Alan Page

Minnesota Vikings · 1967–1978

A front four with a motto

Page arrived in Minnesota as the 15th overall pick of the 1967 NFL Draft, a consensus All-American defensive end from Notre Dame who had just anchored the Fighting Irish's 1966 national championship defense. Moved inside to tackle as a professional, he walked into a defensive line that was about to become the most recognisable unit in football. Alongside defensive ends Carl Eller and Jim Marshall and fellow tackle Gary Larsen, Page formed the group Vikings fans named the Purple People Eaters, a front four whose stated motto was simply "meet at the quarterback."

The unit's peak coincided almost exactly with the franchise's. In 1969 all four linemen were selected to the Pro Bowl and started the game together, a feat no defensive line has matched since. That same season the Vikings won the last pre-merger NFL Championship. Between 1970 and 1977 the Purple People Eaters era produced seven division titles and four Super Bowl appearances, in Super Bowls IV, VIII, IX and XI. Minnesota lost all four, a fact that shadows the era but does not diminish what the defense was: for most of a decade, the hardest front in professional football to run at or throw over.

Quickness instead of bulk

What made Page different was that he did not play the position the way it was taught. Interior defensive tackles of the 1960s and 1970s were expected to occupy blockers, absorb double teams and let the linebackers make plays. Page played the opposite way. He was built lighter than his peers, and he used a first step off the snap that was closer to a defensive end's than a tackle's, shooting gaps and arriving in the backfield before a guard could get his hands on him. Opponents complained, correctly, that he was often moving before the ball was; the truth was simply that he read the snap count better than almost anyone.

He backed the style with conditioning that was extraordinary for his era and his position. Page ran constantly, roughly 35 to 40 miles a week in season and as many as 55 miles a week in the offseason, at a time when distance running was considered actively harmful for linemen. In 1979, while still an active NFL player, he completed a marathon, the first active NFL player to do so. Long-distance running became a lifelong habit that outlasted the football career by decades.

The 1971 season

The conditioning and the quickness converged in 1971. Page was so dominant that the Associated Press named him NFL Most Valuable Player, the first time in the history of the award that a defensive player had won it. He was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year the same season, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame's own biography also credits him with Defensive Player of the Year honours in 1973. Nine consecutive Pro Bowl selections, from 1968 through 1976, bracket the peak.

A contentious ending

The same regimen that made Page exceptional eventually made him expendable in Minnesota. His running had pulled his playing weight down to about 222 pounds by 1978, from a peak of roughly 245, and the Vikings' coaching staff wanted a heavier tackle. Page refused to change how he trained. In October 1978, six games into his twelfth season, Minnesota waived him. The Chicago Bears claimed him on waivers less than a day later, and he moved straight into their starting lineup without missing a game. He played out the rest of 1978 and three more seasons in Chicago, retiring after the 1981 campaign. It was, by any reading, an ungracious way for a franchise to part with the best defensive player it had ever had. Minnesota retired his No. 88 ten years later, in September 1988, and added him to the Ring of Honor in 1998.