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Eagles Unveiling Photos Leak, Confirmed by Team as Legitimate

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Paul here, continuing my rare weekend residence because Phil has the weekend off.

So: The Eagles were scheduled to unveil their long-awaited Kelly green throwback uniforms on Monday, but the internet had other ideas.

Late yesterday afternoon, a bunch of unveiling photos appeared on a private Eagles-centric Facebook page called BirdGang. They were posted by someone named Brandon Winston, who is apparently a big Eagles fan. Several people brought the photos to my attention, and soon they were circulating all over social media. One of them is shown above; here are the rest:

An hour or two after the photos began circulating, the Eagles essentially (and, to their credit, good-naturedly) confirmed their legitimacy:

———

Leaving aside the theater of the leak and its acknowledgment, these uniforms (a) are not a surprise and (b) look great. Bonus points for the striped socks!

I should add here that I like the Eagles’ primary uniforms just fine. I know some fans don’t care for the darker midnight green shade, but I dig it. (Admittedly, there are very few shades of green I don’t like.) So it’s not like I needed the Kellys, because I have no problem with the midnights. Still, I have to say, these throwbacks looks really great.

The only remaining question is when these will be worn. That info will presumably come our way on Monday, when the official unveiling was originally supposed to happen.

With the Bills apparently not reviving their red helmet this year, this is the final NFL throwback unveiling of the season. The NFL’s retro slate now looks like this:

  • Teams with new throwbacks for 2023 (7): Browns (new helmet on previously existing retro uni), Buccaneers, Eagles, Jets, Seahawks, Titans, and Vikings.
  • Teams carrying over existing throwbacks (12): Bills, Bears, Cowboys, Dolphins, Falcons, 49ers, Giants, Lions, Packers, Patriots, Saints, and Steelers.

So that’s 19 teams with a throwback uni — more than half the league.

Update: Jack Connell, who’s a member of the private Facebook group where the photos first leaked, sent a DM to Brandon Winston, the guy who leaked them. Winston wrote back:

“I was on the Eagles app looking for tickets for opening day at the Linc & something told me to check all the features. That’s how I came across it under the ‘Go Green’ tab.”

So it appears that the Eagles mistakenly left the photos unsecured on their app. Interesting!

(My thanks to Jack Connell, Joe LoPresti, Christian Berumen, and Austin Ledley for bringing the original BirdGang leak to my attention.)

• • • • •

Sorry, no Ticker again today, but the Ticker will return tomorrow. — Paul

 
  
 
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Comments (64)

    In their original form, Norman Braman (in)famously made players pay for replacement socks.
    Lurie has deeper pockets, but I wonder how many will wind up opting for sannies.

    Those. Are. Perfect.

    …but leave it to a team from north of the Mason-Dixon to misspell “y’all” (the apostrophe goes *before* the A, y’all).

    As much as I appreciate the historical accuracy here, I always thought this look needed some tweaking.
    Rule #1: A helmet should house every team color. I never liked that black finds its way onto everything but. Slap the modern wings on there and you got something. One of the many reasons I don’t like KC has to do what the fact that their helmet is void of yellow.
    And… as much as I like striped socks, I’ve always felt like they looked out of place here. Felt the same about Brady era NE striped socks.

    I agree on the Chiefs part. It’s weird in general that their logo has no yellow in it.

    KC began life as the Dallas Texans — and their original helmets actually DID contain a smidgen of gold, in the form of the star on the hat (link, link). When the team moved to KC, they removed the one, tiny athletic gold element on the helmet, but kept the gold on the unis.

    So, at one time, the Dallas/KC helmet did contain gold, but it never made the trip from Dallas to Kansas City. And the team pretty much kept the same uniform for 60-plus years, but never added the gold back to the helmet.

    Hopefully they’ll include yellow when they end up changing their logo.
    In the meantime, maybe go with a yellow face mask.

    I’m so happy. Jeff Lurie and the Eagles organization won’t be able to ignore the absolute through the roof reaction to these uniforms. They have to bring these back full time. The only thing that could dampen my mood is if they announce they are only wearing them once rather than the allowable 3 games. Only criticism of the uniform themselves is a Nike thing. The new template sucks and how hard is it to make silver pants?

    Rules gurus…correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s a chance the Eagles could still wear their black jerseys with midnight green helmets correct? I hope that’s not the case but BFBS doesn’t seem to want to go away.

    “there’s a chance the Eagles could still wear their black jerseys with midnight green helmets correct?”

