The NFL's Incredible Passing Hulk

By Josh Tyrangiel

Dennis Green is a lunatic. The Minnesota Vikings' head coach sat down last off-season to tinker with a football team that had made the play-offs eight straight years, featured explosive wide receivers Randy Moss and Cris Carter and running back Robert Smith, and had as good a chance as any other team to get to the next Super Bowl. Just adjust the dials a bit, right? Not by Green's logic. He went for a thorough overhaul. Dispense with the veteran leadership of Jeff George and Randall Cunningham at quarterback, and give the ball to a second-year guy who had never thrown a pass in the NFL. Brass does not do Green justice.

And "phenom" does not do Daunte Culpepper justice. The sophomore signal caller has made the most difficult position in the game look easy, guiding the Vikings to an 11-2 record and a play-off berth before any other team in the league.

Culpepper is revolutionizing the quarterback position with his simple being. He is huge. Capital letters HUGE--6-ft. 4-in. huge. Two hundred and sixty pounds huge. He flattens defenders, stiff-arms tacklers and dwarfs his own offensive linemen in the huddle. He makes kickers look like hors d'oeuvres. Some historical perspective? Culpepper has the exact physical measurements of Deacon Jones, the Hall of Fame defensive lineman who terrorized puny quarterbacks with his speed and size. Culpepper could settle that score.

Size has always mattered in the NFL, but coaches have only recently caught on to the idea that quarterbacks can and should be big too--real big. Culpepper has muscled his way to the front of a new class of big young QBs that includes Cleveland's Tim Couch, Philadelphia's Donovan McNabb, Tampa Bay's Shaun King and Cincinnati's Akili Smith--all players who can throw a football like Joe Montana and run it like Fran Tarkenton.

Culpepper leads the NFC in passing yards (6-ft. 5-in. Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts leads the league), but it's his running that gives the Vikings an added dimension. "You can't lay back your ears and wait for Culpepper to decide what he wants to do, because he can run and he can throw," said Detroit head coach Gary Moeller as he sipped a soda in the locker room after his Lions took a 24-17 beating Thursday night. "When you have a guy who can do all that, he's going to help you a lot."

Culpepper can heave a football 80 yds., run a 40-yd. dash in a halfback-like 4.42 sec. and jump 36 in. from a standing start. Even more impressive, according to Tarkenton, the last great Vikings quarterback, is Culpepper's poise. "A QB can have skills and he can run, but he's got to be able to make plays," says Tarkenton. "What this young man does is make plays for his football team." As in Culpepper's first-ever start, when, realizing that the Chicago Bears were lying back and waiting for him to make passing mistakes, Culpepper tucked the ball under his arm and ran for 73 yds. and three touchdowns. "I don't think there is any young quarterback who has ever come into the league and played this well," says Vikings offensive coordinator Sherman Lewis. "Maybe Dan Marino."

Culpepper sat on the bench all last year, and his form in practice was anything but polished. So when Green announced he would be the starter this season, football pundits--and many Vikings teammates--doubted he was ready. "But I never doubted myself," Culpepper told reporters, "not one time."

His confidence brims, in part, because he has dealt with far more adversity than your average all-American QB. Born to an incarcerated mother, Daunte was raised by Emma Culpepper, a woman who ran a Florida home for troubled youth. When she took Daunte in, Emma was 62 and had already raised 13 children. "She was my mother and my father every day," Culpepper is fond of saying. "It's remarkable that I was taken in by such a special lady." Money was always tight. Emma couldn't afford the $55 youth-football fee until Daunte was 12. With proceeds from his first pro contract, Daunte moved Emma, now 85, into a gated community in Ocala, Fla.

Moss and Carter's volatility is triggered by a hypercompetitive drive to win. So Culpepper's steady bearing has been clearly beneficial to the Vikings. The team has been to the Super Bowl four times, and lost each time. With the play-offs looming, Culpepper will soon get to flash his size and skills on the national stage. The revisionism has already begun. After joking that "he doesn't impress me," Randy Moss confesses, "I knew deep down inside that Daunte was going to be an impact player." So did we.

--With reporting by David Thigpen/Minneapolis

With reporting by David Thigpen/Minneapolis