100 Days, 100 Detroit Lions: #71 Carl Brettschneider
In today’s edition of 100 Days, 100 Detroit Lions, we honor a player known not only for his great play, but his fun-loving antics in training camp.
71. Carl Brettschneider
Linebacker. 1956-59 Chicago Cardinals; 1960-1963 Detroit
Carl Brettschneider was a standout offensive lineman for Iowa State from 1950-52. Brettschneider went undrafted by the NFL. He joined the Chicago Cardinals as a free agent in 1956 and played on some bad Redbird teams for the rest of the Cardinas final decade in Chicago. A rugged, hard-hitting, but heady player, Brettschneider was picked up by the Lions in a July 1960 trade for linebacker, Mike Rabold.
Brettschneider teamed with bookend outside linebacker, Wayne Walker, and Lions superstar MLB, Joe Schmidt, to form the greatest linebacking trio in franchise history. Brettschneider earned First-Team All-Pro honors by the Sporting News in 1962. That season, the Lions finished 11-3. This was before the days of the expanded playoffs, so the Lions were left out of the postseason. Detroit finished second the Western Division behind the 13-1 - and eventual NFL Champion - Green Bay Packers.
The Lions “playoff game” that season came on Thanksgiving, when the Lions destroyed the Packers, 26-14, in front of a sellout crowd and national TV audience at Tiger Stadium.
After retirement, Brettschneider was an assistant coach, scout and player personel director for Detroit. He was fired by the Lions in 1969 after a power-struggle pitting himself and Schmidt (now Lions’ head coach), against Detroit General Manager, Russ Thomas, who was the right-hand hatchet man of owner William Clay Ford.
