75 years after Pete Pihos sparked the Eagles’ first playoff win and championship run, his legacy endures

The Eagles had just made club history on that chilly December afternoon in Pittsburgh 75 years ago, but they were really much more interested in cold beer.

“Please, Coach, can’t we have just one bottle?” Alex Wojciechowicz, the Eagles’ veteran center, asked Earle “Greasy” Neale.

“All right,” Neale was reported to reply, “but not more than two bottles.”

And every man on the team raised his hand, pledging that two bottles would be the limit.

On Dec. 21, 1947, the Eagles thumped the Pittsburgh Steelers, 21-0, in a playoff for the Eastern Division title, earning a spot in the NFL championship game the following Sunday against the Chicago Cardinals. It was the first playoff victory in the franchise’s 15-year history.

The catalyst to victory, before a packed house of 35,729 at Forbes Field, had been provided by a 24-year-old rookie end, Pete Pihos, who blocked a first-quarter punt that led to the Eagles’ first touchdown — a 15-yard pass from Tommy Thompson to Steve Van Buren.

» READ MORE: Ranking the 50 greatest Eagles players of all time

Pihos had already been through a lot in his life. When he was 13, his father, Louis, the owner of a restaurant in Orlando, Fla., was clubbed to death. As a member of the 35th Infantry in the U.S. Army in World War II, Pete Pihos was a part of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, rising to second lieutenant. He did tell his daughter about the bloody beaches at Normandy.

“He didn’t talk about war a lot — and I asked him numerous times,” his daughter, Melissa, an associate professor of dance at Valdosta State University in Georgia, said last week. “I almost felt like I was making him uncomfortable.”

Pihos, who died in 2011 at 87 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, would play nine NFL seasons, all for the Eagles, and was a six-time Pro Bowl pick only because that distinction was started in 1950. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1970.

Before Dallas Goedert, Zach Ertz, Brent Celek, John Spagnola, Keith Jackson or Pete Retzlaff rumbled along as Eagles’ tight ends, there was Pete Pihos, “The Golden Greek.”

The Eagles had finished second in the Eastern Division for three straight years before Pihos arrived. They played in the NFL championship game for three straight years after Pihos arrived.

He was not particularly big for a pro football player — 6-foot-1 and 210 pounds — but he was sure-handed, dedicated, unselfish, and ferocious. His daughter, who was born when Pihos was 51, says football served as a way to get away from the horrors earlier in his life.

“Pihos’ arrival in ‘47 was what elevated the Eagles from good to great,” Ray Didinger, the retired sports columnist, commentator, film producer and co-author of The Eagles Encyclopedia, said recently. “They already had the league’s best rushing attack with Van Buren, and when Pihos came aboard, he made them equally dangerous through the air.”

But here was the thing: Pihos (pronounced PEA-hoce) was a three-time All-American at Indiana University — as a fullback. He’d been drafted in the fifth round by the Eagles in 1945 because of his versatility: Pihos could play fullback, halfback, quarterback, or end.

“I’d rather toss the apple than catch it, but not much more,” he said in an August 1947 interview with The Inquirer, who labeled him “the grandiose Greek.” “Just as long as I have my hands on the ball, it’s all right with me.”

He’d end up complementing the Eagles’ other end, a player from South Philadelphia named “Blackjack” Ferrante, on that 1947 team, catching 23 passes for 382 yards and seven touchdowns in his rookie season. That Eagles team won eight of 12 regular-season games.

On Dec. 14, 1947, before 26,716 at Shibe Park, the Eagles earned the playoff against the Steelers for the division title by beating the Green Bay Packers, 28-14, for the first time in history. Pihos caught a pass from Thompson, and the “bull-like” end turned it into a 66-yard touchdown.

The Eagles would lose their first NFL championship game two weeks later to the Cardinals, 28-21, in part because they were ill-equipped for the frozen field at Comiskey Park. While the Cardinals started in gym shoes with cork cleats, the Eagles wore football shoes with “sharply honed” cleats. Each member of the Cardinals got $1,155. Each Eagle got $755.

Chicago scored four touchdowns on plays that covered between 44 and 75 yards. Two touchdowns were scored that day by a speedy rookie Chicago back named Charley Trippi, from Pittston, Pa., and the University of Georgia — another future Hall of Famer. Trippi, who died at the age of 100 last Oct. 22, was thought to be the last living player to have played in that game.

