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ORIGINAL: geoffrey greitzer
hours ago
How The Late Bart Starr Made The Vikings Great
Mike Greitzer 2 hours ago
With the recent passing of legendary quarterback Bart Starr, Vikings’ fans should recognize the impact of both Starr (and his immortal coach Vince Lombardi), on the first–and perhaps only–great Minnesota Vikings team.
History is replete with good teams becoming great.
Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls had to learn how to defeat the Detroit Pistons and the ruthless defense they played before replacing them at the top of the NBA. Before that, the Pistons had to tame Magic Johnson and the fast-track champion L.A. Lakers with defense to be the best.
In the NFL, this process is almost inevitable.
Take a look at the NFC in the 1980s. Joe Montana and the San Francisco 49ers had to overcome the mighty Dallas Cowboys. They learned to outscore them. In three seasons, the Niners won two Super Bowls.
The 1985 Chicago Bears had to get to ‘Joe Cool’, and they did. With the mighty ‘46’ Defense, Chicago took home the Iron with the world watching them.
But, quickly enough, Joe Gibbs of the Redskins, and Bill Parcells of the Giants, both outsmarted the Bears and brought the Lombardi to their cities.
Then, Montana and the Niners returned. They repeated their run and assumed a position as ‘Team of the Decade’.
1961
In the 1960’s the ‘Team of the Decade’ was, without question, the Green Bay Packers. Vince Lombardi was their coach and Bart Starr was their quarterback.
In 1960, the Packers lost the NFL championship to the Dallas Cowboys, but 1961 and ‘62, and ‘65, the Packers would win that game–then would begin NFL’s modern Era with consecutive victories in Super Bowls I and II in ‘66 and ‘67, both blowout victories against their AFL opponents.
As Viking luck would have it, it was in 1961–just as championship winds blew hard in Green Bay–that the Minnesota Vikings were born of an NFL franchise expansion plan. The Vikings were placed in their appropriate geographical spot, right next to those perennial champion Packers, as well as the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears in the North Division of the NFL.
It seemed an almost impossible task, to compete with such a dynasty, and the young Vikings’ found little success in their early years. Led by young quarterback Fran Tarkenton and head coach Norm Van Brocklin, Minnesota floundered through their first six seasons developing a roster and identity.
But, soon enough, the Vikings came to possess one thing that many other NFL teams did not, a brilliant young mind in new General Manager Jim Finks. Hired in 1964, Finks watched Bart Starr and Vince Lombardi rule the roost for his first few years, doing his best to assemble a team that would someday emulate–if not match their success.
Finks saw the Packers’ Lombardi as a coach of great discipline and positivity who commanded his team to steel their minds on consistently excellent work. Bart Starr, a willing and eager disciple of such mastery, was the Packers’ best player; a signal-caller with savvy, toughness and cool.
The young Vikings needed the same.
Unfortunately, as 1966 came and went, the Packers were celebrating the world’s first Super Bowl, while the Vikings cleaned out their spot in the basement of the North, finishing the season with their worst franchise record of 4-9-1.
But Jim Finks was working on a plan. In 1967, Van Brocklin resigned as Viking coach and the young GM recruited Bud Grant to lead his struggling team. Grant, a highly successful coach in the Canadian Football League (where Finks himself had played and coached), had taken the Edmonton Eskimos to six Grey Cup title games and won the trophy four times.
Climbing The Mountain
Bud Grant was discipline personified, a coach of almost military tactic that demanded toughness and high morale in his football team. He was a stern and quiet coach, but the players respected him to a man.
Jim Finks also brought an equally tough, but much more unorthodox quarterback, to play in Minnesota. Joe Kapp, the NFL’s first Mexican-American QB, had learned to throw by first heaving lettuce heads as a boy on his father’s New Mexico farm.
As a pro football quarterback, Kapp hadn’t his throwing style much. Still, even though the 29-year old NFL “rookie” was no Dan Marino, he, like Grant, was a winner, and he commanded respect in the huddle.
The Vikings responded to Finks’ changes–and Kapp’s strongarm leadership–almost immediately. In 1968 (as Vince Lombardi ironically resigned as Packers coach), the Vikings had their first winning season in franchise history, and took their first NFL North division title from Green Bay.
A year later, during the 1969 season, they were an absolute NFL powerhouse, ranking number one in both league offense and defense.
The Color Purple
Fink had successfully developed what came to be known as the “Purple People Eaters”, at first to compete against Green Bay’s power running game and Bart Starr’s resourceful passing, but quickly enough, to dominate the league.
In ‘64 Finks had added defenders Carl Eller and Gary Larson to join journeyman Jim Marshall on the Viking defensive line. In 1967, with a stroke of genius, he drafted Alan Page out of Notre Dame. A swift and brainy defensive tackle that would define the modern “3-Technique” in the NFL, Page would win the league’s MVP award in 1971.
To this day, Lawerence Taylor has been the only other defensive player to win the award.
GM Jim Finks and Coach Bud Grant had also formed a Minnesota Viking team that had faithfully established a credo they called, “40 for 60”, a bond between all Viking players to give all they had for an entire game, no matter your position or roster spot.
For the Vikings, it was clearly a covenant formed after seasons of doing battle with the steel dispositions of division rivals and world champions Bart Starr and Vince Lombardi.
And they had learned well.
The Great Lift Up
How good were the Vikings in ‘69? After losing a hard-fought first game in New York to the Giants in week one, 24-23, Minnesota returned home to play the defending NFL Champion Baltimore Colts, the team that had bounced them out of their first playoff berth.
The Johnny Unitas and Don Shula Colts.
The score ended Minnesota 52, Baltimore 10. Lettuce-tossing Joe Kapp threw an astonishing seven touchdowns in the game. Yes, that record has been tied, but hardly against a defending champion defense.
For the ‘69 season, the Viking defense allowed a mere 3.2 yards per carry rushing average, and gave up only 3.6 yards per pass. They won 11 games in a row, sat their starters in a meaningless week 14 game against Atlanta and finished the season 12-2.
The Purple People Eaters were bona fide.
The Vikings’ moved through the ‘69 playoffs by beating the L.A. Rams in their Divisional Playoff and crushing the Cleveland Browns in the last NFL Championship Game of the NFL/AFL merger, 27-7.
Minnesota then traveled to New Orleans and entered Super Bowl IV as a 13-point favorite against the Kansas City Chiefs.
And The Great Let Down
What happened in Tulane stadium on January 11th, 1970, is the same thing that happened to Minnesota Super Bowl VIII, IX, and XI.
The Vikings came up short. They played their worst in the ultimate game. They turned the ball over and they failed to stop the run, giving the Chiefs, Dolphins, Steelers, and Raiders their first Super Bowl trophies while missing the chance to bring one to Minnesota.
However, after a full decade of NFL/NFC North Division Championships and four Super Bowl appearances in 8 years, the Minnesota Vikings have indeed established themselves as an unforgettable team in NFL history.
It is not a complete history of greatness, and certainly pales in comparison to the history of their predecessors in the NFC North, but if Vikings fans can think highly of a one-time opponent, the Packers, and that team’s finest player, the late Bart Starr, they should.
Starr was the leader of the team that the Minnesota Vikings’ had to beat to become great.
And they did.
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Good piece, a little fluffy, but anything that brings back Grant, Page and Kapp puts me in a good mood.
I'm guessing most modern fans wouldn't agree, but there is a case to be made for Bart Starr being the best Packer QB ever.
Yeah, today's Packer fans don't like when you mention it.
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