Viking player you hated to see leave the most

[PurpleMustReign]

I don't mean players who retired, I mean those who signed with or were traded to another team. Let's go top 5.

1. Randy Moss
2. Antoine Winfield
3. Randall Cunningham
4. Randall McDaniel
5. Everyone who went to Dallas in the Herschel Walker trade/debacle/whatever you want to call it.

[HornedMessiah]

Can't do a top 5 but I'll go

1. Winfield
2. Moss
3. Birk

just because Winfield was a great guy and Randy could be a dick at times

And I wanna dig up the whole Birk thing again. He was guest host on KFAN a week or so ago and somebody (a caller?) said they hated when the Vikings didn't resign Birk and he had to go to the Ravens...the misconception will never die. The Vikes made Birk an offer and he chose to sign with the Ravens instead and we all pretty much assume he chose to leave because he had issues with Childress. Look, he may have left because he didn't like Chilly or he may have felt the Vikings lowballed him so he went with a better contract. Point is, he chose to leave. The thing that kinda bugged me was he didn't set the record straight, pretty much just said, "Hey, well ya, ya know it was just one of those things..."

I'm gonna look into my crystal ball to a year from now and revise the list

3. Kevin Williams...?
4. Birk

[Mothman]

Off the top of my head:

Alan Page
Carl Eller
Cris Carter
Daunte Culpepper
RandallMcDaniel/Matt Birk

I cheated and put two players in the last slot.

I'd include Tarkenton on the list but I wasn't a fan yet when that happened.

[Mothman]

And I wanna dig up the whole Birk thing again. He was guest host on KFAN a week or so ago and somebody (a caller?) said they hated when the Vikings didn't resign Birk and he had to go to the Ravens...the misconception will never die. The Vikes made Birk an offer and he chose to sign with the Ravens instead and we all pretty much assume he chose to leave because he had issues with Childress. Look, he may have left because he didn't like Chilly or he may have felt the Vikings lowballed him so he went with a better contract. Point is, he chose to leave. The thing that kinda bugged me was he didn't set the record straight, pretty much just said, "Hey, well ya, ya know it was just one of those things..."

Unless a team tags a player and essentially forces him to stay, the player always chooses whether to accept an offer to stay or to leave and play elsewhere so I'm not sure there was really anything to set straight. Saying the Vikes didn't didn't re-sign Birk is an accurate statement. Saying they made no effort to re-sign him wouldn't be accurate since they made him an offer but by the time they did that, I think he'd made up his mind that he was leaving. They didn't show Birk much respect leading up to the expiration of his deal and I suspect that (and Brad Childress, who may have had something to do with that lack of respect anyway) was why he left.

It's all water under the bridge now anyway.

[jackal]

Moss

Birk

Winfield

[Eli]

Fortunately, most players who go on to play another team for a year or two at the end of their career are already toast. That's certainly true of Page and Eller. I think the coaches who have watched over a player for his entire career have a much better feel for a player's value at that point than any other NFL team or even the player himself. If it's a choice between being stuck with a guy who shouldn't be on the field and watching him play for someone else, I'll gladly take the latter.

I'm going to violate the question and put Robert Smith near the top of my list. One of the few Vikings in team history to retire too early. Just like the players who ill-advisedly go on to play elsewhere, most who retire as Vikings tend to play a couple of seasons too long.

1. Joe Kapp. Stubborn SOB, couldn't get a contract deal done with the Vikings.
2. Robert Smith. Probably did the right thing for himself.
3. Chris Doleman. Still had plenty of gas left in the tank.
4. Nate Burleson. Vikings sure could have used him the last couple of years.
5. Antoine Winfield. Unfortunate, but made sense financially.

[Eliot]

1. Daunte. I was pretty little. I had a Moss jersey when i was born but my #11 jersey was the first one I actually chose to buy. Wore it to my first Vikings game. When he got traded to the Dolphins I cried so much. I mean I was pretty upset when Vikings lost to the Aint's but Daunte was worse to me because I was pretty young and didn't really understand football that much. I just said SKOL VIKINGS

2. Randy Moss. F Coach Genius 1.0. Randy Moss traded for a 6th round pick!!!! And we release him! He wasn't doing amazing but we caught Favre's 500th TD!

3 Chester Taylor. I love Toby and all. I even have his jersey (:lol:) But can you imagine AP and Chester Taylor together. I think he is one of the more underrated Vikings of all time. I mean the dude was a beast in the 06 season before we drafted AP. I liked AP on draft day and all but I truly wanted us to take Brady Quinn because Chester Taylor was a damn good back still. Of course we all know how that worked out and all.

