Honoring Bud Grant: The speech that saved the Vikings
On Sunday the Minnesota Vikings celebrated the life of legendary head coach Bud Grant at US Bank Stadium with a special memorial service.
To honor Grant, we have put together a three-part video series of Bud stories in which we dug deep into the archives to find some of the moments that made him great. Here’s Part 1:
Thanks to NFL researcher Collin AKA JaguarGator9 on YouTube for his special research and producer Jonathan Harrison for his video editing on this project.
If you would like to read the video’s transcript, here it is:
The year is 1984, and the Minnesota Vikings are the laughingstock of the NFL. After more than a decade-and-a-half of success under the guidance of head coach Bud Grant, Grant retired following the 1983 season, and gave the franchise to his wide receivers coach, Les Steckel. What could possibly go wrong with Steckel as the successor? Well, just about everything. The team finished 3-13, losing 11 of its final 12 games, and finished with its worst winning percentage since 1962, all while boasting the worst defense in football. In just one short season, Steckel destroyed the Vikings, and there was only one man that could repair the damage. That man was none other than Bud Grant, who came out of retirement to make the Vikings respectable again. He had saved the Vikings before, and he felt an obligation to do it again. Said Grant on why he came out of retirement, “when Max Winter, the club president, came to me, he told me the elevator had gone down the shaft to the bottom, and it was a long climb up. He said they needed credibility, and the best way to get it was to hire me back. I was the quickest way to do it. It sounded like they needed it desperately.”
And Winter wasn’t kidding. It took Grant just one game to bring the Vikings back. Because in week one of the 1985 season, the Vikings let the NFL world know that they were back, and pulled off an absolutely stunning upset over the San Francisco 49ers. But while you might know about the upset itself, you might not know what happened before the game that propelled the Vikings to this magical upset. Because today, we’re going to talk about Bud Grant’s pregame speech before this game against the 49ers, and what turned out to be the speech that saved the Minnesota Vikings.
To kick off the opening week of the season, no one, not a single soul, was giving the Vikings any chance at winning this one. I mean, how could you? In one corner, you had a Vikings team that went 3-13 the year before, and in the other corner, you had the San Francisco 49ers, a team coming off of one of the greatest seasons of all-time. In 1984, the 49ers won their second Super Bowl in franchise history, and did so with a 15-1 record while having the second-best offense in football, and an offense that averaged 29.7 points per game, and the best defense in football, allowing just 14.2 points per game. Since the two-point conversion did not exist back then, this meant that, on average, the 49ers outscored their opponents by an average of three possessions in 1984, and in the playoffs, outscored their opponents 82-26, making easy work of the Giants, Bears, and Dolphins. Oh, and when the Vikings and 49ers met in week 15 of that season, in front of a national television audience on CBS, it was a massacre, as the 49ers won by a final score of 51-7, in a game where San Francisco got six sacks, where Joe Montana threw three touchdown passes and finished with a passer rating of 150, and where the 49ers outgained the Vikings 521-265 in total yardage, just about doubling their output. To make a long story short, you had a complete mismatch on paper, with one of the best teams of all-time the previous year going up against one of the worst teams in football. San Francisco was 11-point favorites entering this game for a reason; no one was giving the Vikings any chance to win. It was going to take something special for Minnesota to pull this one off. And sure enough, Bud Grant knew exactly what it was going to take.
The Minnesota Vikings first played in 1961, meaning that this 1985 season was their 25th in the NFL. And to celebrate the silver anniversary of the team, Bud Grant had a banquet with a bunch of former players, all members of the silver anniversary team, that helped make the Vikings the organization that they were, including the likes of Fran Tarkenton, Mick Tingelhoff, and Carl Eller. I should note that while this was a banquet for the silver anniversary team, all members of the current Vikings organization attended the banquet as well. The original plan was to have Grant speak for a few minutes in a prepared speech, and then return to his seat. But Grant ended up not doing that. He got emotional, tearing up, and then, said about the silver anniversary players, “I wish I could take the hearts of all of these great players at the head table, and implant them into the hearts of our present players.” He used his speech as a motivational tool of sorts to call out his current team. In essence, he said, “the great Vikings of the past had heart. I wish I could say the same about my current team.”
And Grant admitted afterwards that this was his grand plan. Bring the current team to the banquet to get them to appreciate the Vikings of the past more, to learn a little something from them, and then, to fire them up and get them to dig deep. As Grant said, “at the time, I hoped to get to our players. After seeing all of the former players as a group, I realized how fortunate the Vikings were to have had people of that top caliber. What made them stand out is that they had the great athlete’s heart. Maybe our players got a little bit of that by way of osmosis. Our players realized that the Vikings of the past weren’t any different, except that the former players excelled in desire and heart.” So, that was the grand plan, but we all know that sometimes, people and coaches give speeches intending for it to come out one way, and instead, it comes out a completely different way.
But with Bud Grant? The speech hit home. Said Matt Blair, who was entering his 12th season with the Vikings and was on that silver anniversary team thanks to six straight Pro Bowl appearances from 1977-82, on how effective that speech was at resonating with the current crop of players, “the speech was moving to some, and made others mad. I thought it was right on target. The guys in the past knew how to win. Grant taught them. The young players will have to go through that period and learn.” The bottom line from that speech was that the former Vikings had something that the current Vikings did not, and that was heart. And now, going into the opener against the San Francisco 49ers, the players got the message loud and clear. Whether it was out of respect and admiration for the former players, or whether it was a personal revelation, or whether it was a way to try and prove Bud Grant wrong, the players knew that the only way they were going to win this game was if they showed what the Vikings of the past quarter century did, and that was heart. Now, they were all motivated and fired up. Time to prove it on the field.
And in a shocking upset that no one saw coming, the Vikings won the game. Just like that, Bud Grant, with his speech, had saved the Vikings yet again. Because when all was said and done, the Vikings, despite entering this game against the defending Super Bowl champion as 11-point underdogs, won by a final score of 28-21, showing tremendous heart by scoring the final 14 points of the game, scoring the game-tying touchdown on a 1-yard run by Alfred Anderson with just under three minutes left, and scoring the game-winning touchdown on a 10-yard run by Ted Brown with 1:49 left. Minnesota’s defense, which was the worst in football in 1984, forced the 49ers to turn the ball over seven times, with five fumbles and two interceptions by Joe Montana. For some perspective, the most turnovers the Vikings forced in any game in 1984 was four. And here, against the 49ers, they just about doubled that. It was a truly stunning win in every sense of the word, and after one game, it was clear- the Vikings were officially back.
The best coaches to ever be leaders in this sport have always had a way of getting the most out of their players, and resonating with them. Bud Grant was a master at that; it’s why the Vikings were consistently good under him, and it’s why players loved playing for him. And perhaps no example exhibited that more than the 1985 speech he gave prior to his team’s season opener against the 49ers. Because if Bud Grant’s goal was to get his players to show heart and to play like the Vikings of old, then mission accomplished.
The Vikings went on to have a respectable 7-9 record and Grant retired again. Jerry Burns took over and many of the players who were once motivated by Bud led the team to the NFC Championship in 1987. Bud could retire in peace and watch from afar as his team was in the hunt almost every year from then on.
