Detroit — The mob poured from the grandstands at Briggs Stadium that frosty Sunday. They dashed onto the football field and grabbed the champion in the Honolulu blue No. 56 jersey. They hoisted Joe Schmidt aboard their shoulders. They bounced him around like “cork on the ocean” as a wordsmith described the scene that day. They celebrated with utter glee — a championship dynasty.
This was how Detroit — and most of Michigan — adored its stars back then, many generations ago. It was our era when the people cherished Schmidt and Gordie Howe and Al Kaline. The 1950s. What a wonderful town for a rookie sports journalist, and for the fans who loved sports.
The scene provided an imperishable memory.
“Yeah, I remember,” Schmidt said 65 years later from his home in Florida. “It was both exciting — and embarrassing.
“Embarrassing because the whole team should have been lifted up.”
The Lions had just won their third NFL championship in six years — 1952 and ’53 before ’57. A true dynasty. The date of the last championship victory was Dec. 29, 1957. The victim was the Cleveland Browns. The final score was 59-14.
And Joe Schmidt, as he rode the shoulders of the celebrating fans, was a tender 25. Team captain. The protype middle linebacker, Hall of Fame quality. Annual All-Pro, Pro Bowl. Future head coach.
Time flies! Joe turned 90 Tuesday.
“The big nine-oh. I have to say it’s a bit scary,” Schmidt said. “Being 90, it’s not a walk in the park.”
But we had fun dredging up the nostalgia, lot of laughs.
Late-round legend
The Lions through those championship years were a rollicking bunch. The athletes would gather on Mondays after Sunday victories in the saloon across from the old ballpark at Michigan and Trumbull. They’d down a few beers, swap tales about yesterday’s game and tell a few bawdy stories.
It was team togetherness in the 1950s. The togetherness was led by Bobby Layne, the still revered championship quarterback. He pulled in Joe and Doak Walker, Yale Lary, Jack Christiansen, Jimmy David, Dick Stanfel, Lou Creekmur. During those dynasty seasons, the Lions played with seven guys who would become Pro Football Hall of Famers. And a bunch of others whose names still ring out of antiquity.
And ultimately in 1957, the others were joined by Tobin Rote and John Henry Johnson — NFL veterans acquired from other clubs.
But Joe Schmidt was the pillar of those last two Lions championship teams.
He joined the Lions in 1953, a team defending its NFL title. He had been a first-team college All America at Pittsburgh. But the NFL general managers and scouts, for some reason, left him hanging until the seventh round. He was 86th player selected in the draft.
He became a doubtful pro.
“I made the team,” Schmidt said. “They’d won the championship the season before.
“I thought they’d not be taking too many rookies. But I made the team.”
He made the starting lineup in training camp at age 21, And in December the Lions beat the Browns, 17-16, in the ’53 championship game.
“My first year, I made $5,700,” Schmidt said. “At the end of the season, they gave me another $300. The championship share was $1,500.
“So, I made $7,500 that first season.
“I don’t think my whole neighborhood made that much.”
He drove home to Pittsburgh after the season in a new Chevy.
“The car cost $650,” Schmidt said. “I asked about air conditioning.”
Schmidt was quoted an additional price.
“I said, ‘I’ll just roll the windows up and down,’” he said.
Twenty-one then, a rookie with a championship, Joe turned 90 this week in his home in Florida with such vivid memories. It is a rare age for a former NFL player. So many pass on with battered heads and dizzy memories from too many collisions with their heads.
Schmidt’s first two championship seasons were followed what nowadays would be termed a “rebuild” by the sporting press. They did play in the 1954 championship game, but were defeated by the Browns — their perennial enemy.
By then Schmidt had begun a series of consecutive All-Pro selections. In 1956, Schmidt’s leadership among the Lions was recognized by his selection as team captain.
He was just 24. And after one losing season in ’55, the Lions were back challenging with a 9-3 record — not quite enough to reach the ’56 championship game.
The next season is etched with reverence — and oddness — in the history of the Detroit Lions.
New coach, another title
The ’57 season — the franchise’s last championship season — would have a bizarre beginning.
The beginning would be the annual Meet the Lions banquet in the downtown Detroit Statler Hotel.
