The coach the Fran Tarkenton made: RIP Bud Grant
There's lots of memorable games from the Vikings with him at coach. And he had a lot of famous players. Alan Page may be the best defensive lineman ever. Bud Grant lived a long life. And he had some great teams.
Lots of twitter today about his t-shirt coin toss:
Won 4 Grey Cups coaching the Winnipeg Blue Bombers
March 11th, 2023 at 10:02 PM ^
Won an NBA Championship with the Minneapolis Lakers before that.
March 11th, 2023 at 10:40 PM ^
Coached for the Minnesota Fighting Pike in the Arena Football League.
RIP Bud Grant - a legendary coach from my childhood.
March 11th, 2023 at 11:59 PM ^
I just looked it up. I'm surprised those Minnesotans were not outraged over that mascot. Trying to disguise an angry walleye as a northern pike.
My old Marketing prof in my MBA program at Minnesota was a TE for Bud Grant in Winnipeg.
Seemed like a real players coach...his teams played hard and overachieved. My pro team as a kid. Needless to say the NFC championships were great, and the superbowls were heartbreaking letdowns. RIP to a legend chieftain.
Heart break is what I remember of those Super Bowls. I remember in one game watching a couple of guys from the Steel curtain picking Fran Tarkenton up from the ground, and he looked heavy hearted, like he didn't want to get up from the ground.
Pittsburgh D was mean...they were probably reminding him it was only 2nd or 3rd down when they picked him up.
The Viking teams of his era were absolute poison for the Detroit Lions.
The black and blue division effect. It had a gruesome and cruel effect on the teams year in and year out back then. The pack were the only team who made it through in decent enough condition to win superbowls and I think it had to do more with the abundance of quality beer, cheese, and meat than coaching.
I grew up hating the Vikings because they always beat the Lions. Detroit would have the lead, but Minny would come back with their last drive. Tarkenton would scramble around just out of reach and flip the ball to Chuck Foreman for a first down, all the way down the field. They'd score the go-ahead and leave Detroit with no time left.
Tarkenton made me hate opposition quarterbacks who could scramble. Warren Moon in the Rose Bowl cemented that feeling.
RIP. They had some good teams when they played outdoors.
The NEVER should have given up that homefield advantage.
The one fact about him that I did not know: He was a member of the Lakers 1949-50 NBA championship. Played two years for them while they were still in Minneapolis (granted his stats aren't exactly spectacular for hoops). He then focused on football and the rest is history. RIP.
Didn’t hurt to have George Mikan at center, though. Bud ran into angry AFC buzz saws, Kansas City with that great defense, Miami with Bob Griese et.al., the first great Pittsburgh team, and Oakland with Kenny, Dave Casper, Cliff Branch, and Fred freaking Biletnikoff. Mommy’s QB for all four losses? Fran Tarkington. He had a great coaching tree, too. RIP, Bud.
I think Joe Kapp lost the first of those at QB.
Joe Kapp was the first QB in that run. Don't think the title that Tarkenton made Grant is really fair. Fran was on poor Vikings teams before Grant, went to the Giants without team success and only had success when he came BACK to Minnesota with Grant as the head coach. Grant utilized Fran's scrambling ability but had him tone it down it bit and that's when he reached his full potential.
I don't think I ever saw Joe Kapp throw an actual spiral pass. Every pass was like he was shot putting a live piglet.
And he was not especially accurate. But he somehow got the ball to go where he wanted it to go.
My guy. What a coach. Started in the NBA and NFL. RIP Bud.
Shitty title.....Tarkenton made coach Grant? That seems dismissing Grant as a coach. Maybe it was the other way around.
Grant's predecessor, Norm Van Brocklin hated Tarkenton's propensity to scramble. Fran was traded away (actually after Van Brocklin was replaced by Grant) only to be brought back in 1972.
