Certain jersey numbers hold a value in the history of the Minnesota Vikings. Like most franchises, they\u2019ve retired those numbers so that no other player can wear them again, a sign of the rare air that player has achieved during their career.<\/p>\n
Fran Tarkenton<\/a>, Alan Page<\/a>, and Cris Carter<\/a> are just some of the players to earn this distinction, and there will surely be more on the way.<\/p>\n However, the Vikings should have left the No. 84 Randy Moss<\/a> wore during his time in Minnesota untouched after he retired.<\/p>\n Few have had the impact Moss did on the Vikings in franchise history. Still, they have given his No. 84 to the likes of Aundrae Allison<\/a>, Michael Jenkins<\/a>, and Bucky Hodges<\/a>. Josh Oliver<\/a> has joined the list of players to wear No. 84 after Moss\u2019 departure in 2010. While it would be unprecedented to ask him to give up his number, there has to be a better way to honor Moss.<\/p>\n Teams started retiring numbers long before the Vikings joined the NFL. Toronto Maple Leafs winger Ace Bailey<\/a> (not that one<\/a>) had his No. 6 jersey retired after he suffered a career-ending injury in 1934. The NFL joined in when the New York Giants retired Ray Flaherty<\/a>\u2019s No. 1 jersey, and franchises everywhere have continued the time-honored tradition of retiring jerseys for great players.<\/p>\n Tarkenton\u2019s No. 10 was the first number the Vikings retired in 1976. They have retired six others: Mick Tingelhoff<\/a>\u2019s No. 53, Jim Marshall<\/a>\u2019s No. 70, Korey Stringer<\/a>\u2019s No. 77, Carter\u2019s No. 80, and Alan Page<\/a>\u2019s No. 88.<\/p>\n Moss has a strong case to be part of this group. Minnesota\u2019s first-round pick in 1998 burst onto the scene<\/a> with his blazing speed, turning Minnesota into one of the greatest offenses in NFL history.<\/p>\n After catching 69 passes for 1,313 yards, and 17 touchdowns in his rookie year, the Green Bay Packers drafted four defensive backs, including their first three selections in the 1999 draft, to try to stop Moss. While Moss changed the way defenses prevented the deep shot, he also had a massive impact on the franchise.<\/p>\n Talk to anyone in their 30s or 40s, and they probably became a Vikings fan because of Moss. The Vikings were becoming irrelevant before his arrival. The league blacked out<\/a> home games, and .500 seasons became the norm. Red McCombs bought the team to cash in on a new stadium or move the team<\/a> to San Antonio, but Moss was a giant flare that grabbed the attention of Vikings fans and prevented it from happening.<\/p>\n You can mention Vikings history without some of the stars that came after Moss, but you can\u2019t have that conversation without him. If he doesn\u2019t show up, the team is either in San Antonio or Los Angeles, and Minnesota probably has an expansion team with a name like the Freeze.<\/p>\n To the Vikings\u2019 credit, Moss is in the Ring of Honor. But you can\u2019t blame fans for thinking it\u2019s disrespectful when someone runs out to the field wearing No. 84.<\/p>\n However, teams have expanded to 90-man rosters during training camp, which means there isn\u2019t much wiggle room to make specific numbers off-limits. Teams that were trigger-happy with retiring numbers back in the golden days are now seeing rookies ask legends if they can have it back, creating an awkward mess that teams have avoided in several ways.<\/p>\n The first is to have a Ring of Honor. Almost every team has some form of this, and it\u2019s an easy way to honor someone without having a rookie calling<\/a> to ask if they can wear their number. Perhaps this becomes a problem when the Vikings run out of deck facings at U.S. Bank Stadium, but it\u2019s not a concern now.<\/p>\n The other is to make that number have a special place in a team\u2019s history. The Dallas Cowboys have turned<\/a> No. 88 into an honor after Drew Pearson<\/a>, who pushed off<\/a> against the Vikings in the 1975 playoffs, wore it. They\u2019ve passed it down to Michael Irvin<\/a> in 1988. Although there was a weird stretch after Irvin retired in 1999, only Dez Bryant<\/a> (2010-17) and CeeDee Lamb<\/a> (2020-24) have worn it since.<\/p>\n Other football teams have followed suit, such as LSU\u2019s treatment of the No. 7 as<\/a> \u201ca symbol of dominance, swagger, and championship pedigree.\u201d It would be easy for the Vikings to declare that players who wear No. 84 are doing so in honor of Moss.<\/p>\n SI\u2019s Connor Orr<\/a> also had an interesting solution. Keep the number available, but have players wear a patch honoring the player who made it famous. While Oliver could keep his current number, having a patch dedicated to Moss would be a nod to the team\u2019s history and give him the extra honor that he deserves.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unlikely they will make any of those changes soon, but teams will eventually start running out of numbers. While the Vikings could retire No. 84, do they do the same with Adrian Peterson<\/a> or when Justin Jefferson<\/a> hangs up the cleats?<\/p>\n Regardless of what they do, it has to start with Moss to highlight his importance to the franchise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Certain jersey numbers hold a value in the history of the Minnesota Vikings. Like most franchises, they\u2019ve retired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2073],"tags":[7,233,259,2529,6,8261,234],"class_list":{"0":"post-165119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-vikings","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-vikings","11":"tag-minnesotavikings","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-randy-moss","14":"tag-vikings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114760801559176542","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}