For years, some of the players spoke before the passionate, faithful-in-their-own way Lions fans. The highlight would be a speech by Buddy Parker.
Parker was considered the premier NFL coach at the time, architect of the championship seasons of 1952 and ’53. He was the man credited along with general manager W. Nick Kerbawy for the quick rebuild of the ballclub.
And the crowd, well-nourished by food and drink, anticipated rousing, optimistic words from Parker.
Parker, introduced in glowing terms, by master of ceremonies Bob Reynolds — the WJR sportscaster — delivered the quintessential shock.
“I can’t handle this team anymore,” Parker told the audience. “I quit.”
More: Green: Since 1957, Lions’ tortured history riddled with coaching zigs
And he meant it, despite pleading by Reynolds.
The players were, perhaps, the only persons in the room who were not shocked by Parker’s departure.
Through the next decade — or so — I heard stories about what prompted Parker to leave the Lions.
The Lions, at the time, were owned by a bevy of prosperous — and devoted businessmen. They fawned over their athletes — I would see that in the locker room. And they enjoyed events with their players before the annual banquets.
This time — I heard — that Parker was upset with Rote’s appearance at the owners’ shindig. Rote had been acquired by trade with the Packers. Parker’s plan was that Rote would share the quarterback role with Layne. Apparently, Parker did not expect Rote to fit in so quickly into the Lions’ party atmosphere.
The next day, George Wilson was appointed Parker’s successor as head coach.
Whatever magic Parker had as coach, Wilson inherited it — with a looser, less dour attitude.
Sitting at a table with teammates, team captain Schmidt was not astonished by the situation — and Parker’s brief speech.
“He was an unusual person,” Schmidt would say a few days before his 90th birthday. “He had a different philosophy. He didn’t know how to do it.
“He was a great coach. But his personality was different.”
Wilson would go on with Parker’s plan of dividing the quarterback position between Layne and newcomer Rote. In December, Layne’s leg was broken in a game against the Browns.
Rote would be the No. 1 quarterback. Layne would never again play for the Lions, but the tales of his championship accomplishments in Detroit — and his lifestyle — would remain.
In a glorious finish 65 years ago, the Lions beat the Browns and then the Bears with Rote at quarterback. There were no such concoctions as wild cards back then. The Lions with their 8-4 record tied the 49ers for first place in the Western Division.
Three days before Christmas, the Lions would play the 49ers in San Francisco’s then dowdy Kezar Stadium for the opportunity to engage the Browns in the NFL’s 1957 championship game. The 49ers were so confident that they already had printed championship game tickets against the Browns (a photo now glowing on Wikipedia).
By halftime, the tiebreaker was over. The 49ers, led by Y.A. Tittle, had a 24-7 advantage.
And during the intermission, the 49ers were dividing up their championship game shares in their adjoining locker room
“We could hear them,” Schmidt has said through the years. “They thought they had us beat.”
Led by Schmidt, the Lions’ defense halted the 49ers’ first drive in the third quarter. All the 49ers got was a field goal for a 20-point lead.
From then on, the game was classic 1950s dynasty Lions.
Rote and Tom Tracy — who had not played in the Lions’ last four regular-season games — led the offensive rush. The Lions scored two touchdowns in the rest of the third quarter, both by Tracy. One was on a scintillating 58-yard run. The Lions scored another TD in the fourth by Gene Gedman and a chip-shot field goal by Jim Martin.
As for Joe Schmidt’s defense, it provided Rote and the offense with the ball by forcing the 49ers into four turnovers in the fourth quarter.
The Lions won the tiebreaker, 31-27. And they could discuss their championship games shares on the plane ride home.
And the Lions would meet the Browns for the fourth time for the championship.
That day, Rote would fire four touchdown passes, two to rookie Steve Junker. Tobin would score a TD himself. The defense — with Schmidt playing a marvelous game — bedeviled the Browns by creating seven turnovers, five on interceptions. Schmidt himself intercepted a pass. So did a future star, rookie Terry Barr out of Michigan. Barr returned his interception 19 yards for a pick six.
The Lions’ scrubs finished the massacre. The hordes swarmed onto the field to give Schmidt his memorable ride.
