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Uni Watch

Monday Morning Uni Watch: 2023, Week 7

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Good morning! Hope you had a good weekend, as I did. I’ll have more to say about that in a separate post later today.

Now then: For the second straight week, a long-awaited NFL throwback made its season debut yesterday, as the Eagles’ popular Kelly green throwbacks finally took the field. Additional photos here and here, and here’s how it looked in action:

In addition, Philly had a throwback field design:

The Eagles will wear this uniform again on Nov. 26, against the Bills.

In other news from around the league yesterday:

  • In a very welcome development, the Patriots wore their silver/grey pants for the first time this season, and just the second time overall since adopting their current uni set in 2020. So much better than the mono-blue look! Here’s hoping we see more of this (additional pics here):
  • In that same game, Pats cornerback Jack Jones was wearing the team’s pre-2020 NOB font. How can they still be having this problem? Incredible but true:
  • Also from that game, Bills running back James Cook appeared to be wearing the team’s old jersey template. Compare his collar to teammate Dawson Knox in the background (Cook wore the new template the last time the Bills wore white, and he changed his uni number this season, so this can’t be his jersey from last year):
  • The Colts wore their brutal new alternates, complete with the BFBS helmet and the ridiculous Indiana-shaped patch that made everyone look like a captain (additional pics here):
  • Rare situation in Seattle, as the Seahawks went navy over grey instead of their usual mono-navy home combo:
  • The Rams wore their dishwater pants:
  • The Lions went white over blue — one of their better combos — for the first time this season:
  • In that same game, the Ravens inducted Terrell Suggs into their Ring of Honor during halftime. Fans received a pin, and there was a nice “55” display on the field:
  • Gorgeous game in Kansas City, as the Super Bowl champs hosted the Chargers (additional pics here):

  • Classic-looking game in Chicago, where the Bears hosted the Raiders:

  • Way too much black in the Jags/Saints game:
  • Just one home team wore white: the Bucs.

(My thanks to Andrew Cosentino, Robert Zwecker, and Rob in Boston for their contributions.)

 

 
  
 

What Paul Did Last Night

E and I went to Manhattan yesterday to attend our friend Michael’s annual pumpkin-carving party. So many fun, creative designs! Here’s how they looked lit up:

We all agreed that our friend Sonya did the best job, so she took home a little prize:

 

Can of the Day

I’m running this one mainly because of the very endearing slogan: “Just a little better.”

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Categories
NFL
Comments (79)

    When I saw the helmet color at first it looked light, I agree. But I figured out that the issue was the angle. When an overhead shot was used it looked lighter than uni. When field (or at least not overhead) shot was used the color seemed to be really close. I assumed it was because of the fireworks and the stadium lights caused the issue. Anyone else notice a similar phenomenon?

    Overall, I kept thinking the shade of green looked lighter than what it actual was when that uni was used. I assume it has something to do with how the kelly green looks in old clips? Just looks darker in historical footage, at least to me.

    Probably the lighting. The Eagles old unis and helmets could look vastly different depending on time of game, under lights or natural lighting, etc.

    link

    I don’t understand how anyone within the Eagles org can look at the dark green set and the kelly green set side by side, point to the dark green and think “yeah, these are the better unis for our main set.”

    The kelly greens are just so superior it’s not even close. It’s not like a Bucs situation in which the creamsicle throwbacks are awesome but their normal set is also great. The Eagles normal set is among the ugliest in the league, if not the ugliest.

    Agree, though perhaps the wing design on the helmet looks a little dated compared to their full time helmet design. But the green and silver are far superior. It sort of reminds me of the Rams, where the best solution was just changing the navy/gold color scheme to blue/yellow but use the exact same uniform design. Same thing goes for Philly, just swap out the drab green and black for the brighter green and silver, but all other uniform design elements can remain the same.
    I think a good deal of 90s uniforms had good designs, their fault was just the trend to shift team colors to darker shades; Eagles, Rams, Bucs, Broncos, Patriots… swapping out bright and easily identifiable color schemes for blandness.

    I was coming here to comment that, after all the anticipation, hype, and lamenting, the Kelly green was a let down. But I have been in your camp for a while. The problem isn’t the uni design, it’s the color scheme. I kind of feel like the current set could color swap midnight green for kelly, and white for silver and it’d be a great looking set. They could even have a silver alt helmet with green wings.

