A Viking Funeral : After Rising to Near Top in NFL, Team Goes Up in Flames

Most football teams have troubles. They’re human, aren’t they?

In recent years, however, the Minnesota Vikings have largely surmounted theirs.

Only two NFC clubs, the Vikings and San Francisco 49ers, reached the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.

Now, how about four for four?

In Minnesota? Unlikely.

This is the year the dam broke in Minnesota, overwhelming the Vikings with more troubles than most football players, human or fictional, see in a lifetime. It’s all in the 1990 headlines:

--”Vikings’ 1-6 Start Worst in 30 Years.”

--”Herschel Isn’t the Answer, Trade Ruins Vikes.”

--”Wilson, Vike QB, Lost to Injury.”

--”All-Pro Millard Gone for Season.”

--”Viking Coach Hints He’s Quitting.”

--”Owners Sue Owners, Rock Viking Front Office.”

--”Viking GM Deserts Club for New World League.”

--”Viking President Out, Name New One.”

--”Viking Kicker Named in Heroin Probe.”

That’s the short answer to the question, “What happened to the team that put 12 players in the Pro Bowl in the last two years?”

If you count running back Herschel Walker in 1988, there have been 13 Viking Pro Bowl players since then, setting an NFL record.

But you really shouldn’t count Walker.

For one thing, he was a Dallas Cowboy in 1988.

For another, the 1989 Walker trade, which the Vikings made to get them into the Super Bowl, has, instead, led them to the bottom of the standings.

Only two years ago, Walker, the NFC’s fastest running back, gained 1,500 yards for Tom Landry on a 3-13 team, finishing first in NFL yardage at the age of 26. But on the Minnesota team, in a much different offensive system, new coaches have been unable to harness his speed.

Club morale has sagged as Walker’s mostly low-paid teammates contemplate his contributions on his guaranteed salary--a flat $1 million per year--and as they absorb the other blows that have all but sunk the Viking ship.

The torpedoes have hit, one after another, costing the Vikings their quarterback, Wade Wilson; their best defensive player, Keith Millard; their general manager, Mike Lynn; their president, Wheelock Whitney; their field goal kicker, Donald Igwebuike--who was benched by the U.S. Customs office--and maybe even some owners.

Igwebuike was indicted on charges that he and two friends conspired to smuggle heroin out of Nigeria.

And the club’s 12 owners, in a bitter fight for control, are at each other’s throats.

“I’m not looking down the road,” Minnesota Coach Jerry Burns said one day recently, speaking for both himself and his team. “The road’s got a curve in it.”

In the view of Burns’ defensive coach, Floyd Peters, the players who could have handled all this turmoil have never been born.

“Concentration is everything in football,” Peters said. “This is a game that’s played between the ears. And with all the (distractions) we’ve had, our concentration level has been the lowest I’ve seen.”

That’s one thing.

Even more damaging, some say, is the Vikings’ offensive philosophy, particularly their ineffective strategy in the red zone--the last 20 yards before the goal line.

Among those who see that problem is Viking free safety Joey Browner, who has been voted to the Pro Bowl five consecutive times--once more than San Francisco’s Ronnie Lott.

“We’re (failing) in two places,” Browner said. “We need more mental toughness on defense. And offensively, we’ve got to score more points when we’re in scoring position.”

How?

“I’m not an offensive genius, but one thing is obvious,” he said. “We’re not running the right plays on the (goal line).”

So a title favorite--a veteran Super Bowl contender--has started 3-6.

But this year, few pro clubs have won more games than they’ve lost. Add up the Vikings’ goal-line failures, their injuries, their other distractions and the Walker fiasco, and they’re still in the playoff race.

With some truth, and possibly even some hope, Browner said: “All we have to do now is win.”

THE STRANGE STORY OF HERSCHEL WALKER

The message on a large sign in a Minneapolis sporting goods store tempted a recent traveler.

“Viking Souvenirs Here,” it read. “All Herschel Walker Souvenirs Half Price.”

Even so, the salesman said sadly, “Walker isn’t selling.”

But, then, neither are the other Vikings.

They’ve made an about-face on the field this year that is as curious as it is dramatic. With a formerly productive star who has become an unproductive goat, the Vikings, once an obvious Super Bowl contender, have experienced a sudden status reversal.

And the wildest thing about it is that Minnesota’s leadership brought in Walker deliberately, reasoning that he was the one player the Vikings needed to win the championship.

“If we don’t make the Super Bowl in two years, it will be a bad trade,” General Manager Lynn said when the deal was made Oct. 9, 1989.

Was Lynn acting on his own, or with the advice and consent of the coaching staff?

“I’ve never made a trade that the head coach wasn’t involved in and concurred in,” he said. “(Trades) are my ultimate decision, but I’ve always (consulted) Bud Grant or Jerry Burns.”

Burns, who contemplated resigning last month but later reconsidered, agrees.

“Looking back at the time before (Walker), we were looking for a big back,” said the coach who succeeded Grant in 1986. “And he seemed to fit the bill.”

There were apparently no dissenting votes even from the defensive side.

