Synopsis
Experience all the playoff wins of the 1970s Minnesota Vikings, with stories and perspectives from the players themselves.
Whether you were a football fan in the 1970s or are relatively new to the sport, you probably know the names of the former Minnesota Vikings greats and have heard about their legendary games. Hall-of-fame coach Bud Grant and his teams from that decade captured the hearts and minds of fans throughout Minnesota and across the nation. Millions of spectators tuned in to postseason football in late December to hear their favorite sports announcers say, “You’re looking live at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota.” It was from this unforgettable stadium that a host of dedicated, colorful, and selfless players ushered in a Golden Age of Vikings football.
In The Purple-Clad Boys of Winter, debut author, award-winning sportswriter, and lifelong Vikings fan Rick Bowman shines a spotlight on that era’s biggest games and greatest achievements: all nine playoff victories between December 27, 1969, and December 26, 1977. Along the way, Rick shares incredible insights and unbelievable stories from the players who suited up and led Minnesota to victory. He interviewed almost every former player from the 1970s for this book!
Learn more about
- The star wide receiver who almost refused a trade to Minnesota
- Origins of the team’s popular uniform and helmet design
- The shrewd general manager who orchestrated the team’s astronomic rise
- Players wearing mismatched home jerseys for a 1973 playoff game
These moments and more are described in amazing detail, as you follow a generational National Football League team through its most monumental wins. The Purple-Clad Boys of Winter is a must-have for anyone who loves Minnesota sports. Score a copy for yourself, and you can give it as a winning gift too.
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About the Author
Rick Bowman grew up in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, as a first-generation Ohioan. When his father and mother moved to Ohio in the early 1950s from Virginia and Tennessee, respectively, he and his older brother, Bill, became football-fandom free agents. With the hometown Cleveland games often blacked out on local television, Rick began rooting for the Minnesota Vikings and the Purple People Eaters. (Bill chose Saint Louis.) Both boys fell in love with their hard-luck teams, with Rick often suffering playoff heartbreaks on or near his birthday: December 28. (It was on that date in 1975 that the Vikings lost the infamous “Hail Mary" game.)
Undaunted, Rick went on to become a lifelong Vikings fan and an accomplished sportswriter for many years. After earning a BA from the University of Akron, he wrote award-winning features about football hall-of-famers and more. A former high school and collegiate player, Rick specializes in professional-football history, particularly the era in which he grew up: the 1960s and 1970s. Now a full-time pastor, Rick lives in Akron with his wife of more than 30 years. They raised two daughters, both of whom are teachers.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Bobby Bryant was normally overlooked by CBS’s NFL Today crew of Brent Musburger, Irv Cross, Phyliss George, and eloquent sideline pontificator Jack Whitaker. That wasn’t surprising, given the pantheon of stars that made December playoff games at Metropolitan Stadium a veritable rite of passage during the 1970s. But it was the 6-1, 175-pound cornerback out of the University of South Carolina who came up with a game for the ages and a play that was the envy of the team’s three hall-of-fame defenders—a play that all but sealed the Vikings’ final National Football Conference (NFC) Championship win of the 1970s and beyond: a 24-13 triumph over the Los Angeles Rams on December 26, 1976.
Sidebar: Vikings fans have endured a lot of pain since then, as the team has lost its last six NFC title game appearances, which have come about every 10 years: 1978, 1988, 1999, 2001, 2010, and 2018.
The Rams were facing the Vikings in the NFC title game for the second time in three years. (It could have easily been three straight years if not for the heroics of one Drew Pearson; see page 227.)
Los Angeles came back from a 17–0 deficit to trail by just four points with 2:40 remaining. They drove to the Vikings’ 39-yard line and faced a fourth-and-long situation. Setting up the play, with tension at its zenith, former New York Giants star place-kicker and CBS play-by-play announcer Pat Summerall said in the staccato fashion that he learned from announcing great Ray Scott, “Fourth and 10, it might as well be fourth and goal. It might as well be anything. This is the play.”
Coming up in seconds would be what veteran Minnesota beat writer Jim Klobuchar later called, “a clash of 22 desperate men.”
Stationed, as always, on the right side of the Vikings’ vaunted defense, the wiry Bryant backpedaled with his right eye on the mercurial wide receiver Harold Jackson and his left eye on rookie quarterback Pat Haden.
