Fifty years after he retired, Joe Kapp is still the only QB in history who played in the Rose Bowl, a Grey Cup championship game, and the Super Bowl.
After a successful college career at Cal, Joe Kapp began his professional football career in 1959, playing for the Calgary Stampeders. Then, in 1961, Calgary traded Kapp to the BC Lions. Kapp led the Lions to a 1963 Grey Cup appearance, and the next year the team won the Canadian championship.
Joe Kapp (l) and Bud Grant in 1969 (photo, Pioneer Press)
Having achieved CFL successes, Kapp took his skills across the border to the NFL. There he had an ally–Bud Grant–who had coached against Kapp in Canada. Grant thought Kapp would be a good fit at his new team, the Minnesota Vikings. Minnesota had just traded its starting quarterback Fran Tarkenton to the NY Giants and Grant needed a new man under center.
At the time, Minnesota was an NFL newcomer, having joined the League in 1961. The team was getting its footing (29-51-4 overall) when Kapp entered the scene. In his first season with the Vikes, Kapp started eleven games and went 3-5-3 as the team went 3-8-3 overall–par for the course in Minnesota.
Things began changing the following season. Kapp started all fourteen games, and the Vikings reached the playoffs with an 8-6 record. Even though the team lost in the playoffs to the Colts, the future looked bright with Kapp at quarterback.
Shining bright, too. In 1969, Kapp started thirteen games, and the team went 12-2. At season’s end, his teammates voted Kapp the team MVP–an award he refused to take. “There is no one most valuable Viking,” he declared. “There are 40 most valuable Vikings.”
Joe Kapp had proven he could play with the best, but (man) did he still have his critics! They said he threw a wobbly ball, threw too many interceptions, and that his passer rating was below average.
His teammates didn’t waver. They knew, no matter what, Kapp would give 100%. Carl Eller, the Vikings Hall of Fame DE, said: “We had a closeness on that team among the black and white players, and Joe Kapp was the key to that.”
Another thing teammates liked about Kapp was his toughness. Unlike most QBs who avoid contact, Kapp relished it. Rather than run out of bounds, Joe would run straight ahead, often looking for a defender to run over. He did just that in the 1969 NFL Championship game. He ran over Cleveland Browns’ linebacker Jim Houston, knocking him out of the game.
Despite achieving success in Minnesota, Kapp played the entire 1969 season without a new contract. Unable to reach an agreement with the Vikings’ front office, Kapp then signed a four-year deal with the Boston Patriots–a deal that made Kapp the highest-paid player in the League.
But things didn’t turn out in New England the way they had in the Midwest. Kapp and the Patriots got off to a very rocky start at 2-12. Worse yet, Commissioner Pete Rozelle didn’t like his four-year arrangement and demanded that Kapp sign a standard player contract. Kapp refused, and, just like that, his twelve-year pro career was over.
Kapp did some acting, but the lure of football was too strong. In 1982, he signed on as head coach at his Alma Mater and remained at the helm for five years. He then had a brief stint as GM of the BC Lions before transitioning back to coaching as the head man of an Arena League team.
Today at 82-years-old, Kapp lives in Los Gatos, California. He’s a family man (wife, four children, and four grandchildren) and gives talks once in a while. He’s in the record books, too–the only QB ever to play in the Rose Bowl, the Grey Cup championship, and in the Super Bowl.
Kapp, you see, wasn’t an ordinary Joe. He was extra-ordinary.
