Vikings Legend · Tight End · No. 83
Steve Jordan
Vikings Ring of Honor, 2019 · six straight Pro Bowls · thirteen seasons, one team
A seventh-round pick out of an Ivy League engineering programme who became the most productive tight end in Minnesota history.
Steven Russell Jordan was the 179th player taken in the 1982 NFL Draft, chosen out of Brown University, where he had just finished a Bachelor of Science in the School of Engineering. He never played for anyone else. Across thirteen seasons in purple he caught 498 passes for 6,307 yards, went to six consecutive Pro Bowls, and left as the third-most prolific receiver in franchise history. In 2019 the Vikings put his name on the ring inside U.S. Bank Stadium.
- 498Career receptions
- 6xConsecutive Pro Bowls
- 13Seasons, all in Minnesota
- 2019Ring of Honor induction
Player record
- Position
- Tight end
- Vikings years
- 1982–1994
- Number
- 83 (not retired)
- Born
- Jan 10, 1961 · Phoenix, AZ
- Height
- 6 ft 3 in
- High school
- South Mountain, Phoenix
- College
- Brown University
- Drafted
- 1982 · Rd 7, No. 179
- Games / starts
- 176 / 149
01
Nobody Expected Him to Play a Minute
Brown's coaching staff looked at the freshman from Phoenix and wrote him off. Four years later he was an honourable-mention All-American with an engineering degree.
Steve Jordan grew up in Phoenix and played football, basketball and tennis at South Mountain High School without winning a single post-season honour in any of them. Academics came first in the Jordan household. When he arrived at Brown, the coaching staff took one look at him and predicted he would not play “a minute of varsity ball.”
He spent the summer after his freshman year on conditioning and weight, and concentrated on the part of the job he was worst at — blocking. He won a permanent place in the lineup that autumn after catching seven passes in a 21–7 win over Cornell, and from there the record accumulated: first-team All-Ivy twice, first-team All-New England, first-team All-ECAC and honourable-mention All-American. At the end of his senior season Brown gave him the Tuss McLaughry Trophy, awarded to the team member who “through sportsmanship, performance, and influence, contributed most to the sport at Brown.”
He graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science from the Brown University School of Engineering, in four years, while playing. It is the detail that follows him through every retelling of his career, including his own: the Vikings' Kevin Warren, announcing the Ring of Honor selection in 2019, went straight to it. “He has been an iconic player here who had an unbelievable career,” Warren told the current squad, “but bigger than that, he has an Ivy League degree, graduated in four years.”
Brown receiving marks
Figures recorded by Brown Athletics at the time of his 1987 induction into the university's athletic Hall of Fame:
- 188 yards against Penn in 1981 — then a Brown single-game receiving record.
- 693 yards in a season, second on the school's all-time list.
- 1,330 yards in a career, third all-time.
- 17.97 yards per reception, second all-time.
- Tuss McLaughry Trophy, senior season.
02
One Roster, Start to Finish
Jordan played all thirteen of his NFL seasons for the Minnesota Vikings, from Bud Grant's last years through Dennis Green's first.
Nothing about the arrival suggested what followed. Jordan was a seventh-round pick who had not been to a scouting combine or a college all-star game, and he came into camp knowing that Bud Grant rarely kept rookies and had no patience for mental errors. His own account of that summer is a study in controlling the controllable.
He played nine games as a rookie in the strike-shortened 1982 season and caught three passes. He caught 15 the next year, 38 the year after that, and then, in 1985, 68 — the highest single-season reception total of his career and, at the time, a volume almost no tight end reached. From 1984 onward he was the starter, and he stayed the starter for a decade.
Across those years he played for four of the nine head coaches in franchise history: Bud Grant, Les Steckel, Jerry Burns and Dennis Green. In his final nine seasons the Vikings won the NFC Central three times and reached the postseason six times, including the 1987 run that produced road upsets of New Orleans and San Francisco before an NFC Championship Game loss. His teammates over those years included Cris Carter, who arrived in 1990, and Randall McDaniel, drafted in 1988 — both of them, like Jordan, later Ring of Honor members.
