Rip Hawkins
| No. 58 | |||||||||
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| Position: | Linebacker | ||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||
| Born: | April 21, 1939 Winchester, Tennessee, U.S. | ||||||||
| Died: | July 28, 2015 (aged 76) Cheyenne, Wyoming, U.S. | ||||||||
| Career information | |||||||||
| College: | North Carolina | ||||||||
| NFL draft: | 1961: 2nd round, 15th pick | ||||||||
| AFL draft: | 1961: 2nd round, 12th pick | ||||||||
| Career history | |||||||||
| Career highlights and awards | |||||||||
| Career NFL statistics | |||||||||
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Ross Cooper "Rip" Hawkins (April 21, 1939 – July 28, 2015) was an American professional football player who was a linebacker for five seasons with the Minnesota Vikings of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the North Carolina Tar Heels.
Hawkins died in 2015; at the time of his death, he had Lewy body dementia. He was one of at least 345 NFL players to be diagnosed after death with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is caused by repeated hits to the head.