One Tough Hombre--All Hail, WR, Sammy White

[Guest]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAQrxahyXow

Sammy White won the 1976 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Award.  We tend to forget about White as both Randy Moss and Adrian Peterson also won that award.  Yet, Whites' rookie season was something to behold!  He is probably the best pure catcher of the ball the Vikings have ever had...after Cris Carter.  He wasn't the biggest, or the fastest, but he was probably the bravest receiver going across the middle. 

He made pro bowls and is one of the 50 Greatest Vikings.  After retiring Sammy became an offensive coordinator for Grambling University.  The Tigers won 6 conference championships while he was coordinator and he was elected to the SWAC Hall of Fame in 2004.

His pro career can be best described by one catch in 1977 in the Super Bowl against the Raiders, when Sammy was hit so hard by Jack Tatum that his helmet flew off.  I remember watching it live and thinking that Tatum had killed him!  Sammy hung onto the ball somehow and it was ruled a catch.  Today, the hit that Tatum gave would've brought a personal foul against him, and he might have even been ejected from the game.  But, it was legal to literally head hunt in the NFL back then...but Sammy held onto the ball.  Watch the video and tell me you don't think Sammy White was a tough guy!!

[swede700]

Sammy was the first good Vikings' WR I recall in my younger years (as Ahmad retired a couple of years before I started paying attention), but AC took it to a whole another level when he arrived on the scene in Sammy's penultimate season.  Really it was Sammy (even moreso than Ahmad) that started the string of good WRs that the Vikings have had over the years.

[Klomp]

The WR list this franchise has had is pretty impressive.