Sullivan another in long line of quality Vikings centers

No kid dreams of growing up to play center in the NFL. Not even the ones who grow up and start 91 games at center in the NFL.

"I actually wanted to play corner," said Vikings center John Sullivan, sporting the, um, wide base and low center of gravity that makes centers and wrestlers very good and cornerbacks, well, ex-cornerbacks.

"I was a big Rod Woodson fan. But pretty early on, I knew that wasn't going to quite work out for me. By fourth grade, I was a center."

Except for a one-year stint at tackle his sophomore year at Greenwich (Conn.) High School, Sullivan has been a center from age 10 up. The Vikings took him in the sixth round of the 2008 draft out of Notre Dame, and after a year of backing up Matt Birk, he is now finishing his sixth season as a starter at age 29.

On Sunday in Miami, when injuries likely will force the Vikings to turn to three backup offensive linemen once again, Sullivan will start his 15th game of the season and 92nd regular-season game of his career. In doing so, he will tie Jeff Christy (1993-99) for fourth place on the team's list of career starts for a center.

"I didn't know I was making my way up the list until a couple weeks ago," Sullivan said. "Obviously, I knew of Matt, I knew of Jeff Christy and when I got here, I learned all about Mick Tingelhoff. What an incredible list to be a part of."

After Christy, Dennis Swilley (1977-87) is third with 101 starts. Then it's Birk (1998-08) at 123. And then it's Tingelhoff, a 2015 Pro Football Hall of Fame senior committee candidate, on the mountaintop with 240 consecutive starts from 1962 to 1978.

"I think that puts me at my [17th] year," Sullivan said. "I'm not saying that's not possible. But it's too far down the road.

"What Mick did is unbelievable. Luck comes into play a lot, but it also takes an extreme level of toughness to be an ironman like Mick, Brett [Favre] and Jim Marshall. The injury rate in the NFL is 100 percent, so it's not that they never got injured. They got injured and just played through the pain and anything."

Inside the walls at Winter Park, the belief is Sullivan is having his best season, topping 2012, when Adrian Peterson ran for 2,097 yards. Pro Football Focus gives Sullivan a 4.1 grade, highest among the team's regular starters on offense.

Tingelhoff and Birk both went to six Pro Bowls, Christy to three. But a first Pro Bowl selection for Sullivan seems unlikely given the Vikings' record this season.

"The Pro Bowl is fine for what it is," Sullivan said. "But it has to be seen for what it is, a popularity contest. I've never been concerned with being the most popular guy.

As a seventh-grader, Sullivan was 5-10 and 170 pounds. By the end of eighth grade, he was 6-3, 270. Wednesday, he weighed in about 307, or 70 pounds heavier than Tingelhoff's playing weight.

Sullivan has grown to love the unheralded position. He said he enjoys always being at the point of the physical attack, but also is attracted to the mental aspect of having to read defenses, confer with the quarterback, adjust the protections and relay the information to the rest of the linemen.

Asked to describe the best game he has had, which, of course, probably no one noticed, Sullivan picked the win at Houston during the team's playoff run in 2012.

"I knew what they were going to do before they did it on literally 100 percent of the plays in the game," Sullivan said. "And as a center, if you can get that information, you become pretty dangerous. And I put a bunch of guys on the ground, too."

So he's cool with having never played cornerback?