Joe Schmidt made the long walk down the tunnel at old Kezar Stadium, leading the last great Lions team from the locker room to the field without hardly saying a word.

The Lions trailed the San Francisco 49ers, 24-7, at halftime of the 1957 division championship game, and Schmidt and most of his teammates still were seething from what they’d heard.

The 49ers were upstarts of sorts, a good team with quarterback Y.A. Tittle midway through his Hall of Fame career and Hugh McElhenny in the backfield, but they regularly looked up at the powerhouse Lions in the Western Division of the NFL.

On that day in late December, though, three days before Christmas, Tittle had thrown three first-half touchdown passes, and the 49ers were close enough to reaching their first championship game that some players started counting their playoff bonuses at halftime.

“It was only a 2-by-4 wall with drywall on either side with vents that were between the two (locker rooms),” Roger Zatkoff, a linebacker on that 1957 Lions team, said. “You could hear the guy buying his wife a fur coat, another one buying a car, another one had to get his championship tickets. The game was over as far as they were concerned.”

“They’re beating on the wall and ‘(expletive) you,’ and all of this and everything,” defensive end Gene Cronin said. “And Coach (George) Wilson got up and said, ‘I was going to say something, but that’s what they think of you,’ and he sat down.”

Schmidt, a 10-time All-Pro and one of the best linebackers of his generation, delivered a brief pep talk in the locker room before heading out for the second half.

Gathered with four of his 1957 teammates and then-publicity director Bud Erickson for lunch one day this summer, Schmidt and everyone agreed the 49ers’ premature celebration was the impetus for maybe the most important comeback in franchise history.

“All the guys heard that, and that was enough to stimulate everybody,” Schmidt said. “We had to walk through a tunnel, and it was, I don’t know, 50, 60 yards long, with the opposing team, side by side. And they were still chirping, and we were quiet, so we went out and the second half speaks for itself.”

McElhenny got the second half off to an ominous start for the Lions when he broke a 71-yard run to the 9-yard line on the first play from scrimmage, zigzagging across field.

But the Lions forced a 49ers field goal four plays later and, trailing, 27-7, their fortunes began to change.

Tom Tracy, who hadn’t logged a carry in the previous four games, scored on a 1-yard run midway through the third quarter. Sixty-one seconds later, he scampered 58 yards for another touchdown.

By the time Gene Gedman scored on a 2-yard run and Jim Martin added a field goal late in the fourth quarter, the Lions were on their way to their fourth championship game in six years and a 31-27 victory.

Sixty years later, the Lions still haven’t played for another championship, and with the exception of the 1991 season, haven’t come particularly close. The 1950s remain the golden era of Lions football, and for the 10 living members of that 1957 team, that season was the pinnacle of their success.

‘I’ve had enough’

The Lions were prepared for the adversity they faced in San Francisco, having dealt with similar situations all year.

They rallied from a 10-point halftime deficit to beat the Chicago Bears and advance to the division title game, and early in the season they came back from 24 points down in the third quarter to top the Baltimore Colts.

But the biggest hurdle the Lions had to conquer in 1957 came before the season.

Less than 48 hours before their exhibition opener, during the team’s annual Meet the Lions banquet at the Detroit Statler Hotel, coach Buddy Parker stunned the 600 or so fans in attendance, his team and everyone else in the organization when he stepped to the podium at the end of the night and quit.

“Sometimes in every football coach’s career there comes a time when he reaches a situation which he can’t handle,” Parker told the crowd that night, according to a Free Press article published Aug. 13, 1957. “I’ve just arrived at that point. Tonight, I’m getting out of the Detroit Lions organization. I’ve had enough.”

Reports at the time tied Parker’s resignation to a number of factors. His frustration with players, who enjoyed (sometimes too much) their time out on the town. His declining influence within the organization. And his feud with one faction of the team’s board of directors.

But Zatkoff, who was in attendance that night despite officially joining the Lions in a trade from the Cleveland Browns after Parker’s resignation, said there was one incident that night in particular that set Parker off.

“Buddy Parker did not want the players to go to the suites with the owners of the club,” Zatkoff said. “The owners of the club back in 1957 was not Bill Ford — he was one of the owners, but there were others. And the players would go up there, fraternize with the owners and customers, and Buddy Parker did not want that. He wanted to control the team, keep them away from that part of the game, if you will.”

Parker planned his team’s arrival at the Statler to coincide with the start of the banquet. But when the buses pulled in early, players headed their separate ways and several joined a cocktail party hosted by one member of the board who was particularly anti-Parker.

“Nick Kerbawy (the general manager at the time) was taking Buddy Parker up the elevator to his room for a predrink prior to the dinner,” Zatkoff said. “They stopped at a floor, and he could see Bobby (Layne) or Tobin (Rote) or some of the players fraternizing with people in the room, which he did not want to do, and he actually forbid the team to do that. Of course, that’s when he got drunk and got up at the banquet and said I can’t control this team, I quit.”

While some in attendance initially laughed thinking Parker was joking, Jerry Reichow, a wide receiver and backup quarterback on the ’57 Lions, said players were taken aback by the announcement.

“It was like, ‘What did he just say?’ ” Reichow said. “We were all sitting downtown somewhere, Meet the Lions thing, and a full house, and all of a sudden he said that and walked off and, what do you do? No one had ever been through that before. We didn’t know what to say or what to do, so then we went out and got beat the first game. It was quite a year.”

Wilson, Parker’s long-time assistant, took over as head coach and led the Lions to an 8-4 record.

They had one of the best defenses in the NFL, with Schmidt and fellow Hall of Famers Jack Christiansen and Yale Lary playing starring roles. Yet, the Lions still needed to win their final three regular-season games to force a division playoff with the 49ers, a task that got immeasurably tougher when Layne, their Pro Bowl quarterback, suffered a broken right ankle in a December win over the Browns.

