Chris Doleman has his bust in Canton alongside the other greats of NFL history, including his Vikings teammates John Randle and Randall McDaniel. Chris was introduced at Canton Saturday night by his son Evan and went on to give a heartfelt speech, thanking numerous people and institutions including Zygi Wilf and the current Vikings organization. He also took a moment to remember former GM Mike Lynn who recently passed away. A full transcript of Doleman’s speech can be found here. Video here.

After a stellar career at Pitt, Doleman was drafted by the Vikings with the 4th overall pick in 1985. He was installed as a pass rushing OLB in the Vikings’ 3-4 scheme, recording his first half-sack against the Packers on November 10th, 1985. When the Vikes went 4-3 Doleman was moved to defensive end…and the rest is history. Chris grew into one of the great sack artists in NFL history, finishing his career with 150 1/2, including 21 in 1989. Doleman made his first Pro Bowl in 1987 and would return 7 more times, the last in 1997 as a member of the 49ers. He would be selected to 3 All-Pro teams and would be named a member of the NFL’s official all-decade team for the ’90s.

The Vikings had two periods of dominance on the defensive line, first with Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall and the Purple People Eater gang, then again in the late ’80s and early ’90s with Doleman, Keith Millard, Henry Thomas and a little later John Randle. If you’re a Viking fan who grew to love the team in either of those eras, you love defensive line play and you love sack artists like Chris Doleman. Defensive line IS the identity of the Minnesota Vikings as a franchise and Doleman is one of the men who forged that identity. He was, quite simply, a bad-ass crusher of quarterbacks.

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Mar 27, 2011; Dallas, TX, USA; Georgia Bulldogs former football player Herschel Walker cheers during player introductions before their game against the Texas A

Had Mike Lynn’s plan worked, his obits would all refer to him as “the GM who led the Vikings to their first Super Bowl championship.” As we know the plan didn’t work and instead Lynn will forever be remembered as “the guy who traded a bunch of draft picks for that washed-up Herschel Walker.” Is this fair? Absolutely. Lynn knowingly staked his legacy on that one trade. The experiment failed and the rest is infamy.

There’s other stuff to remember about Lynn too, of course. The Vikings did make the playoffs nine times under his watch. He did swing the trade with Miami that brought over Anthony Carter. He was the man who claimed Cris Carter off waivers after Carter was dumped by Buddy Ryan and the Eagles (that was about the last thing Lynn did in Minnesota before leaving to become president of the World League). He did sign John Randle as an undrafted free agent in 1990, starting the unheralded and allegedly undersized defensive tackle on the road to the Hall of Fame.

But there are the negatives too, beyond the ill-fated Herschel trade. There was the decision to promote Les Steckel to head coach after Bud Grant’s retirement, a move that resulted in arguably the most disastrous year in team history. There were allegations by certain players, Joey Browner chief among them, that Lynn showed a racial bias against blacks when negotiating player contracts (Browner would later recant the allegation). There was the infamous Pecos River trip, a comically ill-fated experiment in offseason “team unity” building, masterminded by Lynn, that resulted in a 6-10 campaign.

Towering over all of it is the Herschel trade. In 1989 Lynn mortgaged the team’s future in hopes of adding the final piece to the Super Bowl puzzle, acquiring Walker and four picks from the Cowboys in exchange for five players and seven draft picks. But Walker would prove to be a bust in Minnesota, running for over 100 yards only four times in his two-and-a-half-seasons with the team. Even worse for Lynn’s legacy, the Cowboys would use the picks he gave them to create the backbone of a dynasty.

Mike Lynn, architect of the Dallas Cowboys’ dynasty of the ’90s, is dead at 76. Would make a nice Onion headline. My 16-year-old self is not smiling. I had to put up with a lot of crap because of that Herschel Walker trade. Still, he did put together a pretty swell defense, did Mr. Lynn. A Super Bowl would’ve been nice but that’s just how it is with sports. Somebody wins, somebody loses. And the guy who loses gets sort of trashed in his obituary.

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