owners discussed canceling the upcoming 1943 season due to concerns of player availability due to the war. Instead they chose to delay the decision, along with the college draft, until the following April. At the April meeting, roster sizes were reduced from 33 to 25 players, while the Cleveland Rams announced that they would suspend operations for the season: the team's two top executives were serving in the military, as were a large number of players. The Steelers' roster continued to be decimated throughout the off-season. By late May, they were down to just five players under contract who would be available to play in the upcoming season. Rooney and Bell reached out to Alexis Thompson's Philadelphia Eagles to discuss the possibility of combining the two squads. A proposal to combine was submitted to the league and was slated for discussion at league meetings in mid-June. At the confab the Chicago Bears and Chicago Cardinals sprung a similar request of their own. The league owners voted down the two mergers on the basis that by combining resources the merged clubs would gain an unfair advantage. Rooney and Bell then lobbied the Chicago clubs to withdraw their request, which they eventually agreed to do. After a contentious debate the owners then voted by a narrow 5–4 margin to allow the Steelers and Eagles to merge operations for the upcoming season and retain their players thereafter. Although the combined team was officially the Eagles and would have no city designation, it became known familiarly as the Phil-Pitt "Steagles". The club split its home dates between the two cities with four games played in Philadelphia and two in Pittsburgh. Walt Kiesling shared coaching duties with Eagles coach Greasy Neale and the club adopted the T formation which had been used very effectively by the Chicago Bears for the past several seasons. Many of the Steagles players were classified 4-F by the Selective Service, meaning they were judged as unfit for military service. Common ailments were ulcers, perforated eardrums and poor eyesight or hearing. Co-coaches Neale and Kiesling disliked each other immensely. In order to avoid coaching together, they split coaching responsibility along the lines of offense and defense. This accommodation presaged the rise of the modern offensive and defensive coordinator positions that are near universal in the modern game. The team ended the season with a 5–4–1 record which was the first winning