During WWII, because a lot of players were called to duty, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined to become The Steagles.
WWII Created the Steagles: When Two NFL Teams Became One
Picture this: It's 1943, World War II is raging, and the National Football League is bleeding players to military service. The Pittsburgh Steelers had just six players left on their roster. The Philadelphia Eagles had 16. Neither team had enough men to field a competitive squad, so they did something unprecedented in professional sports history—they became one team.
The Phil-Pitt Combine, affectionately dubbed the "Steagles" by sportswriter Chet Smith of the Pittsburgh Press, played a single season split between two cities, two fan bases, and two coaching staffs who reportedly couldn't stand each other.
A Roster of Rejects and Heroes
The Steagles weren't exactly stocked with prime athletic specimens. These were the men who couldn't serve in the military, either due to age or medical disqualifications. Tony Bova, the team's leading receiver with 17 catches, was blind in one eye and partially blind in the other. Many players worked defense jobs in factories during the week and suited up on Sundays.
Head coaches Greasy Neale (Eagles) and Walt Kiesling (Steelers) split duties, with Neale handling offense and Kiesling managing defense. By all accounts, the arrangement was tense—these weren't collaborative partners so much as reluctant roommates forced together by circumstance.
The Season That Surprised Everyone
Playing home games in both Philadelphia's Shibe Park and Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, the Steagles went 5-4-1 in 1943. That might not sound impressive, but it was the Eagles' first winning season ever and Pittsburgh's second in franchise history. Against all odds, this Frankenstein's monster of a football team actually worked.
The players wore uniforms that were half-Eagles green and yellow, half-Steelers black and gold. Practices alternated between cities. Everything about the operation was makeshift, yet somehow they competed respectably in a league gutted by the war effort.
One Season and Done
The experiment lasted exactly one year. In 1944, the Eagles ended the partnership and posted a 7-1-2 record on their own. The Steelers? They merged with the Chicago Cardinals to form "Card-Pitt"—a team so disastrous that fans called them the "Carpets" because everyone walked all over them. They went 0-10.
The Steagles remain a fascinating footnote in NFL history: proof that desperate times call for creative measures, and that sometimes the most unlikely partnerships can actually succeed. For one chaotic season during humanity's darkest hour, Pennsylvania had just one professional football team. And somehow, it kind of worked.