    Yes. The rule, as I understand it, applies to all alternates (throwback, color rush, third jersey), in that they can be worn a total of three times. So, in essence, the Eagles can wear their BFBS (with green hats) twice and only wear the throwback (known as a “Classic” in NFL parlance) once. Or one BFBS & two throwbacks. Or three throwbacks.

    The NFL have been known to play a bit fast and loose with their uniform protocol before, but as I understand the alternate rule, it’s three times total (no matter which alternate/combo[s] are chosen)

    Thanks for the clarification.

    I hope I’m wrong but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Eagles wear throwbacks twice, all black once and then normal for the rest. On the road I think we’ll see all white, white/green and white/black continue.

    I would love to see them break out the Kelly Green AT Dallas. I always loved seeing that uniform on the road against the Cowboys. Half of that was I loved the lighting with the roof in the old Cowboys stadium and the KG looked so good there.

    Bills didn’t wear their standing Buffalo throwbacks last year and it doesn’t sound like they’re wearing them this year. Sounds like red jersey only alternate.

    There are 18 teams with a throwback uniform, not 17. You forgot the Saints as one of the teams returning one from last year.

    Bears orange is considered an alternate, not a throwback, at least as I understand it.

    But I did mean to include the Saints — will add that now!

    I don’t hate midnight green as a color, but I’ve never thought the Eagles used it very thoughtfully or effectively. These throwback unis with kelly green just look so much better than anything the team has worn with the darker hue.

    At a soccer game last night, I saw a kid wearing his youth football jersey. It was all black with white lettering and featured Eagles logos on each shoulder and the Eagles wordmark across the front. Which just kind of made me sad. I know, youth leagues don’t always pay strict fidelity to the connection between team names and colors – my first baseball uniform featured a yellow jersey for a Mets team – but the midnight green era seems to have fixed the Eagles as a color-black team in the popular imagination.

    When I was in Little League every team was assigned a distinctive color. The team names were all from MLB, but this meant a lot of blue or red MLB teams had odd colors. But we had real flannel (though mostly cotton, I suspect) uniforms, with piping, pants and stirrups! Team names were in felt block letters (no logos) in the team color on white unis for the older kids, grey for the younger division.

    I still think their current set is visually superior, though the kelly and silver colorway is nicer to look at. The black trim on these makes them look amateurish. And the forest green is a nice color anyway. If they kept the current template (wing design, eagle head logo on sleeves, number font and style) but rendered it in kelly green with silver pants, and replaced any black elements with the forest green, I think they’d have something.

    Regarding the number of throwbacks in the NFL. Wouldn’t it be possible for the Bengals to add their old BENGALS helmets to the rotation? All they’d have to do is take off the stripes and get a BENGALS decal? They could ditch the orange jersey and add a black throwback uniform. Easy way for a team to keep their 2nd shell while still adding a throwback.

    I had heard that their stripes are painted on, which would be an issue. Not sure if that’s still accurate, though.

    I don’t think that’s true. They’re too identical and precise to be painted and maintained throughout a season.

    Agree with Paul 100%. I like the darker green but these look really sharp.

    I agree with your agreement.
    I’ll add that these should remain as an alt…(in my best Rich Kotite voice impersonation) ”Without question”.

    I really don’t understand the NFL uniform rules. I guess you can have two alternate uniforms of any variety as long as you use no more than two helmet shells, is that correct? And you can switch up the decals on any of those helmet shells as many times as you want? Never understood how the Chargers could have two different alt unis, I guess that’s because they don’t have a throwback. So could you also have two different throwback looks? It’s kinda confusing, but I’m glad to see what we’re seeing this season regardless.

    As I understand it, teams can have two of the following: third/alternate jersey (in the Chargers case, that’s the royal), color rush (dark navy), and/or throwback (“Classic”). They can have one alternate color shell, which can only be worn with the alt/CR/throwback. And they can wear any combination of alt/CR/throwback a maximum of three times. Shell color (not alternate decals) determines the helmet. That explains how the Cowboys last season were able to wear two different uniforms with the new white helmet — the 63 throwback which was worn on Thanksgiving (link) and the “icy white” at the end of the year (link).

    The 63 throwback counted as their “Classic” uniform, and the Icy White was a “CR” uniform. That allowed them to wear white shells with two different uniform which still fell under the permissible uses for the alternate helmet.