And the Lions would continue with new players, a continued series of quarterbacks and an assortment of head coaches — and continued frustrations for the masses in Detroit.
Coach Schmidt
For the first few seasons, the Lions would remain as challengers to Vince Lombardi’s dynastic Packers.
They had the Packers beaten by one point early in the 1962 season in a pivotal match of two dominant clubs, both undefeated after three games. Schmidt had a refurbished defense by then — Alex Karras and Roger Brown at the defensive tackles, Wayne Walker at linebacker, Dick LeBeau in the defensive backfield.
And the Lions had a new quarterback — Milt Plum — after a trade with the Browns.
In the fourth game of the ’62 season the Lions were readying to celebrate a narrow victory over the reigning champions in Green Bay.
The Lions had the ball, and Plum threw a pass intended for Barr, who had become a wide receiver. Herb Adderley intercepted it and ran it back to field-goal range. Paul Hornung’s third field goal, from 26 yards, won it 9-7 for Green Bay.
The Lions kept in pursuit the remainder of the schedule. They defeated the Packers, 26-14, in the rematch on Thanksgiving in Detroit.
My contention is that the Lions never have recovered from the 9-7 game in Green Bay.
The aftermath remains controversial. Wilson, still the coach, claimed that he called the pass play.
The players, in the heated aftermath, long have insisted they knew differently. They felt Wilson was protecting Plum.
Karras, when he reached the locker room, fired his helmet at Plum’s head.
“I missed him by this much,” Karras told me, holding his hands one foot apart.
More: Green: At long last, Lions’ Alex Karras gets his day as a deserved Hall of Famer
Schmidt, the captain, was alleged through the years to have attacked Plum also.
Now turning 90, Joe has admitted that he went at Plum as the culprit for throwing a dangerous pass when the strategy should have been holding the ball and punting if necessary.
“At the time, I was angry,” he said during our conversation the other day. “I was generally angry about it.
“I wanted to beat Green Bay. We had a good football team.”
But the next several seasons, not so good.
The 1960s was a turbulent decade for the Lions.
The group of doting Lions owners was bought out by William Clay Ford in 1964. Wilson was shoved out as head coach. Harry Gilmer survived as coach for two seasons. Ford then elevated the man he had long wanted to be his head coach of the Lions.
And pro football had muscled into a major part of sporting Americana, while the Lions struggled in the mid-60s. There had been a merger of warring leagues, the NFL joining with the American Football League.
The first product of this shotgun wedding was the AFL-NFL World Championship game — soon to be named the Super Bowl.
Five days before Super Bowl I, Schmidt was hired as the Lions’ head coach. He was 35. Joe was given a job he liked. He grew into an excellent head coach. The Lions had been restocked with excellent athletes — Mel Farr, Lem Barney, Charlie Sanders, Greg Landry. The Lions were improved.
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Joe retained his sense of humor despite the travail of coaching Detroit — despite a quarterback crisis.
And despite the meddling from above.
He was an entertaining guy seated in his office. A favorite subject was the plights of other pro football coaches. George Allen was a primary target as head coach in Los Angeles and Washington.
“George Allen is going to get the ziggy,” Joe would tell me. “Heh! Heh! Heh!”
The ziggy became a favored part of Detroit’s sports language. It translates into getting fired, terminated.
I used it often through the decades. Dick Vitale picked it up and sent it out nationally via his joyous basketball announcing on ESPN.
All along, I believed Schmidt had invented the flavorful word.
“I don’t know who came up with it,” Schmidt said the other day. “We were talking in the locker room, this guy . . . ‘He’s gonna get the ziggy.’ ”
Joe’s Lions were good enough to reach the Super Bowl playoffs in 1970 with a run of five victories to finish the schedule. Then they lost in the infamous 5-0 game in Dallas.
Schmidt would coach the Lions for six seasons. He had been nagged and second-guessed by general manager Russ Thomas through those six years. Thomas’ interference was known all over town.
In 1973, a week before his 41st birthday, Joe Schmidt delivered a self-ziggy. He told Bill Ford it was over. Coaching was no longer enjoyable.
“Why?” he said the other day from Florida. “Well, I couldn’t have done the things I wanted to do.”
Jerry Green is a retired Detroit News sports reporter.