Fred Cox, a place-kicker for the Minnesota Vikings who scored the most points in the team’s history and, while still playing, helped conceive the Nerf Football, a squishy faux pigskin that sold in the millions, died on Wednesday at his home in Monticello, Minn. He was 80.

The Vikings announced his death but provided no details. He had been treated recently for kidney problems.

Cox, a straight-on kicker who used a square-toed shoe, was one of the Vikings’ most valuable players since the team was founded in 1961. He scored 1,365 points, the second most in N.F.L. history at the time of his retirement (he is now ranked No. 34); appeared in 210 games, the third most for a Viking; and played in each of the franchise’s Super Bowl appearances, in 1970, ’74, ’75 and ’77, all of them losses.

“All the players wanted to win,” Cox told The Star Tribune of Minneapolis in 1992. “Yet it might have been easier for the players to accept what happened than the fans. The fans have never been able to live with the fact that we lost four times. But the bottom line is that for any team to get there four times is an amazing feat.”