Most Underrated Vikings in History?

Bleacher Report’s Mike Tanier recently created a list of the most underrated players in NFL history — players who not only were snubbed from the Hall of Fame, but almost lost to the historical record despite greatness (or near-greatness) as an athlete. Tanier peppers the list with some current players he thinks are not receiving their due praise as well, like Philip Rivers.

Of the 25-player list, only one Viking appears — Jim Marshall. It makes some sense that there’s only one Vikings player on a limited list. After all, there are 32 teams and the Vikings are not among the group of teams with a Super Bowl ring to their names.

Still, the Vikings only have five Hall of Famers from their incredible 1969-76 run, despite having the best record in the NFL over that period. While they weren’t able to get over the final hump, many of the individual players from that era — and other eras — deserve high praise.

Each day this week, we’ll look at some of the players in the Vikings’ past who deserve to be better remembered, but we’ll start with the defensive end Tanier isolated: Marshall.

Marshall is certainly worthy of the recognition. If counting unofficial sacks since 1960 (instead of merely official sacks since 1982), Marshall’s 127 sacks ranks 23rd, ahead of Hall of Famers like Andy Robustelli (37th), Elvin Bethea (42nd) and Charles Haley (50th).

With 30 fumble recoveries, he ranks second all-time among defensive players in the statistic (behind Rod Woodson and just ahead of Jason Taylor).

This historical sack list is one I’ve been updating every year, and the initial work comes from football historian John Turney. Because internet archives get deleted and his work gets reported in dribs and drabs, over half of the database now comes from manually filling in the holes.

That work allows us to do some interesting analysis that might highlight why a player like Marshall has been more notorious as a Hall of Fame snub than a repeat finalist.