There’s not many players who could be in the Ring of Honor of two different teams, but Bill Bergey was one of them. Every word I’m writing here as a Philadelphia Eagles fan in the wake of Bergey’s passing is being echoed somewhere by someone in Cincinnati Bengals orange.
The early 1970’s was a different era in the National Football League (NFL). Fresh off it’s merger with the rival American Football League, the NFL was just fueling up the rocket for it’s meteoric rise past baseball as the national sport. But this was still an era where many teams played on baseball diamonds, the goal posts were still on the goal line, and dominant middle linebackers ruled the middle of those half-dirt fields.
There are many legendary names in that class; this was the time when Ray Nitschke and Dick Butkus played the old guard giving way to the new in Nick Buonticonti, Jack Lambert, and Mike Curtis. But there was another in that caliber.
Bill Bergey spent his career being overshadowed by the aforementioned because he toiled on teams in Cincinnati and Philadelphia which garnered far less of the NFL limelight. It didn’t help that Bergey wasn’t “flashy.” You may not have noticed how he got there, but it didn’t take long to realize at the end of nearly every play, Bergey was around the football.
In Bergey’s day, the man in the middle not only needed the brawn to be a punishing tackler, but the athleticism to be a ball-hawk in pass coverage. Given his career accolades, Bergey had to have done something right.
- 2× First-team All-Pro (1974, 1975)
- 3× Second-team All-Pro (1976–1978)
- 5× Pro Bowl (1969, 1974, 1976–1978)
- AFL Defensive Rookie of the Year (1969)
- Cincinnati Bengals 50th Anniversary Team
- Philadelphia Eagles Hall of Fame
- 27 interceptions, ~1,200 career tackles
- The Dubsism All-Time Philadelphia Eagles Team
As of yet he doesn’t have a gold jacket in Canton, nor is his jersey hanging in Cincinnati’s Ring of Honor, but discussing those oversights is for another time. The reality is no conversation concerning all-time great middle linebackers can ever be considered complete if there is no mention of Bill Bergey.
RIP, William Earl Bergey. I’m not sure how I feel about the combination of Cincinnati’s Skyline Chili and a Philly Cheesesteak, but he probably never had to pay for either.
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