This topic pops up on occasion. The top four players/figures in a franchise's history. A Mount Rushmore. As with any "best of," "best ever," "best whatever" it's highly subjective and hotly debated. The funny thing about those debates is that no one's right and no one's wrong. It's an opinion. So, here's the Flea Flicker's Minnesota Vikings Mount Rushmore.
Bud Grant
Alan Page
Cris Carter
Adrian Peterson
I lean to these four because they are the four than meant the most to me in my history with the Vikings. There's really nothing stunning about the four as many long-time fans of the team might come to the same group. Each was pretty great. Bud Grant and Alan Page are probably automatics on nearly every Vikings Mount Rushmore. As a kid just getting to know the team, Grant was the Vikings for me. It wasn't a football Sunday until I saw the coach on the sideline. In an era of great defensive tackles Alan Page was arguably the best. Bob Lilly, Merlin Olsen, Joe Greene, Curley Culp. Page is the only one of the bunch to be named the league's MVP. He was the first defensive player to take home the award. Add to a tremendous NFL career what he's done since he stepped away from the game and Page will always have a spot on my Vikings Mount Rushmore.
I've always been partial to receivers. That was my position. The supposedly simple act of catching a football always fascinated me. In my honest opinion, Cris Carter was the best ever at simply catching the football. He was great at a lot of other aspects of playing the position, route running, body positioning, end zone and sideline catches, getting away with pass interference. It was the act of catching that football that he turned into an art form. Cris Carter and Alan Page are my favorite all-time Vikings players. My appreciation for Carter's play and his place in the league's history led me to Canton in 2013 for his much-deserved Pro Football Hall of Fame induction. An added bonus to that trip was that I met Page while I was there. It was a fantastic weekend.
Adrian Peterson. It's going to be tough to see him in a New Orleans Saints uniform. Just as it was tough to see Page in a Bears uniform and Carter in a Dolphins uniform. It's a damn shame. In the sad days of this offseason when it felt inevitable that Peterson would be playing football for a team other than the Vikings I viewed some of his highlights. My goodness, he was sure fun to watch. 10 years flew way too fast. Especially when two of those years were taken away. Peterson could make a defense look foolish in so many ways. He could run past a defender, run over a defender, or simply make them miss with a drastic cut. Every carry was a thrill. Peterson was one of the best running backs I've ever seen. Still is. He's just going to be doing it with the wrong team. It's a damn shame.
The list of former Vikings that are tough to leave off of this Mount Rushmore starts with Fran Tarkenton, Randall McDaniel and Randy Moss. Moss and McDaniel are in the conversations of the best to ever play their respective positions. Tarkenton is the best quarterback in franchise history. It isn't even close. He held every significant career passing record when he retired. It was nearly 20 years before Dan Marino finally made them his in the mid-1990s, a much different passing era. It feels criminal to not have Tarkenton, Moss, or McDaniel on that mountain but that's what happens when you are limited to only four spots. There are other Vikings worthy of Mount Rushmore acclaim. Jim Marshall. He was the heart of those great Vikings teams of the late 1960s through most of the 1970s. Every Vikings fan loves John Randle. Joey Browner too. Carl Eller, Paul Krause, Chris Doleman, Ron Yary, Mick Tingelhoff, Gary Zimmerman, Chuck Foreman, Ahmad Rashad, Matt Blair, Scott Studwell, Anthony Carter, Antoine Winfield, Kevin Williams, Jared Allen. Damn! Why did Gutzon Borglum have to carve only four?
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