Said Peters: “No one questioned (Walker’s) ability when he became available.”

No one, that is, in Minnesota. Elsewhere in the league, it was by then pretty well understood that Walker lacked some conventional running-back skills.

Specifically, he has proved ineffective on slashes and sweeps--and when cutting in a broken field--although his great speed could be channeled creatively by a team that made it a point to do that, as Dallas did in 1988 when Walker averaged nearly 100 yards per game.

Accordingly, the Vikings have been indicted by their critics on two counts: ignorance of what they were getting in Walker, and a failure to adjust when they did find out, as Landry adjusted to Walker in Dallas.

“The Minnesota system is totally wrong for Herschel,” Hall of Famer O.J. Simpson said.

Burns has reacted to the criticism by taking Walker out of the lineup and rotating him with tough, slow journeymen--a move that upsets both Walker and his agent, Peter Johnson.

“Herschel is tired of being a $1-million decoy,” Johnson, said. “He’s lost confidence in himself, become tentative.”

Midway through his most embarrassing season in football, Walker, as pleasant as ever, said quietly that if the Vikings were running him in the I-formation, he would be as confident and productive as ever.

“During the off-season, I ran the 100 (yards) in 9.3--in my tennis shoes,” he said.

He has been in the league’s top three all season in kickoff returns--perhaps the best measure of an NFL sprinter.

“I don’t feel that I’ve lost anything,” he said.

In fact, he has so much spare energy that he’s been spending his days off--Tuesdays--trying out for the Olympic bobsled team.

Criticized for not putting football first, he said: “Other (Vikings) fish, hunt and play golf Tuesdays. What’s the difference?”

Walker’s most uncharacteristic Viking game was his first one. Before the coaches could teach him the ins and outs of their slow-breaking, trap-blocking system last season--four days after he came over from Dallas--Walker gained 148 yards against the Green Bay Packers.

“We were in the I-formation most of the game,” he said of that day--his only 100-yard day as a Viking. “For the last time.”

Burns responds that as a primary formation, the I won’t do it any more--and the NFL’s other coaches agree.

There are, however, some one-back formations in which, according to Viking critics, Walker would excel as the team’s single running back.

Asked about that, Burns said: “This isn’t a one-man team.”

And he has declined to combine Walker with Anthony Carter, Hassan Jones, Cris Carter and tight end Steve Jordan in a basic one-back, four-receiver system that would blend Minnesota’s five most gifted offensive players.

“That’s hardly a one-man offense,” Walker said.

Thus the Walker trade is increasingly embittering Minnesota fans a year after the club got him in exchange for three first-round draft choices and five players, among other considerations.

Did that trade mortgage the Vikings’ future?

“That’s the kind of nonsense you keep hearing,” said Star Tribune columnist Jim Klobuchar, who covered the Vikings for years.

“The players they gave up were all expendable, except for a linebacker (Jesse Solomon). As for No. 1 draft choices, they’re not so important anymore.

“The Rams said they were going to the Super Bowl with Gaston Green and the other draft choices they got for Eric Dickerson. It doesn’t necessarily work out that way.

“The thing that’s wrong with the Walker trade isn’t what the Vikings gave up for him. The problem is that as a Viking running back, Herschel is a marvelous bobsledder.”

LYNN: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE VIKINGS

The man in the middle of the Minnesota muddle is Mike Lynn, 54, who got into sports as an executive with the failing Memphis team of the old American Basketball Assn.

At Memphis one day, facing bankruptcy, Lynn traded the club’s three best players for three young players and $250,000.

Predictably, the youngsters floundered in their first start, stirring a big-voiced Memphis fan to stand up and yell: “We’ve seen enough of these guys. Where’s Cash?”

Next, the crowd took up the chant: “We want Cash!”

And Lynn, red-faced, left town, resurfacing shortly in Minnesota, where as a Viking executive he built some of the the most talented teams in pro football.

In just the last Pro Bowl or two, the Vikings have been represented by two offensive linemen, two defensive linemen, two linebackers, two defensive backs and a quarterback, among others, all of them Lynn’s men.

During his 16-year term as the NFL’s senior general manager--as Lynn worked his way up to a salary of $1 million a year--the Vikings played in two Super Bowls, won seven NFC Central titles, made the playoffs 10 times, and, in the last three seasons, lost playoff games only to the eventual Super Bowl champions--San Francisco twice and Washington.

From the start, Lynn, the club’s chief executive officer and a part owner as well as general manager, made record profits for the organization while paying some of the league’s lowest salaries.

“We’re the only NFL club that’s made a profit every year for 16 years,” he said.

That policy led to charges of racism against Lynn--charges made in anger by Viking veterans who “simply wanted to be paid like other all-pros,” Klobuchar said.

“Guys who want a raise will say anything,” he said.

Lynn said: “There was never anything to it.”

The playoff record of the Vikings, Lynn’s friends say, stems from his personnel policies.

Keeping himself in charge of player acquisition--including trades and the draft--he scored one coup after another.

The club’s three first-round choices in 1983, ’84 and ’85 were Browner and defensive linemen Keith Millard and Chris Doleman, who have become the heart of the Vikings’ defense.