As an aside, funny Van Brocklin quote:
One thing Van Brocklin was known for was his disdain for soccer-style kickers (now the standard in the NFL). In one game, soccer-style kicker Garo Yepremian beat Van Brocklin's team and after the game, a reporter asked about how felt about losing the game on a last-second field goal, and he replied "They ought to change the god-damned immigration laws in this country".
March 12th, 2023 at 10:01 AM ^
thanks, this is the correct response. the vikes won four straight division titles - and made a super bowl - with joe kapp and gary cuozzo as their quarterback.
this was not a tom brady / bill belichick situation, where a good coach didn’t win big without a great quarterback.
March 12th, 2023 at 10:47 AM ^
And the other thing a lot of people don't realize is that Gary Cuozzo went on to become Dr. Cuozzo, a successful orthodontist in central New Jersey, who was responsible for my braces and both of my sisters' braces and he had an autographed football from the Super Bowl on a shelf in his office and he let me hold it.
A couple of years ago I decided to watch ALL the super bowls on YouTube while exercising. A couple of observations from that excercise.
1. Game strategy back then was SO different. For example, down 16-0, about 10 minutes to go in the 4th quarter, Grant punted on a 4th & 6 from the Chiefs 45. In those days you either punted or tried a FG if it was 4th down. No other options were considered.
2. Tarkenton couldn’t break a plain of glass with a football. His throws were so soft it stunned me. How the fuck the Lions lost to him for a decade is beyond me.
“How the fuck the Lions lost to him for a decade is beyond me.”
Defense.
You can't sack the QB if you can't catch him. And that little bastard wouldn't stand still.
As a Detroit fan, he was the thing from Minnesota that I hated the most - until the 1987 Twins came along.
Tarkenton was the all time NFL leader in passing yards for years.
March 11th, 2023 at 10:07 PM ^
Still at 14 in front of Montana, Johnny U and many others
March 11th, 2023 at 10:09 PM ^
And by a huge margin. He (my first sports idol) retired with 47,003 passing yards and 342 TD passes. No one else had 300 TDs or 40,000 yards.
The Viking SB teams were somewhat like the Bills four time SB losers: first one, were probably outcoached, the other three were clearly not the better team.
And I will die on the hill that they’ve never been the same since moving indoors. I’m sure Bud would agree. May his memory be a blessing.
March 11th, 2023 at 10:50 PM ^
Tarkenton held many QB records. He was amazingly good. But I don't think most people watching him knew how good he was. He didn't look like one of the best all time. He wasn't big and hansom. He never bragged. He never wore flashy clothes. He was quiet. He wasn't in the news like Joe Namath. Many people probably thought Namath was better because they saw him on tv all the time. All many knew of Tarkenton is he was the QB, that no matter how far he was down, he could, and did many times, come back and win. No lead was safe. He was the reason the Minnesota teams he was on made the Super Bowl. They didn't fare well in them. But they were there. I saw the games. I remember.
It took offensive and defensive passing rules changes for his records to be broken. (the story is the same for Dan Marino) He is probably in the top 3 QBs of all time. But he played at Minnesota, in obscurity. If he had played at Los Angeles, Dallas, or New York all his career, he would be talked about as one of the best all time.
March 11th, 2023 at 10:05 PM ^
Field position was so much more valuable because it was so hard to move the ball on offense, particularly through the air. Holding was 15 yards, defenses could rough up receivers, couldn't use your hands in pass blocking, etc.
The AFC was just better than the NFC in that timeframe and there were 3 special teams with Oakland, Pittsburgh and Miami--these teams went to every Super Bowl in the AFC from Super Bowl 6 to 19 except 12 (Denver) and 16 (Cincy). Dallas won Super Bowl 6 and 12, AFC won every other Super Bowl from 7 to 15 and most of the games were blowouts.
I REALLY miss Minnesota playing outdoors. I hate indoor football
i was at this game at tiger stadium:
March 11th, 2023 at 10:01 PM ^
Back in those days, when they gave me the paper program in church Sunday mornings I doodled Lions stuff all over it. I think it's how mom kept me quiet.
