The Vikings go into today's game at San Francisco with an overall record of 19-22-1 against the 49ers.
They are 12-9 at home and a poor 7-13-1 on the road against them, including last year's 9-3 upset by the 49ers.
Of that long series, the home game loss that hurt the worst was in 1970, when the 49ers eliminated the Vikings 17-14 in the playoffs.
Of those road victories, the biggest surprise was in the 1987 strike year, when the Vikings wound up in the playoffs, beat the Saints 44-10 in the first round and then scored maybe the biggest upset in Vikings history when they beat Joe Montana and a great 49ers team 36-24 in San Francisco.
The victory advanced the Vikings to the NFL Championship Game, in which they lost 17-10 to Washington and missed a chance to go to the Super Bowl.
Jerry Burns, the Vikings coach at the time, said this about the victory over the 49ers: "The one thing I've always remembered is that you've seen running backs dominate games, and you've seen quarterbacks dominate games, but I'd never seen a wide receiver dominate a game like Anthony Carter did that particular game. Anything you threw out there [Wade Wilson was the quarterback] he went and got it. He took it away from people. [That] was the most sensational one particular game that I've ever seen any receiver play."
Carter caught 10 passes for a then-NFL playoff record 227 receiving yards (since broken by Buffalo's Eric Moulds with 240 yards vs. Miami in 1998).
I recall Montana having a bad day and coach Bill Walsh replacing Montana with Steve Young to try to generate some offense.