Moose Gardner

If you go back far enough in Packers history, you can find players whose careers actually predate the Packers.

In certain ways, that is.

That’s the case for Moose Gardner, a native of Ashland, Wisconsin who got his start in pro football before the Packers joined the NFL. Or, technically, before there even was an NFL at all.

After a college playing career at the University of Wisconsin, Gardner got his start in pro ball playing in Detroit, not for the Lions, who didn’t exist yet, but for the Heralds, who finished the 1920 season with a record of 2-3-3, good for ninth place in the American Pro Football Association, the league that eventually gave birth to the NFL.

Gardner was a lineman, and played on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball throughout his career. You might have guessed that from his nickname: Moose. His given name was Milton, but at 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds, he was definitely more of a Moose than a Milton as far as pro football players of the day would go.

Gardner’s size would barely merit a mention on an NFL field today, unless he was still playing on the offensive or defensive line. But for the 1920s, he was certifiably enormous. When Gardner joined the Packers in 1922 after stints in Detroit and Buffalo, he was one of the biggest players on the team. According to the roster page at Pro Football Reference, only Cub Buck and Jug Earp, at 259 and 236 pounds apiece, were heavier, and there was nobody taller. Moose seems like a pretty fair nickname, all things considered.

The man called Moose lined up for 58 games across five seasons with the Packers, appearing with the team during a time period when they were beginning to hit their stride, but hadn’t yet reached championship heights.

The Packers had a winning season in each of Gardner’s five years with the team, but never finished higher than third in the league standings. But Gardner helped the Packers do something important: he helped them beat the Chicago Bears.

In their early history, the Packers had a fraught competitive relationship with the Bears. Playing in a much bigger city and bringing in the money that went with the territory, the Bears were definitely the big brother in the rivalry, such as it was, early on.

But to his credit, Papa Bear himself, George Halas, stood up for the Packers, and helped to legitimize the team by regularly scheduling games against them. This did two important things for the Packers: it gave them status by association, since the Bears were regularly a serious contender in the early NFL, and it gave them money, especially when the Packers traveled to Chicago to play. They’d happily take a beating at the hands of the Bears for a part of the gate receipts, which were often significant in Chicago.

But in 1925, Gardner had a hand in swinging the momentum. For one week, at least.

After beating the Hammond Pros in the first week of league competition, the Packers welcomed the Bears to Green Bay, where what the Green Bay Press-Gazette called “the largest crowd that ever witnessed an exhibition of pigskin chasing” got a treat. The paid attendance, as the paper also reported, was 5,889 — hardly a huge number, but pretty big for the time.

It was a great game, though, swinging on goalline stands by the Packers and one crucial special teams play.

On the first play of the second quarter, the Bears found themselves backed up deep in their own territory and looked to punt. But Gardner had other ideas, bursting through the line and blocking the punt.

“Three or four players dove for the ball,” the Press Gazette wrote. “A Bruin got a hold of the pigskin but fumbled and it rolled back of the goalline where Gardner jumped on it like a hot potato.”

The initial reporting might have undersold Gardner’s effort. In his game recap column, George Whitney Calhoun called out Gardner’s effort to track down the ball.

“It would have taken a half dozen teams to have stopped M0ose Gardner when he tore through to block Hanny’s punt which resulted in the Packers first touchdown,” he wrote. “During the skirmish for the oval, Moose bowled over a couple of bruins who attempted to block his progress to fall on the ball.”

Apparently Gardner’s moose-like physical dimensions weren’t just for show. After Cub Buck kicked the PAT, the Packers led 7-0, and, after a Bears’ rally in the third quarter, a late touchdown gave the Packers a 14-10 lead, and their first-ever win over Chicago.

Gardner lined up with the Packers through the 1926 season, and he’d never be a part of another win over the Bears. The Packers played the Bears one more time in 1925 and lost 21-0. They’d square off three times in 1926, tying the first and third games with the Bears taking the second. The Packers wouldn’t actually beat the Bears again until 1928.

Still, there had to be a first, and Moose Gardner wasn’t just there for it, he played a starring role. For a player whose pro career started before the Packers were even in a professional league, that’s quite a claim to fame.