March 11th, 2023 at 10:06 PM ^
funny. i remember that it snowed so hard at that game that for parts of it all you could see of the vikes uni's was the purple of their helmets. we had some type of a blue-gray wool blanket covering us. memories...
March 11th, 2023 at 10:09 PM ^
We played a team in high school that had those viking helmets and I thought it was so cool. Swan Valley, IIRC.
Omg so was I. Thanksgiving, 1969.
My dad somehow got the seats directly behind William Clay Ford’s (50 yard line, upper deck, row 2) and he wasn’t there. This is in the days before owners boxes so they just took the the best seats and sat outside like the rest of us.
Three things I still remember from that game.
1. The weather was god-awful. It must’ve snowed 2 feet that day.
2. The Lions got absolutely pummeled in a game with playoffs in the line
3. WCF had a goddamn phone in front of his seat. I had never seen a phone outside before, this was amazing to the 10 year old me.
too funny. in a movie they'd have a scene that would show the two of us X feet away from one another as we made our way through the stadium 53 years ago. yes, it was thanksgiving.
as an aside: bring back the real lions uniforms and emblem! the era above was the best, with the early '90's nearly as good or just as good. present lions uni's are barely above XFL grade.
+1 for the old uniforms. Last year I was going through some boxes of old clothes and found a Herman Moore jersey that I forgot I had. The old design looked so much better than today's.
Worse than that, it wouldn't fit anymore. Somehow, sitting in a cardboard box for 20 years made the damn thing shrink.
Some highlights if you guys want to relive it:
March 12th, 2023 at 10:04 AM ^
The "Viking offense was not devastating" but scored 2 TDs & 2 FGs. WUT? Seems pretty devastating when the Lions don't score at all.
March 12th, 2023 at 11:44 AM ^
“But the real story of the game was the league-leading Minnesota defense”
Summerall’s statement during the video is what I was referring to when responding to the question of why the Lions lost so often to the Vikings.
Tarkenton was no longer on the Vikings by 1969, and it was the Vikings “Purple People Eaters” defense that defined the team, led by DLs Carl Eller and Alan Page.
thank you moose. i can't tell you how much i enjoyed watching that, and man, what a UFR that would make. O-line completely whiffing on the vikes D-line, repeatedly, and not because of stunts. lion DB's in total disarray in the endzone for a TD. You could tell the early game plays from the later game plays by how incredibly muddy the uniforms got. and how about that jim marshall lateral to alan page on the defensive TD? page, who went on to be a minnesota supreme court judge. some remarkable guys.
Gotta love the fortitude of those baton twirlers in that weather.
March 12th, 2023 at 10:09 PM ^
Anyone remembers the 3 dots and a dash line ? This was the first football game that I saw (on TV) when I came to the US and the game which got me following football with a passion. I watched at a friend’s house where he picked the Lions and I got to root for the Vikings. That was a good time to watch football on TV as the games went quickly (not as many ads and the refs let a lot more stuff go by). The TV networks were trying to build up viewership so they tried to educate new viewers on the rules and strategy of the game which let me figure out what was happening on the field.
The Vikings are still my team but being in Southeast Michigan for the last 50 years has made me a Lions fan as well. This doubles the chances of seeing one of my teams win the Super Bowl (though double nothing is still nothing :-)
March 11th, 2023 at 11:47 PM ^
I played high school football for his son Mike Grant at Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota. Coach managed to run a high school dynasty while at the same time giving literally every guy that showed up the chance to play (I was the third string fullback). Lots of good ways of treating his players that stick with me today.
I never met Bud but from what I've heard he was a real good guy.
March 12th, 2023 at 10:09 AM ^
a great football life.
Bud Grant was a class act. As a lifelong Vikings fan, I sure wish he could have gotten one of those Super Bowl wins. But he did lots of winning regardless to be there four times.