Joe Kapp was the best of Vikings characters at QB
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Joe Kapp didn’t just have a football life, he had several lifetimes worth of football experiences.
When he passed away on Monday, it conjured memories from 60s-era Vikings fans of watching him do battle in the earliest days of the franchise — and doing it in ways few quarterbacks would dare attempt, even back in the Wild West of the NFL. But he didn’t just put together a little run in the 60s, he became one of the most memorable players in team history.
His journey to Minnesota was a major part of that lore. Kapp played his college ball at Cal, where he barely passed the ball and when he did throw it didn’t go particularly well. He threw just seven touchdowns and 28 interceptions in his college career. The NFL wasn’t as pass-happy as its AFL nemeses but numbers like that still rarely resulted in a pro career.
The NFL didn’t think he belonged. Washington drafted Kapp in the 18th round and never called him about actually joining the team. He ultimately became a good passer in the CFL with the Calgary Stampeders and BC Lions and led the Lions to a Grey Cup championship in 1964. In his best year (1962) he led the CFL in passing TDs and yards and in eight Canadian seasons, he passed for nearly 23,000 yards, 136 touchdowns to 129 interceptions and ran for more than 2,700 yards and 26 touchdowns. His number was eventually retired by the BC Lions.
Taking over the Vikings as head coach in 1967, Bud Grant knew he needed a field general to lead his new team. He wanted Kapp because he had competed against him in the CFL in Winnipeg, so the Vikings worked out a deal to acquire him. Because nothing in Kapp’s career was normal, getting him to Minnesota involved the release of one of their players, Jim Young, who wanted to return to the CFL in a pseudo trade for Kapp. Coincidentally, Young became a Canadian Football Hall of Famer.
If Kapp never started a single game for the Vikings, he would have already achieved a pretty interesting football career. But it wasn’t long after he came to Minnesota before he was at the center of football history.
After a three-win season in 1967, Kapp was at the helm for the Vikings turning the corner and becoming The Purple People Eaters under Grant. In 1968 he ground his way to eight wins and got the Vikings into the playoffs.
Let’s not skip over how Kapp got them those wins. Jump passes, runs that looked like a freight train that went off the rails, steamrolling linebackers, wounded-duck throws that wobbled through the air and chest passes that somehow found their targets just often enough to get the Vikings over the top. By the end of every game his jersey was in tatters and he was hobbling. Grant loved the way teammates responded to him, no matter how it looked.
NFL Films described him this way:
“Joe Kapp is one of the toughest men in football. How does a quarterback avoid such pressure? The classic way is to throw over it but Joe Kapp is not a classic quarterback, he is a fighter concerned more with results than style.”
When the Vikings made the playoffs behind their rough-and-tumble QB in ‘68, they faced the Baltimore Colts, who were a 14-1 juggernaut and seemed destined for a championship. They manhandled the Vikings and the Colts went on to lose “The Guarantee” game against Joe Namath in Super Bowl III.
After Gary Cuozzo, who the Vikings acquired in a trade to be their future QB, started Week 1 of 1969, Kapp got his revenge against the Colts in Week 2, throwing for an astonishing 449 yards and seven touchdowns en route to a 52-14 victory and never looked back. By year’s end, Kapp won 12 of 13 starts, led the No. 1 offense in the NFL and finished second in MVP voting. He famously refused to accept team MVP honors saying, “there is no one most valuable Viking.”
The Vikings lost in the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs, which marked the final game before the NFL and AFL merged to form one league and the final game of Kapp’s Viking tenure.
Following that season he became a free agent and signed with the Boston Patriots. Of course with Kapp, a fighter, the situation didn’t come about quietly. He spent the offseason struggling to get the dollars he believed he deserved and didn’t sign with the Pats until partway into the season. At the time, he had landed the biggest contract in history but it wasn’t fulfilled.
After a year with the Patriots, he refused to sign a standard player contract and ended up suing the league and never played in the NFL again. The suit ultimately resulted in the NFL having to pay out a settlement to the players’ association. Kapp turned out to be a pioneer in the players’ labor battles with the league.
When his football career was over, Kapp got involved in Hollywood, including acting in and producing the football classic The Longest Yard. He coached at Cal, where he was on the sidelines for the famed “band is on the field” game. He was the GM for the BC Lions. He coached an indoor football league team called the Sacramento Attack. He owned pizza joints. He famously got in a fight with fellow Canadian hall of famer Angelo Mosca in 2011 at an alumni luncheon over a supposedly dirty hit in 1963. His son played college football as a fullback and his grandson at tight end.
Joe Kapp didn’t let any of his football life go to waste.
How many players could appear in less than three full seasons worth of games for a franchise and leave such a lasting impact? Kapp only had a few hundred more passing yards than Sam Bradford, yet he would rank high on anyone’s list of favorites.
Kapp was the first in a long list of Vikings quarterbacks who had similarly brief yet magical tenures. Whether it was Wade Wilson off the bench to take them to the NFC Championship or Bears legend Jim McMahon getting the Vikings to the playoffs or Warren Moon coming from Houston to lead a dominating passing attack or Randall Cunningham unretiring to lead the greatest offense ever at the time or Jeff George putting up a career best season after a tumultuous career or Case Keenum and the Minneapolis Miracle.
Each of those QBs followed in Kapp’s footsteps with their own winding roads and unique traits. Wilson threw bombs, McMahon played like Kapp, Moon was a gunslinger, George had a cannon and Keenum scrambled around and threw crazy jump balls.
There is no other team with as many underdog stories and characters at quarterback than the Vikings and the world lost the best of the list this week.
