as Michael Vick is now, had been benched.
The benching came at the end of the third quarter when a Vikings crowd, which had been chanting, ''Bouman! Bouman!'' roared its approval when Todd Bouman was put in the game. Bouman, who played high school and college football in Minnesota, would lead the Vikings to two quick touchdowns.
This wasn't Tommy Maddox for Kordell Stewart in Pittsburgh or Chad Pennington for Vinny Testaverde with the Jets. Only two seasons ago, the 6-foot-4, 260-pound Culpepper was anointed as the leader of a new breed: he had great size, speed and strength. In 2000, his second season, he made the Pro Bowl.
Yesterday, he was booed without mercy. – William C. Rhoden, New York Times, November 11, 2002.
Culpepper returned to the lineup the following week but remained erratic as a passer. He rebounded significantly in 2003. As Wilbon wrote at the top of this segment, fans remained skeptical of Culpepper during his 2004 surge, even as he guided the Vikings to a playoff berth. Culpepper threw four touchdowns in a playoff win over Brett Favre’s Packers, then threw two interceptions and had a generally miserable game in an icy loss to Donovan McNabb’s Eagles.
This takes us to the start of 2005 …
Four Minnesota Vikings players have been charged with misdemeanor offenses stemming from a raucous October boat cruise on Lake Minnetonka. Daunte Culpepper, Fred Smoot, Bryant McKinnie and Moe Williams were each charged with indecent conduct, disorderly conduct and lewd or lascivious conduct. Team officials say they take the charges very seriously and will consider disciplinary action after the legal process runs its course.
Hennepin County Sheriff Pat McGowan says witnesses identified 30 Vikings players as being among the 90 passengers who were on the two chartered boats on Lake Minnetonka in October.
McGowan says he believes there were other passengers who violated statutes that forbid public sexual activity and nudity. However so far eyewitnesses could only identify Culpepper, McKinney, Smoot and Williams. He says the investigation is ongoing and could result in more charges. But right now, the cases are built solely on eyewitness accounts.
"Based on the subpoenas and search warrants we have not been able to obtain any physical evidence. Nor is there any indication that there were any pictures taken," he said.
Here's what the eyewitnesses reported to investigators: quarterback Daunte Culpepper and running back Moe Williams received lap dances from naked women and fondled them.
Starting offensive lineman Bryant McKinnie is charged with giving and receiving oral sex from an unidentified woman. And Fred Smoot, who is believed to have chartered the boat with another player, was charged with using a sex toy on two unclothed women. The witnesses say all the acts happened in plain view of other passengers. – Brandt Williams, December 15, 2005.
Getting a lapdance doesn’t sound like a crime, but a $100-million quarterback on a losing team must be beyond reproach. The Love Boat scandal painted a picture of a less-than-championship-caliber team culture, and it was probably accurate. (Vikings running back Onterrio Smith taught the world about the many uses of a Whizzinator at about the same time.) At any rate, Culpepper was on IR with a season-ending knee injury by the time the Love Boat scandal broke.
Culpepper demanded either more money or a trade in 2006. It sounded like he was forcing his way out of town. New head coach Brad Childress, fresh from watching the Terrell Owens/Donovan McNabb beef tear the Eagles apart, granted Culpepper his wish, trading the quarterback to the Dolphins for a second-round pick.
"It just became a deal where I didn't feel like it was the team, I felt like it was 'me,'" Childress said after the trade. "I went through a big 'me' situation last year with a guy [Owens] who was all about 'me.'"
Culpepper’s mobility was gone after two knee injuries, and he found himself on the reclamation-project circuit soon after leaving the Vikings.
Ranking Culpepper ahead of the next guy was trickier than you might think. He wasn’t playing well before getting hurt in 2001, was downright bad in 2002 and does not appear to have been a fully-positive influence in 2005. But Culpepper led two playoff victories, was quietly very good in 2003 and was stuck playing for Mike Tice, the gym-teacher type of coach who almost inspires players to roll their eyes and charter weekend sex cruises. Also, let’s not pretend the early 2000s were a fully hospitable time for black quarterbacks: we’ll get to Rush Limbaugh and Donovan McNabb before you know it. Culpepper never enjoyed a shred of benefit-of-the-doubt, as the Bouman! Bouman! chants mentioned earlier illustrate.
Ultimately, Culpepper’s roller coaster ride brought the Vikings close to the Super Bowl a few times. The same cannot be said of the next guy’s long drive down a flat road.
I leave you with a ditty I composed when I was writing for Fox Sports at the height of the Love Boat era, dedicated to the legacy of the great Gordon Lightfoot:
They took off their clothes
And did God only knows
On the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.
“This party’s a hoot”
Said a guest to Fred Smoot,
“And if this is illegal, then sue me!”
Their spirits sucked dry
Tice’s troops were not spry
So they fell to a 2-5 record.
For the price of a grope
They were sunk without hope,
Twas the wreck of the Duante Culpepper!
On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t dedicate that to the legacy of the great Gordon Lightfoot.
3. Kirk Cousins
ARRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
(Doubles over in pain beside the downstairs toilet)
(Stares at reflection in mirror for an hour, reevaluating life choices)
(Gathers composure)
Ahem.