Fantasy football player rankings adjusted at the time: Fran Tarkenton and Cris Carter headlining Minnesota Vikings

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the creation of fantasy football, Athleticism reviews the best fantasy players and fantasy seasons in NFL history.

A detailed look at the system used to rate historical fantasy performance can be found in our Top Fantasy Players of All Time introduction page, but here is a brief summary.

Fantasy player performance is adjusted through the era so that players who dominated during low-scoring eras can compete against players who racked up huge point totals in higher-scoring eras.

Once these adjustments are made, players are then credited for having a starter-caliber season (one point), a quality season (one point), an impact campaign (1.5 points), or being an elite starter (two points). These points stack up and are measured in both non-PPR and PPR and serve as the basis for determining who the best fantasy players in NFL history are.

Now that we’re done with the preliminaries, let’s take a look at the best fantasy players in Minnesota Vikings team history!

(Note: The numbers listed below are for player performance on Vikings.)

All-Time Fantastic Starting Lineup

QB: Fran Tarkenton

AR: Adrian Peterson

AR: Chuck Foreman

WR: Cris Carter

WR: Randy Moss

TEE: Steve Jordan

SuperFLEX: Daunte Culpepper

Quarterback – Fran Tarkenton

Tarkenton is arguably the greatest fantasy player of all time, as his 64 career points are easily the most in Vikings history and nearly double Cris Carter’s second-place finish with 37 points in that category. What makes Sir Francis’ performance in Minnesota even more incredible is that Tarkenton was a fantastic Top 6 QB in four of his first five seasons with the Vikings, had a dominant five-year streak with the Giants after being traded to New York in 1967 (he ranks as that club’s top fantasy quarterback), then racked up five consecutive Top 5 Fantasy QB seasons after returning to Minnesota in 1972.

Playing at this level at the end of a career was unheard of at the time and it helped give Tarkenton 104 career points overall, making him the only player to post a triple-digit total in this category.

Running back — Adrian Peterson

Peterson was perhaps the top fantasy RB in non-PPR scoring from 2007 to 2010, as he ranked second through fourth in that scoring format in each of those campaigns. Add to that a #1 ranking in RB rating in both non-PPR and PPR in 2012 and #2 in both categories in 2015 and it led to Peterson earning one of the spots on the RB fantasy list. .

Running back – Chuck Foreman

Keep in mind that the NFL was a running back-centric league noting that Foreman ranked second among RBs in non-PPR and PPR scoring in 1974 and 1975 and led that position in scoring in both categories in 1976. Randy Moss and Daunte Culpepper are the only players to score more than Foreman’s 369.1 PPR points in 1975, and Foreman did so in a 14-game season, which could making the most impressive fantasy-scoring season in Vikings history.

Wide Receiver – Cris Carter

Chris Berman and Tom Jackson often joked with Buddy Ryan saying that all Carter did was catch touchdowns but, from a fantasy perspective, all Carter did for a long time was rack up intermediate to senior level WR1 seasons. Carter had eight consecutive WR1-caliber campaigns in both PPR and non-PPR scoring from 1993-2000 and his 361.1 PPR points in 1995 still rank second all-time among all Vikings players.

Wide Receiver – Randy Moss

Moss had a phenomenal start to his career, finishing Top 5 in non-PPR scoring and Top 6 in PPR scoring in each of his first six seasons at Minnesota. He made posting over 300 PPR points seem like a common occurrence, as he ran three consecutive seasons at that scoring level from 1998 to 2000 and then set a new standard for PPR scoring with 376 points in 2003. This is still the highest PPR total. ever posted by a Vikings player.

Tight end – Steve Jordan

The man who made Brown University famous among NFL Primetime viewers was an extremely consistent fantasy scorer as he racked up seven straight seasons as a Top 8 TE. His nine rookie-caliber seasons in a non-PPR rankings tied for sixth all-time at that position.

SuperFlex — Daunte Culpepper

Before Josh Allen did in 2020-21, Culpepper was the last quarterback to post back-to-back seasons as the No. 1 fantasy QB, which he achieved in 2003-04. Culpepper also had two campaigns as the second-highest scoring fantasy QB (2000 and 2002). He only had one more season as a starter outside of that streak, as a serious knee injury in 2005 ended Culpepper’s days as a viable fantasy prospect, but four years at or near the top. from the top of the league earned him the SuperFlex spot over the Vikings. fantastic roster of all time.

Best era-adjusted fantasy seasons of all time

QB: Fran Tarkenton, 1975 (216 points)

RB: Chuck Foreman, 1975 (296 non-PPR, 369.1 PPR)

WR: Randy Moss, 2003 (265 non-PPR, 376 PPR)

TE: Joe Senser, 1981 (146 non-PPR, 224.6 PPR)

SuperFLEX: Adrian Peterson, 2012 (307 non-PPR, 347.4 PPR)

(Top photo: Sports Focus/Getty Images)