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N.F.L.|Jim Marshall, Iron Man Defensive End for the Vikings, Dies at 87
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/sports/football/jim-marshall-dead.html
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Part of Minnesota’s famed unit the Purple People Eaters, he started a record 270 consecutive games. Also famously, he once scooped up a fumble and ran to the wrong end zone.
June 3, 2025, 5:50 p.m. ET
Jim Marshall, a former Minnesota Viking who started in more consecutive N.F.L. games than any other defensive player, but who may be best remembered for romping 66 yards into the wrong end zone after recovering a fumble during a game in 1964, died on Tuesday in Minneapolis. He was 87.
His wife, Susan Landwehr Marshall, confirmed the death, in a hospital. She did not specify the cause but said he had been hospitalized for an extended period.
Marshall started every game for the Vikings over the franchise’s first 19 seasons, making four Super Bowl appearances as part of Minnesota’s formidable defensive line, known as the Purple People Eaters.
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When he retired after the 1979 season, two weeks before his 42nd birthday, he had started 270 consecutive regular-season games at defensive end. Quarterback Brett Favre broke that N.F.L. record decades later in his waning years with the Vikings, finishing with 297 consecutive starts.
Marshall also started in 19 playoff games during a dominant stretch for the Vikings, who won the N.F.C. Central division 10 times in 11 years across the 1960s and ’70s. But although Minnesota advanced to four Super Bowls, it lost every one decisively. (The Vikings remain one of a dozen N.F.L. teams that have never won a Super Bowl.)