In wheeling and dealing, Lynn succeeded George Allen as a master of the creative trade:

--When Pro Bowl linebacker Mike Merriweather’s salary proved too much for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Lynn arranged to get him.

--When Philadelphia’s Buddy Ryan concluded that Cris Carter couldn’t do anything but catch long passes, Lynn got him, too.

--When no one else believed offensive tackle Gary Zimmerman, who said he would never play for the New York Giants, Lynn believed, and Zimmerman became another Minnesota Pro Bowl player.

No NFL coach or executive showed more faith than Lynn in old United States Football League players--Millard, Zimmerman, Anthony Carter and others who have made it to the Pro Bowl as Vikings.

It was only to be expected, therefore, that when the most famous USFL player of them all, Herschel Walker, hit the market last year, Lynn would get Walker, too.

That deal was to be Lynn’s crowning achievement as the NFL’s boldest trader. It was to make Minnesota champion and Lynn famous.

Trader Mike’s biggest trade has become his biggest dud, and, unexpectedly, his last trade. At the height of the Walker storm last month, with the Vikings losing game after game, Lynn made an astonishing announcement. He would move again.

Effective immediately, he would become the president of the NFL’s spring league--the World League of American Football (WLAF)--dividing his work week 50-50 between the Vikings and the WLAF until leaving Minneapolis on Jan. 1.

Lynn’s opponents in Minnesota, caught by surprise, charged that in addition to deserting the Viking ship, he had floated his own life raft. They noted that after serving from the start on the NFL committee supervising the WLAF, he was present for duty when the committee decided to unload league founder Tex Schramm.

Lynn says, however, that he has long had a career change in mind--that he and his wife agreed several years ago to explore new horizons when his Viking contract expired Dec. 31, 1990.

Their friends substantiate Lynn’s statements that for some time, he has been about equally interested in the Vikings and international football.

He and the Rams’ Georgia Frontiere have been the NFL’s most vigorous proponents of overseas summer games.

Lynn is aware that in his last season in charge, he is presiding over one of the NFL’s three most sensational busts. In addition to the Vikings (3-6), they are the Rams (3-6) and the Denver Broncos (3-6)--all big winners last season.

“I have a theory about these three teams,” Lynn said. “They’re the three that were shellacked in the playoffs last year by the San Francisco 49ers. None of us have recovered from the shellacking.”

THE REAL PROBLEM: TOO MANY OWNERS

These days, if truth is stranger than fiction in Minnesota, the real wonder isn’t the Viking slump or the Walker recession or Lynn’s defection.

The strangest truth is that the $100-million Viking franchise is the property of divided, scrapping owners who, with part-owner Lynn still leading one faction, share it as follows:

--Half of them are in full charge.

--The other half have a majority financial interest.

As they fight for final control on two fronts--in Minnesota courtrooms and in the NFL commissioner’s office in New York--the end, pending the last appeal, is not in sight.

Basically, the fight is between Lynn and Carl Pohlad, who owns the Minnesota Twins.

Pohlad, a Minneapolis banker, is the wealthiest member of the group that owns 50.6% of the Vikings but has only three seats on the nine-man board of directors.

Lynn speaks for the group that has control and wants to keep it with six seats on the board.

Although he is leaving as general manager, Lynn remains involved as a Viking owner in a 10-person partnership holding 49.4% of the club.

He also remains as one of three members of the team’s voting trust, which is an arm of his partnership. In Viking management matters, the three-man trust is the power.

The team’s bylaws provide that any trustee can veto anything he wants to.

How did a minority partnership get so influential?

Its power rests on an old ownership base.

Born in 1960, the Vikings were reorganized a few years later with three owners--Minneapolis businessmen H.P. Skoglund, Bill Boyer and Max Winter--each of whom held one-third of the 600 shares.

Winter, now in retirement, sold his 200 shares for a reported $25 million in 1984 to Pohlad and Pohlad’s partner, Irwin Jacobs, a Minneapolis financier who specializes in buying into corporations.

The controlling 400 shares remained the property of the estates of the deceased Skoglund and Boyer, or their other heirs and assignees.

When in late 1984 Pohlad and Jacobs began acquiring some of these shares, Lynn’s attorneys reorganized the Vikings to put permanent control in the hands of the descendants of Skoglund and Boyer.

Representing two-thirds of the original ownership, they got two-thirds of the nine seats on the board, and became two of the three voting trustees.

“All I did was keep the two families together,” Lynn said.

His opponents have accused Lynn of running a long, massive bluff. They predict that his partnership will relinquish control if the Pohlad-Jacobs payoff is large enough.

Regardless of whether Lynn is bluffing, he still is very much in control. As recently as last month, the board voted 6-3 in favor of the man Lynn chose as his successor as chief executive officer, retired Minneapolis businessman George L. Headrick.

A Viking owner--he is in Lynn’s 10-man partnership--Headrick will advance to the club presidency Jan. 1. He will succeed Wheelock Whitney, another partnership member, who is stepping down to pursue other interests.