“I could control mental errors”
“The first time I had to line up against Matt Blair, an All-Pro outside linebacker, blocking wasn't my forte. I was more of a receiving tight end coming out of college. I went to do a 1-on-1 drill, I was in a 3-point stance, and the next thing I know, I was looking up at the sky. Matt Blair ran right through me like a revolving door.”
“There's certain things you can control and certain things you cannot control… One of the easiest ways to get bounced out of camp was by mental errors. I could control mental errors.”
— Steve Jordan on his 1982 rookie camp, speaking to Vikings.com in 2019
03
1986 to 1991: The Best Tight End in the League
Six consecutive Pro Bowls, and more catches and more yards over that span than any other tight end in the NFL.
The stretch opened on 2 November 1986 in Washington. Tommy Kramer threw for 490 yards that afternoon, still a Vikings franchise record, and Jordan took six of those passes for 179 yards — the highest single-game receiving total of his career. He finished 1986 with 859 yards, the best season figure he ever posted, and earned the first of six straight Pro Bowl selections.
From 1986 through 1991 he led every tight end in the NFL in receptions and in receiving yards, and ranked third among tight ends in touchdown catches. He was a UPI second-team All-NFC selection in each of the four seasons from 1986 to 1989. When he finally stopped playing after 1994, only Ozzie Newsome Jr. and Kellen Winslow Sr. had caught more passes as tight ends in league history.
His production from 1986 through 1991
“No one — no one on the Vikings works harder, and I see no tailing off from the determination we saw in him from the start.”Vikings head coach Jerry Burns, quoted in Jordan's 1987 Brown University Athletic Hall of Fame citation
04
Every Regular Season, 1982–1994
Thirteen seasons of receiving, with the bar scaled to his 68-catch high in 1985. Gold bars mark the Pro Bowl years.
| Season | Receptions | Rec | Yards | Avg | Long | TD | G / GS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | 3 | 42 | 14.0 | 29 | 0 | 9 / 1 | |
| 1983 | 15 | 212 | 14.1 | 28 | 2 | 13 / 2 | |
| 1984 | 38 | 414 | 10.9 | 26 | 2 | 14 / 14 | |
| 1985 | 68 | 795 | 11.7 | 32 | 0 | 16 / 16 | |
| 1986Pro Bowl | 58 | 859 | 14.8 | 68 | 6 | 16 / 16 | |
| 1987Pro Bowl | 35 | 490 | 14.0 | 38 | 2 | 12 / 12 | |
| 1988Pro Bowl | 57 | 756 | 13.3 | 38 | 5 | 16 / 16 | |
| 1989Pro Bowl | 35 | 506 | 14.5 | 34 | 3 | 16 / 15 | |
| 1990Pro Bowl | 45 | 636 | 14.1 | 38 | 3 | 16 / 16 | |
| 1991Pro Bowl | 57 | 638 | 11.2 | 25 | 2 | 16 / 16 | |
| 1992 | 28 | 394 | 14.1 | 60 | 2 | 14 / 12 | |
| 1993 | 56 | 542 | 9.7 | 53 | 1 | 14 / 12 | |
| 1994 | 3 | 23 | 7.7 | 10 | 0 | 4 / 1 | |
| 13 seasons | — | 498 | 6,307 | 12.7 | 68 | 28 | 176 / 149 |
Regular season Pro Bowl season
05
The Whole Body of Work
Every regular-season and postseason snap of Steve Jordan's NFL career was taken for one franchise.
Regular season · Minnesota Vikings, 1982–1994
Postseason · seven playoff runs
Career averages: 12.7 yards per reception, with a long of 68 yards. His single-season highs were 68 receptions in 1985, and 859 receiving yards and six touchdowns in 1986; he averaged 14.0 yards or more per catch in seven separate seasons. His biggest single game was 179 yards on six catches at Washington on 2 November 1986, and his biggest playoff game was nine catches for 149 yards in the divisional round following the 1989 season.