    I’m also amicable to a two-shade solution where they’d use midnight green as a trim color in place of black.

    2 major objections to your proposal:
    1. “Midnight green” has so much blue in it is closer to the Jaguars’ teal than a shade of green. It would be tough to pair with kelly green.
    2. In addition to the lackluster color, the current Eagles’ set has too much black and charcoal, and the number/name font is too cute and overdesigned. The throwbacks have better pants, pants striping, socks, sock striping, number font, and restrained use of black as a minimal trim color. Also, the silver pants go with the white or green jerseys. The current design in the old colors doesn’t do the job as well as simply going back to the old uniform.

    I like kelly green as a color, and I welcome the uniform as a throwback (and very much enjoyed the novelty if last nights game) but I actually don’t consider it a very great uniform.

    My big gripe with it is it seems to use black in all the wrong places – The black outlines on the numbers and pants striping feel unnecessary, where the lack of any shadow or outlining on the helmet wing logo make it look like a shapeless white blob from a distance.

    While not my favorite uniform in the league (I’ll concede that the team has created some unfortunate combos) their current uni is certainly defensible, and the helmet specifically doesn’t succumb to the same problem as the throwback. The throwback in its current iteration would not be a good replacement IMO

    Agreed. My full thoughts are above, but I think the current dark greens are actually quite nice, and this iteration of the kelly’s looks like it belongs to a high school that doesn’t put much effort into their athletics. Also, like it or not, they’ve been in the dark greens for more than 25 years. It’s a part of their franchise history. But, like criticizing Star Wars, many people will blow a gasket and start declaring opinion as hard fact if you don’t fawn all over the kelly’s.

    Sometimes, I love this site… Agree with every word Dave said! Eagles now own midnight green (need a redesign to balance off or remove the black) and the Kelly green just looked dated. The dull pants and striping that isn’t repeated elsewhere doesn’t help the overall look either.

    I thought the Eagles looked absolutely glorious last night. All the little touches like the field logo, the cheerleaders uniforms, it just all worked so well together. I didn’t realize when I was growing up how much I liked those uniforms.

    The Birds did a nice job uni-wise.
    I don’t like them any more than I did before (that is to say, not very much)…but a slight drawback for this guy who remembers the original ’85-95 iteration was seeing a #7, a #41 and a Cunningham NOB on defense in Kelly green.

    Eagles helmets a skosh too light and not metallic. However the wings and silver pants were spot on.

    Were the kelly green helmets metallic? Thinking back to the old Dick Vermiel days, I don’t remember that.

    Never with this set, but they were briefly metallic in 1974 when the Eagles first went back to green helmets – at least all their Riddell helmets were metallic green.

    By 1975 a large number of players switched to the Marietta (later MaxPro) helmets that were painted on the inside of the clear shell and were a non-metallic green. So by 1976 the Eagles switched their helmets from Riddell and other non-clear-shell helmet manufacturers to molded in non-metallic green plastic (so they didn’t need to be painted constantly like the metallic green finish).

    The silver pants for the Patriots are so obvious that I do not see how it has taken this long or why the mono blue option even exists. Robert Kraft has generally always made pretty good decisions for this team. I am surprised he chose and allowed them to wear a uniform that is so terrible for so long now. It is like he is in Tom Brady-mourning and wanted to suffer.

    Let’s hope they make this the full time option. Not only does it look infinitely better, but it finally makes this uniform change an upgrade over what they wore for all those Super Bowls.

    Patriots wearing their red, white and blue “Pat Patriot” throwbacks makes it obvious how inferior any of their blue, silver and red combos are. The problem is, they became the greatest dynasty in NFL history wearing “Elvis Patriot” and blue and silver. Too bad from a uni standpoint.

    There was something off about the kelly greens last night. The helmet was way too bright and even the jersey and pants were on the loud side, although not as bad as the helmets. It was as if someone turned the brightness level up to 100 on everything. It reminds me of those restored cars from the ’50s and ’60s where the owners paint them a robin’s egg blue or cherry red, thinking that that’s how those cars looked back in the day. Sure, they were technically those colors but they were never that bright. And so they never look right. Same with the Eagles’ throwbacks. I have to say, by the second quarter I was ready for the midnight green ones again. And I never thought I’d say that.

