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Update: Cowboys Not Changing Silver Pants Stripe After All

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Update, Thursday, 1pm ET: I never heard back from the league on this story, but Dallas radio station KRLD is now reporting that the Style Guide is wrong and that the Cowboys are not changing their pants striping after all. I’m leaving the rest of the story intact for the historical record. — Paul

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We all know about the Cowboys’ famously mismatched shades of blue. It looks like they’re changing one of their blue elements this year — but it’s probably the last one you’d expect.

Here’s the deal. As you know, the Cowboys have distinct pants that they wear with their white and navy jerseys. The pants worn with the white jersey have royal/white piping down the sides, while the pants worn with the navy jerseys have navy/white piping, as seen in these pics:

Royal pants piping to match the royal jersey graphics and royal socks (left), and navy piping to match the navy jersey and navy socks.

The pants piping has been like that for many years. But TruColor.net’s Donovan Moore — the uni-verse’s foremost color expert — has spotted something. He has access to the current NFL Style Guide (something I no longer have access to, myself), and he noticed that this year’s Style Guide shows the silver pants with royal striping, instead of navy.

Here’s a comparison of last season’s and this season’s Style Guide entries for the Cowboys:

As you can see, the striping on the silver pants has changed. Let’s take a closer look:

Is it possible that this was just a mistake in the Style Guide? I’ve asked a league exec for clarification and will update this post if I hear back.

If the change to the silver pants is legit, that means the Cowboys could now wear the silver pants with the white jerseys, perhaps for road games. It would also mean that the navy jersey would presumably be paired only with the team’s white pants, not with the silvers.

Also of note: I find it interesting that the Style Guide uses the Riddell SpeedFlex helmet, compete with the flex panel cutout, as the default headwear template.

 

 
  
 
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Comments (52)

    I’ve also noticed that a lot of Pro Shop team gear now uses SpeedFlex Helmets on apparel, polos, hoodies, etc. Makes sense, Rodgers may be one of the few players still wearing an “Original” Riddell.

    Rodgers wears a Schutt. But I get it–other than the earholes, it looks traditional as far as modern helmets go.

    May be for the Miami game. With the Dolphins wearing their throwbacks, if the Cowboys have silver pants (they’re really gray) would be a lot closer to a Super Bowl VI uni rematch.

    Dallas could solve all of this by returning to the 70s uniforms. Not only their best set but not the blue spectral array they are now.
    The current road set is the worst look they’ve ever had. Even the 80s navy had silver numbers and the two sleeve stripes that mimicked the home set. The current blue jersey is a curse in itself.

    Worst Cowboys road uniform?
    It’s this:
    link

    I don’t root for the ‘Boys, but I do like their inconsistencies.

    Agreed! This was always a neat quirk, same for the Packers and Colts (who put their numbers inside the horseshoe).

    I hope that is not the case. I always thought a cool alternate for them would be to where the color rush jersey with the silver and navy pants. Not likely though outside of Madden!

    Maybe they will phase in these new silver pants with royal blue, since it really makes no sense to have these blue/silver tinged pants. However, even though they don’t match the helmet, I really like these blue/silver pants, It’s been mentioned that Nike lately seems to have a hard time with metallic pants, but the blue/silver pants seem to appear more metallic than the silver pants. Now that they changed from the green tinged hue pants to the blue tinged hue, I’ve liked these uniforms more. It would look great to have the helmet in this silver/blue color, though I know that won’t happen. Honestly, they should just switch to royal or navy for all their uniforms, and my vote would be royal.

    I agree. The shift back to a more Columbia hue of blue looks so much better. The green tint was stating to look like they borrowed pants from the Dolphins.

    I had the same thought. That would be good. I suspect that the Cowboys will only wear white pants with the blue shirts this year.

    Paul, you’ve got an “apostrophe catastrophe” happening (at least how it looks on my end). “But TruColor.net‘s Donovan Moore…” is where it’s at, thought you would very much like to know given your stance on apostrophes :)

    Here’s a thought…are the Cowboys thinking of doing the unthinkable?…Going back to royal blue jerseys instead of navy?

    I prefer the royal. Just like when the University of Pittsburgh went back to royal from navy. Not sure why royal blue became less popular. The Seahawks are another example that went from royal to navy blue.