That would be the last NFL championship won by the franchise now known as the Arizona Cardinals. But those ‘47 Eagles had a nucleus that had been made even more solid by Pihos. They would win NFL championships in 1948 and 1949.

The Eagles would develop a middle or tight end screen-pass play to give Pihos room to run in the middle of the field. Pihos said he never dropped a pass and told Didinger later in life that it was hard for him to watch the modern NFL, because the dropped passes drove him crazy.

“I never dropped a pass, period,” Pihos told Didinger. “A few might have gone over my head or something like that, but if the ball hit my hands, it was caught. I wasn’t the fastest guy in the world, but I could get open. The big thing was I caught the ball. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be out there.”

Didinger said in an email: “I interviewed Pihos several times, first as a newspaper reporter working on various Eagles history pieces and later as an NFL Films producer. He wasn’t much of a talker — he was actually pretty gruff — but he certainly was a great player, arguably the most underrated player in Eagles history. He is a Hall of Famer, yet he is rarely spoken about. Mention his name to most Eagles fans and you’ll get a blank look.

“I still think the greatest Eagles team was the 1947-49 edition. Three straight title games, back-to-back world championships (both won by shutout, the only time it ever happened), a truly dominant team (20-3-1 in the championship years) and its best players were Steve Van Buren and Pihos. Most fans know Van Buren. Hardly anyone knows Pihos.”

In a way, Pihos became more well-known after he died because Melissa Pihos, whose mother, Donna, was Pete Pihos’ fourth and last wife, did not want his legacy to vanish.

In 2012, she put together a multimedia tribute, “Pihos: A Moving Biography,” that included dance and her short 2009 film, Dear Dad. The tribute played at Drexel University, with benefits going to the Alzheimer’s Association. It was most recently performed in 2018.

“He really pushed dance — was really into me going into it,” she said, laughing. “I was hyperactive, tearing things up. I probably have the same build as him — I’m just a female.”

During his decline, Pihos would inexplicably say to his daughter, “You’ve got to move!” as if she were a football player in a drill. “He’d call out numbers a lot,” she said. “I assumed they were plays.”

Her father was a pre-law student at Indiana, and Melissa Pihos is convinced that he would have become a lawyer if he hadn’t been so good at football — and surely would have been motivated to investigate his father’s murder, which never has been resolved.

Donna Pihos, her mother, has said that Pete Pihos played football so well because he was motivated by his father’s death. The Eagles, it turned out, made ideal teammates, because many of them also served in the military in World War II. Thompson, the quarterback who was blind in one eye, stopped playing for two years because he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army.

After Pihos retired at age 32 following the 1955 season — he caught a league-high 62 passes for a 4-7-1 team — he became a coach, first in Doylestown at National Agricultural College, which is now Delaware Valley University. His three teams went 14-7-1.

He coached college, semi-pro and minor-league teams through 1966. An obituary that appeared in the New York Times after he died in August 2011 at a nursing home in Winston-Salem, N.C., mentioned that he’d been a sales manager for a construction company.

And that might have been the end of the story, but Pete Louis Pihos had left behind a small piece of his legacy for someone to discover. In March 2021, Melissa Pihos received an email from a woman who had found one of his dog tags — a soldier’s identification tags — in a forest near Fontainebleau, France.

“She wrote, ‘I have a medal of your father, and would you like it?’” Melissa said. “I said, ‘What is this? They usually only give medals after you serve.’”

Her father had won the Silver Star and Bronze Star for bravery while serving under Gen. George S. Patton, but Melissa then realized the woman was talking about his metal dog tags. The woman sent the tag to Melissa, who traveled to France in December 2021, pausing at the spot where it was found.

Melissa Pihos said she’d like to do more about her father. Perhaps she’d write a screenplay about his remarkable life. She has written a dance textbook, but she thinks she might need to audit a screenwriting course at Valdosta State to get ready for the task. Her father would have expected nothing less.

“He wanted to be the best,” she said. “He also had a job to do, so he would go and do his job. He always stressed the importance of a good work ethic, positivity, and the ability to work as a team.”

The Eagles would win their first NFL title on Dec. 19, 1948, beating the Cardinals, 7-0, in a blizzard at Shibe Park. Thompson completed two passes that snowy day. Both were to Pihos. The Eagles won the 1949 title with a 14-0 win over the Rams. Pihos caught a 31-yard touchdown pass.

No records are available on how many beers they earned from Greasy Neale on those days.