I also miss
Nate B.
Sidney Rice
K-Will
Birk
Shankdog

[Mothman]

Fortunately, most players who go on to play another team for a year or two at the end of their career are already toast. That's certainly true of Page and Eller.

It's not even close to true with Page. He amassed 40 sacks for the Bears after leaving the Vikings as "toast". He had plenty of good football left in him when Grant released him. Heck, in his final game, he registered 3.5 sacks and and helped a lousy Bears team upset the Broncos.

I think the coaches who have watched over a player for his entire career have a much better feel for a player's value at that point than any other NFL team or even the player himself.

That's often true but in Page's case, Grant misjudged the situation and cut him because he felt he was too light for his position, not because Page was essentially done. Page joined the Bears mid-season in '78 and he still led the team with 11.5 sacks even though he only played in 10 games.

[VikeMike]

That's true about the Page/Grant situation ... Page had started long distance jogging and went down to 225 (though it might have been even less). When Page refused to put on weight, Grant released him.

[tnvikesfan]

1. Moss. Duh.
2. Winfield. We're gonna pay for that. MN West will benefit.
3. Jeff George. What an arm, he didn't need Green's politics and big head. Loved his 'why the bleep don't we know what we're doing???'.
4. Dixon. We still haven't been able to replace him.
5. Corey Fuller. Dang, he could hit!

[Eli]

Page also attended law school in his last years with the Vikings, even during the playing season. Combined with his inability (or refusal) to keep his weight up, I'm sure the Vikings were convinced that his dedication to playing football was less than it should have been.

Page started for a pretty bad Bears team. He remained lightning quick, and when he got a good jump off the snap (something nobody has ever been better at) would often get into the backfield untouched. But he also got pushed all over the field with the Bears, ending playing career at less than 220 lbs.

[Sutsgold]

1. Moss
2. Page
3. Foreman

[Mothman]

Page also attended law school in his last years with the Vikings, even during the playing season. Combined with his inability (or refusal) to keep his weight up, I'm sure the Vikings were convinced that his dedication to playing football was less than it should have been.

Page started for a pretty bad Bears team. He remained lightning quick, and when he got a good jump off the snap (something nobody has ever been better at) would often get into the backfield untouched. But he also got pushed all over the field with the Bears, ending playing career at less than 220 lbs.

I saw most of those games. He struggled to get off blocks at times but he didn't get pushed around as badly as you're suggesting and as you pointed out, he remained lightning quick so he was hardly "toast", which implies that he was done when he left the Vikings and had little left to offer. That obviously wasn't the case.

By the way, he had 12 blocked kicks to go with the 40 sacks he registered in Chicago over 3.5 seasons, clearly the work of a player with nothing left to offer a team.

Here's an indication of the immediate impact Page had for the Bears in 1978:

There was still a lot of football left in Page, who had been the NFL's Most Valuable Player in 1971—the only defensive player ever to win the award. And the Bears, whose general manager (Jim Finks), coach (Neill Armstrong) and defensive coordinator (Buddy Ryan) had all been in Minnesota with Page, knew it. They paid the waiver price of $100. "A hundred dollars more than the Vikings deserved," says Page, who responded by melding an inexperienced, injury-beset line into a strong, proud unit. Though playing in only 10 games at right tackle, Page led the Bears in sacks (11½) and was tied for second among linemen in tackles with 50. Chicago's defense surged from 22nd in the NFL to 12th, passing, among other teams, the Vikings, who dropped to 14th.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/ ... /index.htm

Page certainly wasn't the player in Chicago that he was during his finest years in Minnesota but he was a long, long way from being toast.

[S197]

I wasn't alive when Page, Eller, et al played and left so I can't really put any emotion towards those players. I would say for me:

Moss
Doleman
Birk
Randle
Harvin

Harvin is a bit of a toss up but I'm going to put him down because he still has a lot of his career ahead of him and I think he's going to be very successful.

[King James]

Going off Vikings I was alive to see leave the team.

1. Moss
2. Harvin - It still bothers me to this day. Before became a Vikings my dream was for him to become a Viking one day and when he did I was the happiest person. But him to leave like he did, with all this uncertainty he had with the team, I hate him now. I should probably but Harvin at #1 lol
3. Culpepper
4. Pat Williams - but it was just his time to go.
5. Korey Stringer - I hate seeing athletes die, it definitely hits me harder when its a player that played for my favorite team. He left way too early.