December 30, 1973. The NFC Championship game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings were leading 10-7 in the third quarter when a pass from Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach got deflected. Jeff Siemon collected the ball where it fell, not a read of the quarterback’s eyes, but a linebacker in exactly the right place. It was a kind of steady contribution that rarely led to a highlight reel, but that’s how Minnesota will remember him now.

Jeff Siemon, the four-time Pro Bowl linebacker who wore No. 50 for 11 seasons for the Vikings, passed away on March 28, 2026. He was 75, and no cause for his passing has been made public at this time. The Vikings confirmed his passing through a social media post.

“The #Vikings are mourning the passing of Jeff Siemon,” the team wrote in an Instagram post’s caption. “Siemon, a 1st round pick in 2971, was a 4-time Pro Bowler and was named one of the 50 Greatest Vikings in 2010.”

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Siemon arrived in Minnesota the same year quarterback Fran Tarkenton returned. The franchise had traded Tarkenton in 1967 and brought him back in 1972, a signal that they were chasing a championship window. Siemon, the 10th overall pick from Stanford, was drafted into it. For six seasons, Tarkenton improvised while Siemon ran the defense. Together, they reached three Super Bowls, but unfortunately couldn’t win a single one. 

Behind the ‘Purple People Eaters’ line of Alan Page, Carl Eller, Gary Larsen, and Jim Marshall, Siemon called assignments and absorbed contacts. He played in 156 games (124 started) without missing one across nine consecutive seasons. The Vikings credit him with 1,375 career tackles, third-best in franchise history behind Scott Studwell and Matt Blair.

After playing for 11 years (1972 – 1982), Jeff Siemon didn’t pursue a broadcast career. He earned a master’s in Christian Apologetics from the Simon Greenleaf School of Law in 1984. He then led the Minnesota chapter of Search Ministries for the years that followed. He and his wife, Dawn, raised four children in Edina.

Now, as the Vikings shared the update on their social media, the NFL community took notice. The prayers and stories the fans shared on Saturday reflected the linebacker at his best.

A jersey still worn to games

The Vikings’ tribute on Instagram drew hundreds of responses. Several had the kind of specificity that doesn’t come from general sentiment.

“One of the greatest Vikings in the history… Rest In Pace❤️🕊️,” one fan wrote.

Meanwhile, for anyone who watched him play through the Tarkenton era, the reverence is proportional. Siemon wore the number 50 for eleven seasons. For some fans, that number still belongs to Seimon. One fan even shared a story about how they got Siemon’s jersey.

“In 1975 – my tenth as a die hard Vikings fan – I could afford to buy an “official” Vikings jersey,” they wrote. “I sent away for one not knowing what number I would get, The day arrived – I excitedly opened the box, and it was Jeff’s #50! I was so happy. Still have the jersey today – still wear it when I go to games!”

Another chose this moment to reveal that Seimon had actually been his babysitter at Stanford, and they exchanged letters for over a decade.

“RIP… Jeff was my babysitter when he was a Stanford and we remained pen pals during the 70’s and 80’s,” they wrote. “It was extremely generous of him to take time out of this life to write letters to a kid halfway across the country, but it meant everything to a young Vikings fan in NorCal!!”

With Jeff Siemon locking up the defense, the 1973 Vikings defense had just allowed 168 points through the regular season. What’s more, they’d only allowed 8 passing touchdowns on the year, and caused a massive 33 turnovers. For many, Siemon’s presence through these games was everything.

“Loved his hard-nosed play and leadership of the Purple People Eaters, the greatest era of Vikings defense,” one wrote.

And then there was the comment that sat in a different register altogether. Siemon had survived a plane crash one, and returned to the site every year since then without announcements or an audience.

“He was in the small airplane that crashed into my friend’s house in Crystal in the 80s,” the fan wrote. “He walked away! He would go back there on the anniversary every year.”

Jeff Siemon was one of the 50 Greatest Vikings, a list that honors the most dynamic playmakers from 1961 to 2010. But even with that, the image that endures is a fan opening a mail-order box in 1975, finding his number inside, and still wearing that jersey to games today.