    I thought so too, I also thought the Bucs creamsicle seemed a little brighter too, I wonder if it’s just the modern fabrics.

    I thought the same about the creamsicle jerseys. And the helmets last night definitely looked off — too light, and almost creamy, if you will. I don’t know if it was the paint or just the lighting (or HD TVs). But they weren’t quite right.

    They were always that bright. The televisions in 2023 are much bigger and better then 1995. When I went to the games I was always in awe of how bright the Eagles green was.

    You might right…I remember my first in-person NASCAR Cup race way back in the ’90s and was shocked that the colors weren’t at all what I thought they were…Gordon’s #24 which looked yellow on TV was a neon almost-green at the track.
    The Eagles could have adjusted the shade of Kelly to compensate for the ‘mis-match’ experienced by the TV viewers I guess.

    Paul, not sure if you caught the ESPN weekly NFL uni preview. Among the low lights this week was calling the Lions’ helmet white, apparently the Raiders are now the Gray and Black, and interestingly enough, the Patriots have a gray helmet but silver pants?

    By my count he had an unbelievable error (for anyone even remotely paying attention) on seven of the twenty teams he was providing information on. I’m not convinced those pieces are made by a real human.

    Is he the same guy who does the college uniform previews? He needs to find a thesaurus, because I am tired of reading how every set is “clean”, “tight” or “fire”. I may not be his demographic cohort or his target audience, but his audience is actually the intersection of sports fans and aesthetics obsessives of any age.

    Same guy.
    And for last week’s college preview I told Phil he needed a thesaurus because he kept using the word “sweet” over and over.
    I really don’t understand 1) how he got this gig and 2) how he keeps it.
    Do better, ESPN.

    I checked his Twitter feed and he doesn’t link to his articles. I can see why…

    He seems to be knowledgeable about sports in general. He just doesn’t seem to Get It when it comes to uniforms. Guessing he was assigned the job and is trying his best at something that’s not quite in his wheelhouse. I’m not going to bother him. If he doesn’t get any better, the general public will catch on eventually. Either that or he’ll be running the whole network someday…

    I might be alone since I didn’t start watching football while the Eagles wore those uniforms, but I think I prefer their current template. That said, I would LOVE to see it in these colors and silver pants in place of the black set.

    That Chiefs/Chargers uni matchup might be the best looking game all year. I found myself keeping the TV on that game and switching over late when play resumed in the Steelers/Rams game.

    This week’s slate really goes to show how much better teams look when they avoid the mono-color route. I don’t mind the Bills in all white, but teams always look better with contrasting pants.

    Yes, the Chargers were yesterday’s best example of contrasting pants. Their yellow pants made that the best uni game of the day. If they wore white pants, that game probably wouldn’t even get mentioned. I think the Chiefs would make a splash by wearing yellow pants with their white jersey on rare occasion.

    True, but the Packers, Raiders and Steeers have been wearing contrasting pants for decades as well…

    That green is quite a bit lighter/brighter than what the Eagles used to wear (suspicion confirmed via GUD). Paired with the Dolphins aqua, it was unexpectedly one of the worst-looking games of the weekend, outside Saints/Jags. As awful as those Colts unis are, they paired somewhat decently with the Browns.

    Lots to dislike about the Colts’ uni, but I actually think black pants would improve the look slightly.

    Out watching the games yesterday and the Colts uni was pretty much universally loathed when people saw it. I don’t know if there’s any saving it as long as there’s BFBS.

    I spend a lot of time on Facebook (too much, if we’re being honest, but that’s another story for another day), and I noticed the response to posts over there when the Colts first unveiled this new alternate set was overwhelmingly positive.

    I don’t have an explanation for this, but I thought it was interesting data.

    And then seeing it on the field against a classic Browns look, I wanted to hurl. That has to be the WORST of the alternate helmets. Those helmets (and that awful uniform) need to be put in an incinerator. Yesterday.

    Maybe go with something that’s historical and in blue, like what they did in 2010, which replicates the 1955 scheme.
    link

    You spelled Detroit wrong ; )

    link

    PS – While the Lions look their best in silver pants (should be their only option), the Colts never did (White. Pants. Only).

    I’m in the (apparent) minority as someone who really hates the kelly green. The color just looks off. Like something that Microsoft Word would select as the default green that you have to change every time you use it. And the helmets look washed out without an outline around the wings.

