During World War II, a number of sports leagues were left with depleted rosters as players went off to war. 70 years later, we take a look back at how two NFL teams had to temporarily merge into a team that was known as the “Steagles” in today’s installment of Throwback Thursday.

Exactly 70 years ago today, the “Steagles” played their final game.

For one lone season in 1943, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles merged their rosters to form what was officially called the Phil-Pitt Eagles-Steelers Combine. Several weeks after the announcement, a Pittsburgh Press editor gave the team the unofficial nickname that would stick: The “Steagles.”

Due to U.S. involvement in World War II, many NFL rosters were decimated by players heading overseas to serve in the armed forces. According to a 2007 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, the Steelers, who were coming off the first winning campaign in team history, only had six players left under contract heading into the 1943 season.

Rather than shut both teams out, the league approved a merger between the two, with Steelers coach Walt Kiesling and Eagles coach Greasy Neale both leading the combined roster.

Via the Post-Gazette:

All of the 25 players on the roster were required to keep full-time jobs in defense plants. One of Pittsburgh’s players, Ted Doyle, worked at Westinghouse and figured out later he was a small part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, according to Matthew Algeo’s book Last Team Standing. And even though it was a merger, the team practiced in Philadelphia and wore green and white uniforms. That color scheme was worn in the two home games played at Forbes Field, which were wins over the Cardinals on Halloween and over Detroit on Nov. 21. Four home games were played in Philadelphia, where the team went 2-1-1.

In his 2006 book, Algeo goes through the team’s season in great detail, including the adversarial relationship between the two coaches, as Kiesling ended up coaching the team’s offense and Neale the defense. With completely different coaching approaches, it would be like Bill Belichick and Rex Ryan suddenly having to share a sideline.

Despite the uniquely shrinking pool of players to choose from, some men who might not be eligible for war still had qualifications that allowed them to play football.

Via Last Team Standing:

The minimum height (60 inches) and weight (105 pounds) went unchanged throughout the war. The maximums – 78 inches and “overweight which is greatly out of proportion to the height” – went unchanged too, winning deferments for a handful of oversized football players, notably Green Bay’s Buford “Baby” Ray, a six-six, 250-pound tackle. Likewise, some defects were deemed unacceptable no matter how dire the need for soldiers. A host of maladies large and small – ulcers, perforated eardrums, high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic sleepwalking – earned otherwise able-bodied men an automatic 4-F classification, rendering them unfit for military service but not for professional football.

Many of the Steagles players actually had wanted to go to war, but were held back by some of the above qualifications. One Eagles tackle had bleeding ulcers while another lineman was born deaf in his left ear and was discharged from pilot training. A Steelers receiver was blind in one eye. Several players had bad knees.

There was a special bond among the Steagles’ 4-Fs, who believed, in some small way, they were contributing to the war effort. If they couldn’t fight the war, at least they could take people’s minds off it.

“The fans really liked it. Attendance picked up,” Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, who as an 11-year-old boy would often ride the train with the team, told the AP in 2004. “People were looking for things to do and it worked out pretty well.”

So this ragtag group came together and despite living in separate cities, playing for dual coaches and working full time factory jobs, managed to compile a 5-3-1 record heading into their final regular season game versus the Green Bay Packers. With a win, the Steagles would set themselves up for a first-place tie in the four-team Eastern Division if the Redskins could beat the Giants the following week.

The team kicked off its game in Philadelphia’s Shibe Park in front of nearly 35,000 spectators, with fans in Pittsburgh listening on the radio. The Steagles went into halftime trailing 17-14 and after falling behind 31-14 to close the third quarter, rallied to narrow the deficit to 31-28 with less than five minutes left. After a key Steagles fumble, future Hall of Famer Don Hutson caught a one-handed 24-yard touchdown pass to seal the Green Bay victory.

Later that night, on December 5, 1943, Algeo writes that the team held a farewell banquet at the Hotel Philadelphian. It was the last time the team would be together, as the Eagles would field a full roster the following season while the Steelers would merged with the Chicago Cardinals in 1944 and go 0-10 as a squad called “Card-Pitt.”

In 2003, six of the nine surviving members of the team were honored during a pregame ceremony prior to an exhibition game between the Eagles and Steelers at Heinz Field. Only three players from that 1943 team are still alive, with quarterback Allie Sherman the youngest at 90 years old.