âEither coach the Steelers or Duquesne, you canât do both!â For
Donelli the decision was easy: heâd stay with the winning Dukes. So Dad turned again to his old pal Walt Kiesling. Kiesling won only one game that season. Oddly enough, it came against the Brooklyn Dodgers, coached by famed University of Pittsburgh head coach Jock Sutherland. Somehow Kieslingâs Steelers prevailed, 14-7, playing in brutal conditions on an iced-over Forbes Field, home of the baseball Pittsburgh Pirates.
Â
Â
In 1942 the Steelers drafted Bill Dudley, an unconventional player but a real talent. Behind big tackle Ted Doyle, who spent his days welding navy landing craft at the defense plant on Neville Island, Dudley led the Steelers to a 7-4 record, the franchiseâs first winning season. Dudley did everything wrongâhe couldnât throw, he couldnât kick, he wasnât fast, and he wasnât very bigâbut he hated losing and led the league in rushing yards and interceptions. Dudley was intelligent and explosive and could have led the Steelers to more winning seasons, but he was lost to the war effort.
People wondered whether the NFL would survive World War II. So many men were called up for active duty that the teams were soon stripped of their talented players. Those left behind were generally 4-F, while others received deferments as strategic âwar workers,â men who worked in steel mills and defense plants.
The Steelers of the war years were a mixed crew, and it soon became evident that they would not be able to hold their own against other teams in the league. The Philadelphia Eagles were also hard-pressed to field a team fit enough to compete in the NFL. Because of the scarcity of players, the league revised its team player limit to twenty-eight, down from its prewar standard of thirty-three. This meant that many players had to play both offense and defense, with few opportunities for substitutions.
By 1943, the situation in the NFL was desperate. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and never was it more necessary to be creative if the league were to survive.
By pooling their resources, the two understrength clubs might field one competitive team. The Eagles could dress nineteen players, while the Steelers had only six players under contract. NFL commissioner Elmer Layden worried the Pittsburgh franchise might not make it. He discussed the situation with my father, and soon after Dad and Bert Bell went to Lex Thompson in Philadelphia and proposed the unholy Steelers-Eagles union. They argued that it might be the only chance for the survival of the two franchisesâand possibly for the NFL itself. Although shocked by the boldness of the plan, Thompson soon came to appreciate its merits. And so the âSteaglesâ were born, a crazy amalgamation of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Not that bringing these two rivals together was easy. It wasnât, not for the owners, the fans, the players, and most of all the coaches. Pittsburgh coach Walt Kiesling and Philadelphiaâs Earle âGreasyâ Neale clashed almost immediately. The hard-headed Kiesling and the flamboyant Neale successfully merged the teams, but they couldnât agree on anythingâstrategy, assignments, uniforms, not even what brand of coffee to drink. The whole thing would have broken apart had not Bert Bell stepped in. He proposed that Greasy run the offense, while Kies handled the defense. The men continued to battle over who would coach the guys who could play on both sides of the ball, but all in all the arrangement worked.
The Steagles couldnât even fill the twenty-eight-man roster. On a good weekend they were lucky to dress twenty-five. When tackle Al Wister came limping off the field during a close game, Greasy Neale confronted him and barked, âWhatâs wrong with you?â
âI think I broke my leg, Coach!â
âWell, get back in
Donelli the decision was easy: heâd stay with the winning Dukes. So Dad turned again to his old pal Walt Kiesling. Kiesling won only one game that season. Oddly enough, it came against the Brooklyn Dodgers, coached by famed University of Pittsburgh head coach Jock Sutherland. Somehow Kieslingâs Steelers prevailed, 14-7, playing in brutal conditions on an iced-over Forbes Field, home of the baseball Pittsburgh Pirates.
Â
Â
In 1942 the Steelers drafted Bill Dudley, an unconventional player but a real talent. Behind big tackle Ted Doyle, who spent his days welding navy landing craft at the defense plant on Neville Island, Dudley led the Steelers to a 7-4 record, the franchiseâs first winning season. Dudley did everything wrongâhe couldnât throw, he couldnât kick, he wasnât fast, and he wasnât very bigâbut he hated losing and led the league in rushing yards and interceptions. Dudley was intelligent and explosive and could have led the Steelers to more winning seasons, but he was lost to the war effort.
People wondered whether the NFL would survive World War II. So many men were called up for active duty that the teams were soon stripped of their talented players. Those left behind were generally 4-F, while others received deferments as strategic âwar workers,â men who worked in steel mills and defense plants.
The Steelers of the war years were a mixed crew, and it soon became evident that they would not be able to hold their own against other teams in the league. The Philadelphia Eagles were also hard-pressed to field a team fit enough to compete in the NFL. Because of the scarcity of players, the league revised its team player limit to twenty-eight, down from its prewar standard of thirty-three. This meant that many players had to play both offense and defense, with few opportunities for substitutions.
By 1943, the situation in the NFL was desperate. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and never was it more necessary to be creative if the league were to survive.
By pooling their resources, the two understrength clubs might field one competitive team. The Eagles could dress nineteen players, while the Steelers had only six players under contract. NFL commissioner Elmer Layden worried the Pittsburgh franchise might not make it. He discussed the situation with my father, and soon after Dad and Bert Bell went to Lex Thompson in Philadelphia and proposed the unholy Steelers-Eagles union. They argued that it might be the only chance for the survival of the two franchisesâand possibly for the NFL itself. Although shocked by the boldness of the plan, Thompson soon came to appreciate its merits. And so the âSteaglesâ were born, a crazy amalgamation of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Not that bringing these two rivals together was easy. It wasnât, not for the owners, the fans, the players, and most of all the coaches. Pittsburgh coach Walt Kiesling and Philadelphiaâs Earle âGreasyâ Neale clashed almost immediately. The hard-headed Kiesling and the flamboyant Neale successfully merged the teams, but they couldnât agree on anythingâstrategy, assignments, uniforms, not even what brand of coffee to drink. The whole thing would have broken apart had not Bert Bell stepped in. He proposed that Greasy run the offense, while Kies handled the defense. The men continued to battle over who would coach the guys who could play on both sides of the ball, but all in all the arrangement worked.
The Steagles couldnât even fill the twenty-eight-man roster. On a good weekend they were lucky to dress twenty-five. When tackle Al Wister came limping off the field during a close game, Greasy Neale confronted him and barked, âWhatâs wrong with you?â
âI think I broke my leg, Coach!â
âWell, get back in
Similar Books
