Vikings Ring of Honor · Linebacker · No. 59
Matt Blair
Twelve seasons in Minnesota, six straight Pro Bowls, and the franchise record for blocked kicks
September 20, 1950 – October 22, 2020
A six-foot-five linebacker with a jumper's reach, Matt Blair spent his entire twelve-year NFL career with the Vikings and made a specialty out of the one play nobody else on the field was trying to make: getting a hand on the kick.
Minnesota took him in the second round of the 1974 draft out of Iowa State, and he never played a professional down for anyone else. He appeared in 160 regular-season games between 1974 and 1985, started 130 of them, went to six consecutive Pro Bowls, was a first-team All-Pro in 1980, and reached two Super Bowls that the Vikings lost. The club inducted him into its Ring of Honor in 2012.
- 1974Draft, Round 2, Pick 51
- 12Seasons, all in Minnesota
- 6×Pro Bowl, 1977–1982
- 20Blocked kicks, club record
Overview
Matt Blair at a Glance
A second-round pick who stayed twelve seasons, became the most decorated linebacker in Vikings history, and left behind a team record that has nothing to do with tackling.
Player Snapshot
- Full name
- Matthew Albert Blair
- Position
- Linebacker
- Number
- 59
- Height / weight
- 6′5″ · 232 lb
- Born
- Sep 20, 1950 · Hilo, Hawaii
- Died
- Oct 22, 2020 · aged 70
- College
- Iowa State
- Drafted
- 1974, Round 2, No. 51
- NFL career
- 1974–1985
- Teams
- Minnesota Vikings only
- Ring of Honor
- October 25, 2012
Why He Mattered
- He spent every professional season of his career with one club — twelve years, one uniform, no other team.
- His six straight Pro Bowls from 1977 to 1982 bridged the end of the Bud Grant Super Bowl era and the rebuilding years that followed it.
- The Vikings credit him with 20 blocked kicks, a total the club still lists as its franchise record.
- He arrived as the Purple People Eaters front four was breaking up, and became the defence's centre of gravity for the decade that followed.
Team-mates on This Site
The Signature
Twenty Blocked Kicks, and Why the Number Is Not in the League's Books
Blair did not simply lead the Vikings in blocked kicks. He made the play so routinely that it became the first thing anyone said about him.
Blair still holds the team record with 20 blocked kicks — 16 extra points, 3 field goals and 1 punt.
Minnesota Vikings, official legends profileSixteen of the twenty were extra points, three were field goals and one was a punt. Blair was listed at six foot five, unusually tall for a linebacker of his era, and the distribution of the twenty is the part of the record that survives: the bulk of them came on the shortest, fastest kicks on the field, where reach and timing count for most.
An unofficial record. The NFL has never kept blocked kicks as an official individual statistic, and it certainly did not during Blair's playing career. The figure of 20 is the Minnesota Vikings' own count, published by the club on its official profile of him, and it should be read as a franchise record compiled by the team rather than a league-certified one. The same caution applies to his sack and tackle totals below.
The Record
Twelve Seasons, 160 Games, One Team
Blair never played a regular-season snap for another franchise. Every line below is a Minnesota season.
| Season | Age | Team | G | GS | Int | Int yds | FR | Sacks | Honours |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | 24 | Minnesota | 14 | 6 | 1 | −3 | 1 | 0.0 | |
| 1975 | 25 | Minnesota | 14 | 0 | 1 | 18 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| 1976 | 26 | Minnesota | 14 | 13 | 2 | 25 | 5 | 0.0 | |
| 1977 | 27 | Minnesota | 14 | 13 | 1 | 18 | 2 | 0.0 | Pro Bowl |
| 1978 | 28 | Minnesota | 16 | 16 | 3 | 28 | 3 | 4.0 | Pro Bowl |
| 1979 | 29 | Minnesota | 16 | 16 | 3 | 32 | 2 | 4.0 | Pro Bowl |
| 1980 | 30 | Minnesota | 14 | 14 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1.0 | Pro Bowl All-Pro 1st |
| 1981 | 31 | Minnesota | 16 | 16 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6.0 | Pro Bowl |
| 1982 | 32 | Minnesota | 9 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1.5 | Pro Bowl |
| 1983 | 33 | Minnesota | 16 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 4.5 | |
| 1984 | 34 | Minnesota | 11 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1.0 | |
| 1985 | 35 | Minnesota | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1.0 | |
| 12 seasons | Minnesota | 160 | 130 | 16 | 119 | 20 | 23.0 | 6 Pro Bowls |
About the sack and tackle totals. The sack did not become an official NFL statistic until the 1982 season, which covers all but the last four years of Blair's career, so the 23.0 figure is unofficial and compiled after the fact from play-by-play and film research. Tackles were likewise unofficial and recorded inconsistently from team to team before 1994; published career tackle figures for Blair come from the Vikings' own records rather than from the league. His 16 interceptions and 20 fumble recoveries are the more solid numbers, because both were official league statistics throughout his career.
The shape of the career is clear from the table. Blair was a rotational rookie in 1974, played almost exclusively on special teams in 1975 — fourteen games, zero starts, which is where the blocked-kick habit was formed — and then started nearly every game he was healthy for from 1976 onwards. His 1982 season was short because the season itself was: a players' strike cut the schedule to nine games.