06
His Place in the Vikings Record Book
Franchise positions as the Vikings recorded them when they announced his Ring of Honor selection in June 2019.
3rd
6th
8th
14th
4th
1st
07
The 25th Name on the Ring
Announced in June 2019, inducted that October, and still working as an engineer on the other side of it.
-
1978–1981
Brown University
Two-time first-team All-Ivy, first-team All-New England and All-ECAC, honourable-mention All-American, and winner of the Tuss McLaughry Trophy as a senior. Graduated in 1982 with a B.S. from the School of Engineering.
-
1982
Drafted 179th overall
Taken by Minnesota in the seventh round of the 1982 NFL Draft. He played nine games and caught three passes as a rookie in the strike-shortened season.
-
1986–1991
Six straight Pro Bowls
Six consecutive selections, and league-leading totals among tight ends in both receptions and receiving yards across the span.
-
1987
Brown Athletic Hall of Fame
Inducted into his university's athletic Hall of Fame while still in his fifth NFL season, and already working an off-season career as an engineer with the Gilbane Building Company.
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1994
Final season
Four games in his thirteenth season closed out a career spent entirely in Minnesota. He retired third on the all-time list of receptions by an NFL tight end, behind only Ozzie Newsome Jr. and Kellen Winslow Sr.
-
2019
Vikings Ring of Honor
Surprised with the news at a team meeting on 12 June 2019, and inducted as the 25th member of the Ring of Honor at halftime of the Week 8 Thursday-night game against Washington on 24 October 2019.
“I look back, and it's really good that something like this can happen, someone like me, who comes out of a small school can come to the Vikings and have a successful career, not just on the field but off the field.”Steve Jordan on his Ring of Honor selection, Vikings.com, June 2019
Two things this page will not claim
Steve Jordan is not a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He has never been enshrined in Canton; his name does not appear on the Hall's list of enshrinees, and the Hall's roll of tight ends does not include him. He is listed on the Hall's site among Minnesota Vikings “Team Greats,” which is a team-history page, not an induction. Anything that describes him as a Hall of Famer is wrong.
His No. 83 is not retired. The Vikings have taken six numbers out of circulation across their history, and 83 is not one of them. The Ring of Honor is a separate recognition, and it is the one he holds.
Jordan built the second career while the first was still running, and he has kept it. He worked as an engineer with the Gilbane Building Company during his playing years and, after retiring from the NFL, as a civil engineer for M.A. Mortenson in Minneapolis. He was elected to Brown University's Board of Trustees in 1993. He lives in Eagan, Minnesota.
Football stayed in the family. His son, Cameron Jordan, has been a defensive end for the New Orleans Saints since the team drafted him in the first round in 2011, and is the franchise's all-time sacks leader.
Mark Wilf, announcing the Ring of Honor selection, put the case for Jordan in a sentence that had nothing to do with his catch totals: “As great a player as Steve was, he's just as great an ambassador for the Vikings and the game of football. He is a positive role model to young players about the value of education and using your platform as an NFL star for good.”
Where these figures come from
Career and postseason statistics, draft position and biographical detail on this page come from the Wikipedia career record and the Pro-Football-Reference player page. Franchise rankings, the 1986–91 tight-end totals, the quotations from Steve Jordan, Kevin Warren and Mark Wilf, and the Ring of Honor dates come from the Minnesota Vikings' own announcement of his selection and the club's Ring of Honor page. His college record, the Jerry Burns quotation and the Tuss McLaughry Trophy come from his Brown University Athletics Hall of Fame citation. His Hall of Fame status was checked against the Pro Football Hall of Fame list of enshrinees. Anything we could not confirm against those sources has been left off this page rather than estimated. This is an independent fan site with no affiliation to the Minnesota Vikings or the NFL.
Thirteen Seasons, One Team
From the 179th pick in 1982 to the 25th name on the ring at U.S. Bank Stadium, Steve Jordan's whole professional career belongs to Minnesota.
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