Atlanta moved linebacker Andy Bowling to Detroit during the…

The player movement is supportable, but the downstream draft-pick identity is not. Pro Sports Transactions lists Andy Bowling among the Detroit-to-Atlanta 1969 draft-pick chains and identifies both No. 138, used on Wally Oyler, and No. 164, used on Ted Cottrell, as possible Bowling compensation. The same ledger explicitly marks those mappings unconfirmed because both selections overlap with Atlanta's separate Chuck Sieminski transaction and, for No. 164, another possible Detroit deal. That makes the legacy TradeVerdicts asset text—“possibly #137 Wally Oyler OR #164 Ted Cottrell”—too specific and partly off by one on Oyler, who was actually selected No. 138 in 1969. The safer reconstruction is simply a 1969 Detroit draft choice with the selection not identified. Bowling's own professional record is clearer. NFL and Pro Football Archives records place him with Atlanta in 1967 for six games and no starts. Pro Football Archives records Atlanta releasing him in 1968 rather than providing a detailed Detroit transaction line, while a contemporary August 20, 1968 Michigan State News report says the Lions had picked Bowling up recently “for a look-see” and then released him. He never appeared in a Detroit regular-season game. The surviving draft record nevertheless shows that Detroit's 1969 sixth- and seventh-round positions both wound up with Atlanta in the cluster of Falcons-Lions player transactions, so there is enough evidence to retain the basic player-for-draft-capital structure but not enough to attach one draftee to Bowling alone. Because Detroit received no regular-season contribution and Atlanta's realized pick value cannot be separated from the neighboring Sieminski transaction, a precise winner would depend on unsupported pick attribution. The source-safe result is an Even Trade with C/C grades, medium confidence, and an explicitly unidentified 1969 selection.