In Tobin they trust

If Schmidt was the emotional leader on defense, Layne was the heart and soul on offense. The swashbuckling quarterback came in a 1950 trade with the New York Bulldogs and led the Lions, coming off four losing years in a row, to almost instant success.

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Layne set a franchise record for passing in his first season with the team, topped that in his second, and by 1952 had the Lions in the NFL title game, where they beat the Browns, 17-7, for their first title since the 1930s.

A year later, Layne threw the game-winning touchdown pass to Jim Doran in the fourth quarter of another championship-game victory over the Browns and, after losing to Cleveland in the 1954 title game, the Lions were contending again in 1957.

Rote, acquired in a training-camp trade with the Packers that summer, split time at quarterback most of the season, but it was Layne who was on the field for a Dec. 8 game against the Browns the Lions had to win.

Layne staked the Lions to a 3-0 lead in the second quarter when a trio of defenders hit him as he rolled out to pass. According to news reports from the time, Layne’s cleat stuck in the mud, leaving him with a fractured fibula and posterior dislocation.

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Cronin, who suffered a shoulder injury in the same game, went to Detroit Osteopathic Hospital for X-rays and stopped by Layne’s room while he was there.

“He’s still laying there. He’s got his football pants on, a Marlboro cigarette in his mouth, he had an ice pack on his ankle, and he’s watching the 49ers game,” Cronin said. “The 49ers are playing (the Colts), and he’s got a black and white television, smoking a Marlboro, and he says, ‘(expletive), Cronin.’ He says, ‘If the ... damn 49ers win that, we’ve got to play them.’

“He was rattling on, the doctor comes over, he said, ‘Mr. Layne, we need …’ (And Bobby said,) ‘You get out of here. ... I told you not to bother me until this game’s over.’ And he ran the damn doctor out of the room. ... Toughest old guy I ever saw.”

As accomplished as Layne was, the Lions had a more than capable backup in Rote.

Rote led the NFL in passing yards and touchdowns in 1956, but the Packers deemed him expendable after drafting Bart Starr.

With Layne out, Rote finished off a 20-7 win over the Browns, then led the Lions past the Bears in the regular-season finale.

“Tobin was a hell of a football player,” Schmidt said. “He was a damn good football player, so it wasn’t like we go from Bobby Layne to (a no one).”

‘Fun times’

McElhenny, who played one season for the Lions at the end of his career, said he doesn’t remember the 49ers celebrating at halftime of the division title game, but he does remember Tracy going “crazy” for 86 yards rushing and two touchdowns on only 11 carries.

“He had a big day,” McElhenny said. “The offensive line had a marvelous day.

“They just kicked the (expletive) out of us, the middle of our defense.”

By the time the Lions returned home from San Francisco, it seemed a fait accompli that they would beat the Browns for another title.

1957 Detroit Lions: What happened each game during championship season

More than 3,000 fans camped out overnight outside Briggs Stadium in 20-degree temperatures to get tickets to the game, which was blacked out on local TV. And when kickoff came that Sunday, the Lions routed the Browns, 59-14, in one of the most lopsided championship games in NFL history.

“The championship game was kind of like, ‘Well, the hard game we just passed up,’ ” Reichow said. “Right away, we started scoring touchdowns, and it was one of those games where we couldn’t do anything wrong and the Browns couldn’t do anything right. It was a funny deal, strange deal. Strange year, actually.”

The Lions intercepted five passes and recovered two fumbles as the Browns rotated Milt Plum and Tommy O’Connell at quarterback. Terry Barr returned one interception 19 yards for a touchdown. Rote scored on a 1-yard run and threw for 280 yards and four more TDs. And the Lions held Jim Brown, the NFL’s MVP as a rookie that season, to 69 yards rushing on 20 carries.

Steve Junker, a rookie wide receiver for the Lions, caught two of Rote’s touchdown passes, one on a fake field goal, as the Lions ran up the score much like the Browns did when they beat the Lions in the 1954 title game, 56-10.

“We were lining up to kick the field goal and … then Tobin said it in the huddle, ‘We’re going to pass it,’ ” Junker said. “And it just worked out. And we had everybody on their defense convinced it was going to be (a field goal) because you kind of talk to each other. You got him, make sure. And they were convinced it was going to be a field goal.”

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The game got so out of hand that Reichow played quarterback for the first time all year and threw a late 16-yard touchdown pass to Hopalong Cassady off a run fake.

“Don Colo was with Cleveland, and he wasn’t being very nice to me, ’cause we were passing,” Reichow said. “I said, ‘Hell, I don’t get to play much, I’m firing.’ And he says, ‘Well you sorry so-and-so.’ He must have had two or three personal foul penalties on him.

“I don’t blame him. It just happened, and I hadn’t played much, so it was my chance. I told him that, too. I said, ‘Hey, I don’t care what you say, I’m firing and you can do what you want.’ And he did. He knocked the daylights out of me a couple times a little later than he probably should have.”

True to the ’57 team’s nature, Cronin, who lived with Schmidt at the time, had been planning a championship party, win or lose. The celebration, of course, was a hit.

“When the game was over, Bill Ford came up to me and said, ‘I hear you and Joe are having a party,’ ” Cronin said. “And I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Can Martha and I come?’ You didn’t expect me to say no, did you? So, he and Martha showed up, and they had to carry him out. And Gary Lowe, I just bought a brand-new pair of loafers for about $30, and that was a lot of money back then, and they were loafers and they had a leather thing on the front of them, and (damn) Gary Lowe got a pair of scissors and cut the leather off of my brand-new shoes. Oh, those were fun times.”