Meet Mr. Twinkletoes And His Friends

Last year Karras, Lucci, Barney, et al. were a close second behind the Vikings in overall defensive statistics. But only one Lion (Barney) was picked from the defensive unit to play in the Pro Bowl, an oversight that caused grumbling and yet could be considered an encomium to the cohesive and unified structure devised by Jim David. Jerry Rush, the aptly named tackle, has pointed out: "It's the sum of our parts that is awesome."

David has given the Lions his own considerable competitive instincts. As a Detroit cornerback (1952-59), he was known as "The Hatchet," and it was said that running into his area was to traffic with a buzz saw ripped from its sockets and careering around the woodshed yard—a slight confusion of metaphor perhaps, but to the point. David once broke Y. A. Tittle's jaw in several places, and he carried on such a highly publicized rivalry with Tom Fears of the Rams that on one occasion in Los Angeles, when the mood of the crowd got unusually ugly, George Wilson, then an assistant coach, took David out and furtively changed his jersey in case the crowd got completely out of hand and came down to find him.

So habituated is Detroit to the idea of a cannonading defense and a popgun offense that its first two games this season were described by more than one local writer as great "defensive" victories despite the high offensive totals—40-0 over Green Bay, 38-3 over Cincinnati. Schmidt has concentrated on offense this season, and that most intricate of mechanisms, the offensive line, has finally begun to mesh. In previous years, when Mel Farr, the quicksilver running back from UCLA, turned upfield on his cut, his way was barred by terrifying thickets of tacklers. Now the likes of Roger Shoals, Chuck Walton, Rocky Freitas and Ed Flanagan clear his path. Farr attributes his present success (140 yards in two games) to his blockers. "I'm not running any better," he says, "but the line is there and even an average running back with a great line is a top back."

Finally, the Lions have depth. There are three good quarterbacks: Bill Munson, Greg Landry and Greg Barton; a host of running backs, including Altie Taylor, Bill Triplett and Nick Eddy; and All-Pro Tight End Charlie Sanders has Craig Cotton behind him.

"In the old days," Alex Karras reminisces, "a guy'd get hurt, the coaches would give this big gasp, and you'd watch a rookie give a little yell and come off the bench to take the guy's place. His contact lenses would tumble out on the way out to the huddle, and you'd see him put his hands out in front of him like a blind man, and he'd say, 'Well, if you just point me in the right direction maybe....' I mean they were eager, those cats we used to have. It's different now. On this club, a guy gets hurt and the coaches give this little shrug of the shoulders and they call out, 'Well, all right, next,' and off the bench comes a guy who's 800 feet tall and good enough to make your eyes pop, and he's got someone behind him, too. Imagine a club good enough to lose three fine players through injury [Steve Owens, Earl McCullouch and John Wright] and not be hurting."

The keeper of all this talent is Schmidt, who took the head coaching job in 1967 with great reluctance. He was self-appraising enough to ask for assistants who knew more football than he did: for example, Offensive Coach Bill McPeak was an NFL head coach for five years.

Schmidt's own coaching career began with a humiliation that he often thinks back on to remind himself of the precariousness of the profession and to give himself assurance that he has come a long way. In his first game, an exhibition against Denver, the Lions were beaten 13-7, the NFL's first loss to an AFL team. Schmidt and the league weren't alone in their shame. Alex Karras was thrown out in the second half. Consumed with fury, he cast about for some form of self-flagellation and ended up by chain-smoking 40 cigarettes in the shower room. He had announced publicly that if Denver won the game he would walk home to Detroit, which gave him a banquet-circuit line that year...that he was late because he'd just got in from Colorado.

The Denver game had further significance for Karras and Schmidt. Karras suffered such dizzy spells from his smoking bout that he gave up cigarettes entirely despite having smoked since the age of 13. Schmidt not only lost, he achieved instant nadir, a point which it is well to have behind you.

For four years Schmidt and his coaches have worked on rebuilding their ball club. Last year might have been the Year of the Lion if it had not been for an opening-day loss to Pittsburgh, the only game the Steelers won in 1969. Schmidt thinks he brought the Lions in too "tight" but some of the players think that the Steeler loss may have been the true making of the team, the last vestige of adolescence having its fling. From that point on, and despite injuries and weaknesses in certain positions, punting especially, Detroit won nine games, tied one and lost three, two of them to the Vikings. Up until Monday's Chicago game, the Lion goal line has not been crossed in four league games, including the last two in 1969.

One advantage that Schmidt enjoys as a coach is that he has not been long out of the playing ranks. He has a particular accord with his men. Without a touch of self-consciousness, he can deliver the soul-searing perorations that give a player or team a lift. Schmidt has been there himself, in the wars; he was possibly the best there ever was at his position. He continues to keep himself in shape with laps after practice and weight-machine exercises so that when he tells his players that he wants the win, that they'd better get the jump on the opposition or he's going to go in and beat them up himself, he is convincing. One of his admiring players, a man who has drifted from team to team in the NFL, says that Schmidt is the only coach he has come across whose words are never made fun of. (This is a common practice—to exchange the verbal excesses that coaches are prone to, the malapropisms, the clichés.)