The following comes from a 1962 Minnesota Vikings pamphlet. This delightful publication is like a modest media guide. Seeing as the Vikings had a single season under it’s belt, this pamphlet probably isn’t much more expansive than the official media guide of the day. It looked back on the team’s first season and toward their second season. I like this summary of the Vikings 1961 season. I like the writing. Sports writers no longer write like this.
Hi-Lights of the1961 Viking Season
(Bustling Baby of 1961)
Common sense, the astrology tables and the wise old birds of the National Football League suggested at the start of 1961 that the Vikings should take their pastings quietly and not bother anybody.
But they came in squalling, with a 37-13 romp over the Chicago Bears on opening day that made the Vikings a relative success, competitively, no matter what they did the rest of the season.
This was a team built from the hand-me-downs of other NFL organizations, of large batches of rookies and a handful of September arrivals for whom the club paid heavily in traded draft choices.
Yet, remarkably, this was a squad which attained a unity and spirit of the corps matched by few teams in the league. It was this, even more than the tactical generalship that he gave the Vikings, which represented Norm Van Brocklin’s highest achievement in his first year as coach.
“Nobody,” said Vince Lombardi of the world championship Packers, “hit us harder than the Vikings. And they did it on two straight weeks.”
From the tumultuous success against the Bears on opening day, the Vikings encountered the expected dark days. They lost seven in a row, but there is a good chance it might have gone differently if Baltimore’s Steve Myrha had not kicked his impossible 52-yard field goal in the final second to beat them in the third game.
In any case, while the Vikings lost, they were never overrun. And on a sunny day in Minneapolis in November they squared it with the Colts - 28-20 for their second victory. And three weeks later they picked off another in a 42-21 frolic against the Los Angeles Rams.
The Vikings frightened nobody defensively (they finished last in the league with a yield of 400 yards a game). But their offense, after just three months of tooling, was as good as half the teams’ in the league.
For this the garlands belonged primarily to Fran Tarkenton, the daring and inventive rookie quarterback from Georgia who threw 18 touchdown passes; Hugh McElhenny, the proud old king of the halfbacks who enjoyed one of his finest seasons as the symbolic leader of a crew of NFL castouts; Jerry Reichow, a football retread who became one of the money-playing receivers in the league with 11 touchdown catches; and Van Brocklin himself, whose football savvy gave the Vikings a jump they would not otherwise have had.
There were other important people in ‘61 for the Vikings - young players like Jim Marshall and Jim Prestel on the defensive line, Tommy Mason, Gordie Smith, Grady Alderman and Ray Hayes on offense, linebacker Rip Hawkins; and veterans like Charlie Sumner, Dean Derby, Frank Youso, Dave Middleton and Gerry Huth.
The fans, evidently, liked it. The Vikings in their first season drew 270,084 at home, and average of nearly 34,000 a game.
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