    The Cowboys declared their royal blue jerseys to be “unlucky.” Eventually they thought the same of the darker blues.
    Pardon me while I roll my eyes.

    Actually, I hope they win the Super Bowl this year. The AFC is the home team, so they could choose to wear white and force the Cowboys to wear blue. If they win it would help put away that nonsense once and for all.

    Why are you calling stripes, piping?

    Anyway, not a Cowboy fan at all, but I like that their unis are in different shades, it’s unique.

    I’m a pretty die-hard Cowboys fan and I just don’t see any way that this is anything other than a mistake in the style guide. There is no precedent for the Cowboys to do this and they already had a road game vs. The Giants and wore the same, standard silver-blue pants. I would be happily wrong to see them change things up but this just seems so unlike them. Furthermore, the silver pants don’t match the helmet either, they are a much lighter, more metallic sheen that specifically matches the silver on the navy jersey. I would expect them to create an entirely new set of pants that perfectly matched the helmet with a royal blue stripe instead of changing the stripe on the current silver pants. The 2023 pants above seem to have the same silver as in 2022. I wish this were true just to see Dallas try something new but I highly doubt it is.

    Not at all. That’s Donovan Moore’s wonderful site.

    Previously it was known as “Colorwerx” and then, at the beginning of the Interwebs age, SSUR (Society for Sports Uniform Research)

    I actually followed that before Uni Watch (because it predates Uni Watch).

    You’ve definitely heard of those sites, if not Donovan, before.

    If that is accurate, its one of the dumbest subtle changes in uniform history. The silver pants would still mismatch the colors on the the helmet stripe. I know that’s true on the blue/gray pants, but the base color is not the same as the helmet, so its not the same.

    The Dolphins are wearing their throwbacks on Christmas Eve. I really think that the Cowboys are going to wear the silver pants with white shirts for that game to effectively wear 1970s throwbacks as well.

    Cowboys should just go back to the royal blue jerseys of the 1970’s like they wore in Super Bowl V. So much sharper looking than when they switched to the navy blues:

    If this is accurate, then it looks like the last time that the Cowboys wore a non-blue tinted silver pant was 1973. How poignant (I hope I’m using that word correctly) would it be that they make the switch 50 years to-the-year after the last time they weren’t wearing pastel-metallic-seafoam-whatever-the-heck-that-shit-is?

    link

    I forgot how to HTML, let me live pls

    Links are automatically turned to “link” here anyway, completely ignoring any HTML formatting one might put in anyway… I’ve seen a couple of comments like that recently, where there’s clearly meant to be text but there’s just “link” there.

    Man I hate the current white uniforms. The white with the navy stars on the shoulders makes so much more sense

    Can we stop calling their road pants silver? They’re supposed to be silver but Nike can’t make metallic pants. They’re gray. Slightly grayer than dishwater. But not a hint of metal.

    They used to be more metallic/shiny silver from Nike until a couple of years ago; now they’re matte grey. I think the change in fabric might have been when the silver blue pants got less green but they are still shiny.

    I believe Nike uses Reebok’s old supplier for shiny fabric pants (also used by the Raiders) and for the Packers’ uniforms.

    If a team Redesigned and had all these inconsistencies it would be laughed at but for some reason it just works for the Cowboys. I Iike the home uniforms and for some reason feel like the silver pants with white jerseys would be a down grade. Only thing I would change is adding a silver to the middle stripe of the CR helemt to match the white pants.

    I have LITERALLY read every possible point of view in the above thread. Now that’s how you stir the pot!

    I take a clean-slate approach: Make white jerseys with dark blue numbers and stripes, outlined in silver, to wear with the silver pants. Best colors in sports.

    Interesting timing, auto manufacturer Ford has introduced a similarly subtle shift. This is probably better suited for the ticker (and may have already been listed there), but Ford recently released photos for the 2024 version of the F-150. The Ford badge on the grill has been updated, nothing major, but they are swooping chrome for white, and metallic blue for a flat blue.

    I remember when it was hell freezes over time to even see the Cowboys in dark tops. Same with the phins. And when they played each other you wondered who was gonna give in..

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