    I loved the Kelly’s but also thought they didn’t pop great on the grass surface, kinda washed them out. Plus the dolphins colors just didn’t add anything to the viewing.

    they didn’t pop great on the grass surface

    This is one of the reasons why I’m not ecstatic about these particular throwbacks. Sure, they’re miles better than the current unis, but grass-colored helmets and jerseys is just as bad as Boise State wearing blue on their blue turf.
    I’d rather they went back to their mid-70s look (although that’s tough with less sleeve space these days), or their 40s look with the shoulder yokes and the half green/half gray helmets. Those would stand out better on the field.
    Plus these throwbacks remind of the Buddy Ryan era and I don’t want to be reminded of that.

    FYI – the Browns’ Jim Brown patch yesterday was different than the ones worn on brown jerseys. Yesterday’s had a white outline that was not on the brown jersey patch. Putting it on a white jersey just makes the difference difficult to spot unless you have a real close-up image.

    I was a little disappointed that the Giants didn’t have the New Jersey Meadowands/state outline in the center of their throwback field. I wonder what the reason was for going with the helmet instead.

    Complete speculation: I wonder if the NFL now forbids non-NFL logos from appearing on NFL fields.

    The Pats wearing silver pants is definitely an improvement over mono blue however I wish they would just get rid of silver from their color set altogether and change it to white. I think the helmet logo would really pop and navy tops over white bottoms is a classic combo.

    The Eagles’ kelly green doesn’t contrast well with the Dolphins’ teal. It’s a shame they don’t plan to wear them for a divisional game. They’d look especially great vs. any of the Giants’ options.

    I liked the kelly green on the Eagles but I prefer the old Jets shade of it. Bears-Raiders was very good to look at, maybe the best of the bunch. Back to the Eagles: this throwback should replace the BFBS uniform. I really love that old Eagles font, though. Bring it back. As for the midnight green versus kelly green discussion: this idea mentioned above of midnight green with silver and kelly green as accents and striping instead of black sounds very appealing to me. Two hues of green, yes!

    The Eagles looked fantastic and the Dolphins looked fantastic, but the Eagles’ kelly green against the Dolphins’ aqua was brutal

    Loved that Kelly green was back, but like many, felt the color was slightly off. It also clashed somewhat with a dolphins uniforms.

    All season long, those aqua pants of the ‘Phins have ruined what should have been great-looking matchups, including the re-introduction of Pat Patriot and now the Braman Birds…:

    link

    While the Cardinals road uniforms have helped make for easy-on-the-eyes games every time:

    link

    How do you think the Pat’s silver pants would look if the striping was Red/White/Red to match the shoulder stripes? The Red/Blue/Red currently matches the white jersey’s shoulder stripes.

    I prefer the dark green eagles uniform. For me it’s the definition of the Wings. They seem to stand out in better detail on the dark green helmets than the kelly. (Just comparing photos now – there is more detail in the wings on the dark green helmet). Maybe if they used the wings from the dark green helmets on the Kelly green helmets, I might like it more.

    To all who are complaining about the Eagles’ or Bucs’ throwbacks being too bright or too shiny or too off… Maybe it’s modern TV technology that oversaturates all the colors.

    Yeah, high definition TV will make it look different than it looked on lower quality TV during the 90s.

    The Jags game was TNF- a little surprised to see it here/not mentioned as the Thursday game

    It’s amazing to me how much the grey pants improve the Seahawks’ home look as opposed to the usual mono-blue scuba suits. It goes from a uniform I pretty much can’t stand to one that’s… not bad! (Still a far cry from the perfection of their late ’80s look, though: link)

    Have the Patriots ever commented on why or how the old NOB or Number font still keeps popping up on the field?

    On the Iggles, I’d take the Kelly Green with White helmet adorned with a Green Wing they wore 1970-1973

    link

    Chiefs vs Chargers best looking game of the day. The red of the chiefs vs the powder/yellow of the chargers makes all the colors pop. That would have been the perfect color on color game. I keep awaiting the day till we see that.

    The current ‘kelly green’ is too light and due to how the uniforms are made it look inferior to the unis worn by Cunningham and Co. There’s far too much hype surrounding this shade of green plus the silver pants looked washed out. I wasn’t impressed.

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