Minnesota sent a rare blitz, with Matt Blair and Wally Hilgenberg crashing toward Haden from their outside linebacker spots—leaving both Bryant and Nate Wright, Bryant’s running mate on the left side, in single coverage. Wright was responsible for receiver Ron Jessie.
“It was what we defensive backs called ‘pucker time,’” said Bryant of the lonely feeling that island dwellers (aka NFL cornerbacks) feel, sans backup.
During the play, Bryant ended up drifting to his left.
“[Jackson and Jessie] both ran posts, and as I turned to the middle of the field, I noticed Haden never looked my way. Whenever I was on my backpedal, I would always keep an eye on the quarterback to see which way he was looking. He never looked Jackson’s way. When I saw him load up, I took off toward Jessie.”
Jessie was running free of Wright, and, for a moment, as the ball was released on a high loft from the right hand of the diminutive former USC Trojan signal caller, time froze.
When fighting one of Israel’s enemies in the Old Testament, Joshua asked God that the sun stand still. He needed the daylight to help secure the victory for God’s people. Bryant, who was playing in his ninth career playoff game (six of them at the Met), just needed time.
It had been less than a year earlier, with Minnesota seeking a third-straight trip to the Super Bowl, that Wright found himself one-on-one in a different game-deciding scenario.
Return to a winter’s paled Met Stadium, on December 28, 1975. Wright was one-on-one against Dallas’s rangy Drew Pearson. The Cowboys trailed, 14–10, with 32 seconds left. Legendary quarterback Roger Staubach launched the ball from his own 42-yard line, about as far and as high as he could throw it.
Bryant, as always, was on the opposite side, guarding receiver Golden Richards—a good player but not “Pearson” good. Richards’ day to that point had been two catches for 20 yards.
“They both ran ‘go’ routes,” said Bryant of that fateful play.
Looking back, as a retired auto-glass man in South Carolina, Bryant probably wishes that Richards had run a post. That’s because a convincing Staubach pump fake toward Richards caused Paul Krause, one of the team’s three defensive hall-of-famers, to arrive a step-and-a-half too late to help Wright, who was the recipient of what could perhaps be considered the most subtle push-off in NFL history.
Pearson’s touchdown catch off his back hip gave Dallas a 17–14 win. Had Minnesota won, they would have hosted the Rams the next week. Instead, they watched as the Cowboys beat the Rams in the NFC title game, en route to their third Super Bowl appearance.
“I wouldn’t say we hated [Dallas], but they got a lot of PR,” said Vikings star running back Chuck Foreman. “They didn’t become ‘America’s Team’ until they beat us on that doggone Drew Pearson crap. I never liked Dallas. Thomas Henderson always talked the whole game, but he always got beat by me. We beat them on several occasions. A lot of those guys were trash talkers. That was our greatest football team, and we had to lose on crap like that.”
Like Staubach’s pass the year before, Haden’s long heave hung seemingly forever in the air; and Jessie, who had spent time as a running back in the same University of Kansas backfield as Washington legend John Riggins, was about to conjure up Pearson.
“Not again, not again,” thought the God-fearing Bryant, who had been sensational enough as a left-handed pitcher to get drafted in consecutive years by Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees (1966) and Boston Red Sox (1967).
Staubach’s launch was fortuitously underthrown, causing Wright to stumble, an occurrence aided by Pearson’s slight right-handed basketball box-out push. (Pearson had played basketball at South River High School in New Jersey). Meanwhile, Haden’s toss was plenty out in front of Jessie.
“I knew there was a chance [Haden] could come off Jessie and throw back to Jackson, but I had good position,” Bryant said of his risky maneuver. He made like Krause and came from what seemed like the first base dugout at a baseball game to snag a range-roving, leaping interception between the hash marks inside the 10-yard line.
“I tripped when I came down with it,” said Bryant. “I got up and ran 10 to 15 yards with it and then got down. The last thing I wanted to have happen was to get tackled and fumble the ball.”
In retrospect, it was not only one of the most athletic interceptions in NFL history but, given the game’s magnitude, one of the timeliest, a combination that single-handedly belied Bryant’s hall-of-fame detractors.
“I got there right when the ball was there,” said Bryant. “I have that picture at home. It may not have been my best game—I had a couple of three-interception games—but given the situation, it probably was. I’m thankful I got there in time. It probably would have been a touchdown. I was lucky he didn’t come back the other way, but by that time our defensive line would have been all over him.”
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