The Vikings list him as the franchise's leading linebacker in sacks and interceptions, and he was still recovering fumbles in his final year, twelve seasons after he arrived.
Honours
Six Straight Pro Bowls and a Place on the Ring
Blair's decorations are concentrated in a six-year run at the centre of his career, and in one night in the autumn of 2012, twenty-seven years after his last game.
Pro Bowl Selections
- Six consecutive selections, for the seasons 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982.
- Pro Bowl honours from this era are sometimes listed by the season played and sometimes by the calendar year the game was held, which is why published year lists can differ by one. The count of six consecutive selections is consistent across sources.
All-Pro Recognition
- First-team All-Pro in 1980, the peak of the six-year Pro Bowl run.
- 1980 was also the season he intercepted three passes while starting all fourteen games he appeared in.
Vikings Ring of Honor
- Inducted on October 25, 2012.
- The Ring of Honor is the club's own tribute and is separate from the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Jersey Number
- Blair wore No. 59 for all twelve of his seasons.
- The number has not been retired by the Vikings. The club's retired numbers are 10, 53, 70, 77, 80 and 88.
Super Bowls
Two Trips, Two Losses
Blair reached the Super Bowl twice, both within his first three seasons. Minnesota lost both games, and the franchise has still never won one.
| Game | Season | Opponent | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super Bowl IX | 1974 | Pittsburgh Steelers | Lost 16–6 |
| Super Bowl XI | 1976 | Oakland Raiders | Lost 32–14 |
There is no way to write around this, and it would be dishonest to try. Blair was a rookie for the first of the two, in the 16–6 loss to Pittsburgh at the end of the 1974 season, and a third-year starter for the second, the 32–14 loss to Oakland at the end of 1976. The Vikings did not reach another Super Bowl in the nine seasons he had left, and they have not reached one since.
That timing is the quiet tragedy of his career. Blair's best football — the six straight Pro Bowls, the All-Pro season — came after Minnesota's window had closed. The teams he carried in the late 1970s and early 1980s were not the teams that went to Super Bowls; the team that went to Super Bowls was the one he joined as a rookie, alongside Alan Page and Carl Eller, at the very end of its run.
For the full record of all four Minnesota appearances, see the site's Vikings Super Bowl history page.
Canton
Not a Hall of Famer, and It Is Worth Saying Plainly
Matt Blair is not enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Ring of Honor is a Vikings award, and the two are frequently confused.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame lists no player profile for Matt Blair, and he does not appear among the enshrinees on its Minnesota Vikings team page — a page that does list Carl Eller, Alan Page and more than twenty other men connected to the franchise. He has never been enshrined in Canton.
This site notes it directly because the confusion is common: a Ring of Honor induction is a public ceremony, it puts a name permanently on display at the stadium, and it reads in a headline very much like a Hall of Fame call. It is not one. It is the Minnesota Vikings honouring their own, and it is the honour Blair received.
What the record supports without any of that is straightforward enough. Twelve seasons for one club, six consecutive Pro Bowls, a first-team All-Pro season, and a franchise record that no Viking has taken from him in the four decades since he retired.
Final Years
Dementia, and a Diagnosis He Chose to Talk About
Blair spoke publicly about his own decline while he was still able to. What follows is reported only as far as the published record goes.
In February 2015, Blair told the Star Tribune that a neurologist had informed him and his wife, Mary Beth, that his early signs of dementia were likely the result of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head impacts. He was 64 at the time, and he agreed to the interview knowing what it would make public.
He died on October 22, 2020, at the age of 70, after an extended period in hospice care. He had been living with dementia for years by then.
What can and cannot be said here. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy cannot be diagnosed in a living person; it can only be confirmed by examination of brain tissue after death. The 2015 account is what Blair said his neurologist told him, and it was reported as a likelihood, not a confirmed diagnosis. No post-mortem finding for Blair has been published that this site has been able to verify, so none is claimed. What is documented is the dementia he lived with, the CTE his doctors considered the likely cause, and his decision to say so while he still could.
The Vikings announced his death publicly and the club, its players and its alumni paid tribute. He was 70, and the franchise he joined as a second-round pick in 1974 was the only one he ever played for.
Related Coverage
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Sourcing
Where These Records Came From
Career records, honours and biographical details on this page are drawn from the Minnesota Vikings official legends profile for Matt Blair, the club's statement on his passing, the season-by-season record held by Pro Football Reference, ESPN's report of his death, and Wikipedia. His absence from the Pro Football Hall of Fame was checked against the Hall's own Minnesota Vikings enshrinee list. Sack and tackle totals predate the statistics becoming official and are therefore unofficial, as explained above; blocked kicks have never been an official NFL statistic and the total of 20 is the Vikings' own franchise count. Where sources differ, the differences are noted rather than smoothed over. This is an independent fan site and is not affiliated with the Minnesota Vikings or the NFL.
Get a Hand on It
Twelve seasons, one uniform, six straight Pro Bowls and a franchise record built on the play nobody else was trying to make. Matt Blair's Minnesota chapter runs from the last Super Bowl team to the Ring of Honor.
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