Joe Schmidt, Detroit Lions star linebacker on 1957 champions and ex-coach, dead at 92

Joe Schmidt, the Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker who led the Detroit Lions to their last championship in 1957, died Wednesday, his family told the Free Press on Thursday. He was 92 years old.

Schmidt spent two decades with the Lions as a player and coach, and is one of the most revered figures in franchise history. He was an eight-time first-team All-Pro, a member of the NFL’s 100th anniversary team, and he helped revolutionize defenses by ushering in the modern middle linebacker position.

“He was like a coach on the field,” Schmidt’s teammate, Roger Zatkoff, told the Free Press in June 2020. “I can recall instances where he would come up and say, ‘Hey, cheat over here, one man to your left,’ because something else was going on and we needed to make an adjustment. And the reality is, he like Bobby Layne made adjustments without the coaches knowing it.”

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A seventh-round pick out of Pittsburgh in 1953, Schmidt helped the Lions win a championship as a rookie after he replaced LaVern Torgeson as a starter early in the season.

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The Lions defeated the Cleveland Browns, 17-16, that December to win their third ever title. Schmidt, who forced an Otto Graham fumble to set up the Lions’ first touchdown in the championship game, made the Pro Bowl each of the next 10 years.

“He was the best,” said Gene Cronin, a teammate of Schmidt’s in 1956-59. “Years ago, there was a story going around that they were going to make a movie called ‘The Violent World of Sam Huff.’ And (Huff) was a fine middle linebacker, no question about it. And they asked Gino Marchetti, they said, ‘What do you think about the making a movie called The Violent World of Sam Huff?’ And he said, ‘Well, if they make a movie, they better get Joe Schmidt to play the part.’ You can’t get a better compliment than that.”

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Before Schmidt’s emergence, most NFL teams, including the Lions, played five-man defensive fronts with an oversized guard in the middle of their line.

Schmidt, who played fullback and guard early in his college career, moved to linebacker during his sophomore season at Pitt, where his speed and athleticism allowed him to star as an off-the-ball run-stopper.

With the Lions, he played outside linebacker his first two seasons and moved to middle linebacker in 1955, when coach Buddy Parker switched full-time to a 4-3 defense after guard Les Bingaman retired.

With Schmidt as their leader, the Lions had some of the NFL’s most fearsome defenses.

“Nearly everybody soon went to the 4-3 with the middle linebacker the key to the defense,” Parker once told the Free Press. “Schmidt’s mobility took some of the load off the defensive backs on pass defense.

“In fact, his style of play brought about the zone defense, revolving defenses and modern defensive look of pro football.”

Born at the height of the depression in 1932, Schmidt spent his early years in Pittsburgh. His father passed away when he was 12, one of his older brothers was killed in World War II, and he grew up idolizing another older brother, John, who played football at Carnegie Tech and coached a semi-pro team, the St. Clair Veterans.

Schmidt played sandlot ball with that team as a teenager, and according to The Saturday Evening Post even joined them as a 14-year-old for a game against a team of convicts inside the Western State Penitentiary.

At Pitt, Schmidt suffered a slew of injuries, including two broken ribs, a broken wrist, a separated shoulder and a serious concussion.

Those injuries caused him to drop in the 1953 draft, when the Lions made him their fifth player selected, after guard Harley Sewell, halfback Gene Gedman and tackles Charlie Ane and Ollie Spencer. Sewell, Gedman and Ane also played on the Lions’ ’53 and ’57 championship teams.

“Statistically, I would have to say that he was marginal. He was 6 feet tall and 220 pounds,” then-Lions owner William Clay Ford said when presenting Schmidt for his Hall of Fame enshrinement in 1973. “Joe likes to say that at one point in his career, he was 6-3, but he had tackled so many fullbacks that it drove his neck into his shoulders and now he is 6 foot.

“There are, however, qualities that certainly scouts or anybody who is drafting a ball player cannot measure. … Desire, leadership and courage. Nobody knew what quantity Joe had of those elements and Joe had tremendous qualities in those elements.”

The Lions’ team MVP in 1955, ‘57-58 and ‘61, Schmidt helped organize what’s now known as the NFL Players Association in the 1950s and was a leading force in getting players training camp pay and pensions.

He retired after the 1965 season, spent a year as an assistant coach under Harry Gilmer and took over as head coach a year later, where he compiled a 43-35-7 record in seven seasons.

“I loved football and I came up here, seventh draft choice of a championship team, I really didn’t think I had an opportunity to make the team and lucky I made the team,” Schmidt told the Free Press in 2017. “I enjoyed it so much, the camaraderie, winning a championship, an opportunity in business after I got out of sports. So everything I have was actually came from playing football here in Detroit.

“If you stay here and work, people are very kind to you here in the industry. They love the sports in Detroit, they follow the Detroit Lions to a point where they were very great fans. And during that time we were winning, and of course that helps. But I can’t say enough about my opportunities here in Detroit and the opportunities the Detroit Lions gave me, and I’m forever grateful for that opportunity.”

Schmidt, who started his own automotive services business, selling rubber and plastic to the Big Three, during his playing days, is survived by his wife, Marilynn, and five children.

No public memorial is planned, with the family holding a private ceremony.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on X @davebirkett. 

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