    Paul, have you considered having an NFL throwback calendar as a choice in your drop down menu? With so many teams introducing throwbacks/fauxbacks the last two years, it’s impossible to keep up. I’m more excited for this upcoming season than any in a long time simply because of the uniforms. It would be great to have one place on your site to review the dates (and opponent, game time, TV network) for all these new releases. Plus, you’ve mentioned in the past that traffic is down on the weekends and this might be a way to persuade readers to check out Uni Watch.

    I’ve been trying to write down all these throwback dates, but now we’re up to 19 or 20 teams.. A calendar on uni watch would be so much easier.

    Paul may not need the Kelly green…
    I do!

    Still not an Eagles fan, although they look SO much better that I dislike them less today.

    I hate the midnight green jerseys. I find them dull and depressing. This is the perfect shade of green for a football uniform. I wish they would not use the black accents but other than that these are sweet.

    Those socks look great! teams that wear dark pants should wear this style of sock like Kansas City does with their red pants. It’s a clean look and you get nice separation at the knees to see the player is wearing football pants. When you wear dark pants with dark socks it looks like the team is wearing leggings.
    I know I am old school and hate all the new uniforms that Nike does for the NFL, but I would like these for the Eagles regular uniforms and the white helmets with white pants 70’s style for the alternates.

    In 1977 I was at a free agent camp run by former Bell coach Ron Waller, Vince Papale was there to help out. I had not seen Vince in two years since the WFL folded, he was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles basketball uniform with a pair of socks just like the ones in your link. I said Vince those are cool socks, he said thanks these are our game socks. I already knew that, even at 13 I was one of those people who get it.

    These are great, but I’d really like to see them go back to the Jaworski era set and those glorious sleeve stripes.

    I have always liked the Jaworski era uniforms too, but when they first started wearing them in 1974 “The Roman Gabriel era” The sleeves went down to the elbows, considering that NFL jerseys no longer have sleeves how would they fit that sleeve design with no sleeve space to do it?

    I would have preferred that no-trace-of-black throwback for the Birds – the BuddyBall threads are just ok – but the jersey would have to have truncated sleeve stripes (probably just room for the white/silver/white design, which would be passable…but not right.

    Yea, I guess if they put the UCLA stripes on the shoulders and put some other stripes on the sleeve band like the Titans did on their Luv Ya Blue jerseys I guess it could work

    There were something like 14 stripes on sleeves that went down almost to the elbow. Can’t be done. The 49ers struggles to get 3 on their caps.

    This may be a crazy idea but how about the Eagles have the Jaworski era uniforms for an alternate and actually have Nike make sleeves on the jerseys? Dick Butkus wore a heavy jersey with almost full sleeves, he never missed a tackle, Jack Lambert wore a heavy durene Steelers jersey with 3/4 sleeves, and it never hindered his play, they both made the Hall of Fame. It isn’t written anywhere that an NFL jersey must be sleeveless.

    Eschew the TV numbers (as is the new vogue), put the UCLA shoulder loops there and then put the first set of stripes on the caps, that should look cool enough.

    The Eagles tweet has apostrophe catastrophe. They tweeted YA’LL better not leak the playbook. But it’s a contraction for “you all”. So it should be Y’ALL.

    Lifelong Eagles fan. They NAILED it. My only complaint is that the pants look more dishwater gray than silver, but that is minor. They got everything else spot-on.
    The midnight green is OK, and winning the Super Bowl in it (3 of the team’s 4 Super Bowl appearances to boot) will always give it some nostalgia currency. BUT… 1) Nike can’t make the color consistently; 2) sometimes it looks more like teal; 3) the current set is veering too hard into BFBS territory at the expense of silver; and 4) the number font has always been too cute and fancy for this team and this city. In short, the whole set is dated, the way that the Broncos’ uniforms are dated.

    I think you nailed it MJ, the Eagles and the Broncos have very dated mid 90’s looking uniforms. I have always preferred the block style numbers to the cute number fonts a lot of teams wear.

    Eagles throwbacks would look MUCH better if they wore black cleats, as the team did in 1990.. After the Vikes ditched the black in the early ’80’s, the Birds were the only ones to bring them back in what became almost 2 decades of NFL-wide terrible white shoes..

    Looks like they gave us clues for the games they will wear them. The program on the front says Giants vs Eagles and the back cover is a Cowboy. Those are probably the 2 games they wear them.

    Very nice uniform but my favorite part of this is the player holding the boombox. He looks so happy.

    The modern wings on the helmet would have made these perfect. I much prefer the kelly green over the midnight green.

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