Joe Kapp, the hardcore quarterback who regularly ran into tacklers rather than away from them while driving the Minnesota Vikings to their most memorable Super Bowl and California to its last Rose Bowl, has passed on and he was 85.
Cal QB Joe Kapp Is No More
Cal affirmed that Kapp passed on Monday. According to his son J.J. Kapp, Joe was suffering with Alzheimer’s disease since the last 15 years. His family planned to send his brain to researchers at UC San Francisco to study the possibility of a link between his dementia and the head blows he took from his punishing playing style.
Image source- NBC News.com
Kapp had a great college career at Cal, which culminated in a Rose Bowl appearance in the year 1959. He went on to be a star in Canada before joining the NFL. He succeeded Fran Tarkenton in Minnesota and led the Vikings to the 1969 Super Bowl, where they lost to Kansas City. In a victory over Baltimore in the year 1969, he still holds a share of the NFL single-game record for most touchdown passes with seven.
Insight Into Joe’s Fabulous Career
In an interview with The Associated Press over the phone, J.J. Kapp stated that it was kind of like having your own superhero living in your house. In a Sports Illustrated cover story, Kapp was dubbed “The Toughest Chicano” for his fighting prowess on the field. That was the title of J.J. Kapp’s autobiography, which was published in the year 2019 and was co-written by two other friends.
Kapp, whose mother was Mexican American, was a wild promoter for the Latino people group who worked with dissident Cesar Chavez for farmworker privileges. He likewise fiddled with acting, with credits that remember a job for the 1974 film “The Longest Yard” about a jail football crew.
He set the standard as one of the first Mexican-American pro football stars and remains, along with Jim Plunkett, the only Mexican American quarterback to start in a Super Bowl.
Kapp Was A Great Coach
Kapp likewise later trained his place of graduation for five seasons and was on the sideline for quite possibly of the most critical play in school history.
He promised not to drink his favorite alcoholic beverage, tequila, until the Bears made another appearance in the storied bowl game when he was hired as a coach at Cal prior to the 1982 season.
During his lifetime, they never returned. In his five years at Cal, Kapp went 20-34-1. His last game was the biggest upset in the rivalry’s history, when the Golden Bears beat Stanford as 21-point underdogs.
He then went to the NFL in 1967 as a component of a confounded exchange between groups in various associations and supplanted Tarkenton, who had been exchanged by Minnesota to the New York Monsters.
Before the Vikings lost to Baltimore in the 1968 playoffs, Kapp led the team to a 12-2 record and threw 19 touchdown passes. The following year, he finished second in MVP voting.
