Vikings QB Joe Kapp

NIAN OF NIAl;HISNIO: Part 3 by JOE KAPP with JACK OLSEN WE WERE JUSTA BUNCH OF PARTY POOPERS So says the Viking quarterback in explanation of the Super Bowl defeat. Instead of whooping it up like so many swashbuckling Odins, the Vikings suddenly got very serious and played like cautious businessmen After the Vikings won the Central Di the NFL championship. We had beaten ball to the goal line by whatever means M vision title we had to play Los An them 51-3 in a league game earlier necessary. Those two guys would go geles for the Western championship, and one of those games where we could do through a brick wall if you painted a our team really did a job. That was the nothing wrong and the opponents could goal line on the other side. You have to game where we were behind 17- 7 at the do nothing right-but we knew that club .them with a stick to stop them. half after I assisted in a crucial fumble. they had some horses, At this stage of Later on I made a play that every Then I managed to throw two inter the season we were running on sheer mo body talked about, but it really wasn't ceptions. But in the second half our de mentum; we had come too far to blow as sensational as it looked. To begin fense held-as it had been holding all it all now, and Cleveland couldn't stop with, you have to understand that it's year-and we put together two of the us. Early in the game I called a hand against my principles to run the ball prettiest touchdown drives you've ever off to Billy Brown, but he slipped on out of bounds. Football is just as much seen to beat one of the finest teams in the ice and I had nobody to hand off a game of inches as baseball or any oth football 23-20. They tell me that Ram to, so I barged through the left side of er game, and you've got to get every Coach George Allen is still going around our line and went in for a touchdown. inch you can. Frankly, I'd be embar shaking his head and saying, "I can't They told me I left Walter Johnson and rassed to run out of bounds just to avoid believe it. I can't believe it!" I don't Mike Howell sprawled behind me. I getting hit. J.J. might be watching the blame him. He had the game won, but don't even remember hitting them. I gave game on television, and I wouldn't want somebody forgot to teJJ the Vikings. it the old Bill Brown-Dave Osborn tech him to think that his old man lacked ma Now we had to face Cleveland for nique. Their idea is that you take the chismo. Well, in the NFL continued AARON BROWN OF THE CHIEFS SLAMS INTO KAPP, CAUSING A FUMBLE. SUBSEQUENTLY, BROWN KNOCKED KAPP OUT OF THE GAME PARTY POOPERS continued , championship game against Cleveland I Right there in the dressing room we be has enough good judgment to allow us called a quick-out pattern to Gene Wash gan acting like it would be bad luck if to act as free spirits within his rules. If ington, but he was double covered. I we celebrated the NFL championship we choose not to act like free spirits, looked to John Henderson on the other anymore. We should have. We were it's not up to him to get us out of it side, and there was nothing there, so I wrong! We should have had a party, it's up to us, and especially to me, as took off around right end, straight at but we didn't. That was mistake No. 1! the quarterback. Well, I blew the as Jim Houston, the Browns' All-Pro line Before I say another word about the signment. I didn't have the slightest idea backer. I could have gone out of bounds, Super Bowl, let me be like Mr. Nixon what was wrong. All my insight came but instead I put all my moves on Hous and make one thing perfectly clear: I after the game. ton, and when neither of them worked am not offering excuses. In fact, I'll say Another thing that was no help to us I put my head down and crashed into it flatly: the better team won that game. although it shouldn't have mattered him. The next thing I knew I had done The better team on Jan. 11, 1970. Noth was being named 13-point favorites. a complete flip through the air and Hous ing that I say after this is intended to There wasn't a single Viking who didn't ton was down and out. My leg hurt like deny that fact. The Kansas City Chiefs realize how ridiculous that was. We'd tell hell, but I didn't rub it. I didn't know played one of the great games in mod the newsmen every day, ''Listen, you what really happened until several weeks ern football history, and they deserved guys, you just don't know pro football if later when I ran into Houston on the to win. We made mistakes and they you think we should be 13-point favor Coast. didn't. That's all. They did to us ex ites." We had studied the films, and the ''You know what you did to me that actly what we'd been doing to everybody Chiefs looked tough. And why shouldn't time?" Houston said. else all season long. they be tough? Mr. Lamar Hunt had "Yeah," I said. "l hit you with ill)'. In my opinion, somebody should have spent enough millions to develop a good purse." seen our trouble developing early, right team. I don't remember him losing many Houston said, ''You caught me right after the NFL championship game when draft choices. So how could he come up on the point of the jaw with your knee." we didn't party eno_Qgh, didn't have with a marshmallow ball club? We knew "Well," I said, ''that's one of our enough fun. But nobody added up the better. We had lost to the Jets in the ex plays. We practiced it all year." signs. We went down to New Orleans hibition season, and now it was Kansas ''Better practice some more next to prepare for the Super Bowl, and they City and not New York that had reached year," Houston said. "I'll be looking checked us into the Hilton Inn near the the Super Bowl, so we had every reason for that play." I hope not. airport, and that is exactly nowhere. It's to rate them high. After our 27- 7 win in that champi way out on the Delta flats, so far from I point all this out because there were onship game, I got into a little bit of trou downtown New Orleans that you can't a lot of reports later that we had un ble with Pete Rozelle, but it was all in even see the skyline from there. That derestimated the Chiefs, that we had been nocent. Without consulting the NFL only served to emphasize our change in too complacent. That theory just hap rules, Dale Hackbart and I had put a attitude. All year long we'd been win pens to be bull. We were anything but case of champagne in the dressing room ning by having fun and being enthu complacent or overconfident. We were, before the game. I said, "You know, siastic, and now we were changing into however, much too serious about ~he Hack, the front four has been getting a bunch of certified public accountants. whole thing. All season long we had all the newspaper space and they de Not for us the bright lights of Bourbon been doing our thing, but when the big serve it, but we also have a fine of Street. Everybody was thinking about money was on the line we started doing fensive line and nobody's writing about the extra $7,500 for winning. Each one somebody else's thing, acting like U.S. them," so we went out and got another of us was thinking, "I'm not gonna be Steel or the Green Bay Packers. We for case of champagne strictly for our of the guy who blows that money that ev got who we were and we came to that fensive linemen. When the game was over erybody's wife has already spent." We game as uninspired as Lawrence Welk. and the television cameras focused on were all worried on behalf of our team Well, I don't propose to replay the our locker room, all you could see was mates, and instead of swashbuckling Super Bowl here. Everybody knows that champagne spurting all over the place around like the Odins that we were, we Kansas City worked out an intelligent and that's against the rules. We just turned into organization men. game plan. They doubled and tripled didn't know, and Rozelle was nice about In the middle of our practice week, on our great pass catcher, Gene Wash it. Personally, I'd have rather had te Gary Cuozzo and I had a little talk. ington. They played head-up on our great quila anyway, but he probably wouldn't "Something's not right," Gary said.

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