Congrats Dean! https://t.co/LWqhdJdHQ8 pic.twitter.com/696cExoSqR
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) June 27, 2024
Here’s some well-deserved recognition for longtime New Orleans Saints athletic trainer Dean Kleinschmidt. The Pro Football Hall of Fame honored him Thursday with its 2024 Award of Excellence for his efforts in treating athletes and helping to cultivate the game. He’s spent his years away from the NFL working with the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala.
“I’ve enjoyed 43 years in the NFL,” Kleinschmidt told Mobile Bay Magazine’s Breck Pappas. “But I’ve really loved 50 years in Mobile.”
Kleinschmidt was with the Saints from 1969 to 2000, having worked with a host of future Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees: Rickey Jackson, Willie Roaf, Sam Mills, and many other great players, establishing some long-lasting friendships. At times early in his career he was tasked with watching Archie Manning’s sons Peyton, Eli, and Cooper while their father received treatment or worked out at the team practice facility.
“We’re in that business of trying to speed healing,” Kleinschmidt said in back in 1998, per the Herald Times’ Mike Wright. “We do everything we can to get these guys ready, within safety limits, to play on the next deadline, which is noon the following Sunday.”
He continued to work in the NFL after leaving the Saints, most notably joining the Detroit Lions as their coordinator of athletic medicine. Kleinschmidt retired from the NFL in 2015 and has since been enshrined at the Saints’ team Hall of Fame as well as the National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame. Now the Pro Football Hall of Fame is making room for him, too.
