Pete Pihos & the Philadelphia Eagles

Oct. 22 is the birthday of Petros “Pete” Pihos, the Philadelphia Eagles legend from the 1940’s and early 50’s. A NFL Hall of Famer, Pete Pihos won the NFL championship 2 times with the Eagles in the late 1940’s. He was also a WWII veteran, earning a Bronze and Silver Star for bravery. After coming back from WWII he joined the Eagles and quickly became one of the leading players of the team that eventually won 2 championships while he was there.

Still today Pete Pihos is remembered as one of the top 10 best Philadelphia Eagles players of all time. In his book Pro Football’s 100 Greatest Players, George Allen called Pihos “the first great tight end.” Technically Pihos was not a tight end. There were no tight ends in his era. Offenses consisted of four backs and two ends. But Allen, the Hall of Fame coach, was making the point that Pihos played like a modern tight end – a tough, physical blocker and a skillful receiver who averaged 15.1 yards per catch for his career. This paragraph was taken from this Philadelphia Eagles article about Pete Pihos.

Near the end of his life Pete Pihos suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, party due to playing American Football in a time when their equipment could not protect them as well as they do today. His daughter Melissa Pihos made a biography/documentary about his life, called Pihos: A Moving Biography. We included an excerpt from that in the videos below along with other videos about him and the Philadelphia Eagles.

It is quite fitting that Pete Pihos played for the Philadelphia Eagles, because the Eagle was the sacred animal and symbol of Zeus, and you could say Pete Pihos had all the qualities that you would expect from Zeus : Strength, Courage, Great Father and an Inspiration to All. Not to mention that Philadelphia is made up of 2 Greek words that mean City of Brotherly Love.