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Monday Morning Uni Watch: 2023, Week 10

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Greetings from Virginia’s eastern shore, where I’m taking my annual trip to hang out with my friend Carrie and her family (including this very sweet dog, named Tuck).

Now then: The Cowboys added the red stripe to their helmet yesterday for Veterans Day. They originally did this throughout the 1976 season for America’s bicentennial, and this is now the third consecutive year that they’ve done it as a one-game “Salute to Service” gesture. Additional photos here.

In other news from a fairly uni-sedate day around the league:

  • In that same game, CBS at one point was using a primitive-looking digital font for the game clock:
  • The Seahawks wore navy over grey. As I wrote last Thursday, this marks the fourth consecutive home game that they haven’t worn their default mono-navy home combo (and that streak will apparently extend to at least a fifth game, because they’re slated to wear their neon-green alternates for their next home date):
  • I feel like I probably say this every year, but it bears repeating: While I may not like purple, I love the way the Ravens’ and Browns’ colors collide on the field, especially with the combos they wore yesterday. Here’s how the uni matchup looked in action:

  • Speaking of the Browns, we’ve noted before that Browns kicker Dustin Hopkins has a matte-finish helmet. But his helmet also has a Schutt maker’s mark, which is supposedly a no-go (no manufacturer’s name or logo is currently permitted on NFL helmets):
  • With the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes earning a berth in the Grey Cup on Saturday, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, whose father, Jim, played for the Alouettes in the 1970s, arrived at the stadium yesterday wearing his father’s jersey:

  • Patriots coach Bill Belichick alternated between cold-weather gear and more lightweight gear during the team’s game against the Colts in Germany:
  • Two teams wore white at home: the Bucs and, of course, the aforementioned Cowboys.

Looking ahead to tonight: The Bills, sadly, will be doing their awful mono-blue thing against the Broncos.

(My thanks to Ian Bagley, Jonas Feit, Dave Fisher, Wade Heidt, @mhfight, and Phil for their contributions to this section.)

 

 
  
 

Your Daily(ish) Dose of Kitten

I shot this on Friday. Miss them so much now that I’m down in here in Virginia for a few days! But I’ll be back home tomorrow night. Here’s hoping they remember me!

 

 

Can of the Day

It’s like there was a rule that said, “You must intentionally misspell one word in your product name, because that makes it seem cool and modern and shit.” Love the raindrops, too.

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NFL
Comments (46)

    Love Seattle wearing the gray pants more with the navy jersey. Hopefully the Pats get the memo and do that more often as well.

    I think it was because there was a technical glitch of some kind. I remember times in the past when the broadcast would have to dedicate one camera to film the stadium/arena’s clock and superimpose that into the clock area of the score bug.

    I work in sports television production, and although I’m not a bug operator, as far as I know that glitch occurs when the truck loses data connection to the stadium’s clock.

    When this happens, they have to manually insert (key in) the time via a clock camera ( i.e an actual camera pointed at the game clock).

    Some processing went on. There are those kinds of digital clocks at either end of Heinz Field, but they have black backgrounds.

    Here’s a pregame photo of the video board with the clock on the bottom left. link

    The Ravens-Browns matchup was very good looking with the orange pants. Ans an exciting game too. Packers visiting the Steelers was also goodlooking and a fun game to watch. Kiwi brand shoepolish is still being sold here in the Netherlands, I love that can.

    Agree on all points except one- I really don’t like the brown’s brown face masks. Anyone else?

    I really like the red-stripe on the Cowboys helmet.

    Turned on the PIT/GB game for a few minutes, my wife is a PIT fan, told her they were wearing throwbacks. She stared at me like I was an idiot, when I told her the difference between them and their regular uniforms, she just sighed. :)

    To the those who get it, there is a jarring difference between their throwbacks and their standard uniform.
    As someone who prefers the block, it is actually at the point that I am so used to their custom font now that when I see the block font throwbacks they just don’t look right anymore.

    That’s actually historically accurate. They’ve always used the current jersey number font on the helmets, back to the ’70s. In the ’90s they decided to use it on the jersey too.

    The Alouettes top worn by Joe Burrow was made by Royal Retros, who make custom repros of pretty much any jersey you want, for a comparably fair price. They also made the Birmingham Barracudas jersey that Jalen Hurts wore in pregame, representing his dad, earlier this season.

    I hate the Cowboys, but the red stripe is the most simple and classy tribute I can think of from the NFL.
    Such a simple change and it is so visually effective…

    Ravens-Browns was beautiful. Those shades of purple and orange look great together. The old Philadelphia Phantoms were proof of this…

    link

    Misspelling a brand name helps with copyrighting/trademarking issues. Miller’s attempt at trademarking “Light” failed, so they switched to “Lite,” and the rest is history. Also, it can help mitigate claims of false advertising. “Froot Loops” and “Frute Brute” do not contain fruit, but the names technically do not imply that they do.

    This is why I love Uni-Watch. I find intentionally misspelled words really annoying, but it’s good to know that there’s an better reason for than just “using a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’ looks cool, and even cooler if it’s ‘zz’.”

    That spelling came from newspaper headline writers, shortening “Stockings” and “Socks” to Sox for space.

    Ravens/Browns was the very rare excellent uni matchup in the NFL these days. Both have solid looking, traditional uniforms, and in the matchup there was no mono, there were contrasting colors… a lot to love there. This one, along with Packers/Bears and Raiders/Chiefs are some of the few excellent matchups left.
    When catching some of the Hawks/Commies game I couldn’t help but think how great a matchup that would have been if they both had more traditionally designed uniforms. The navy/gray vs burgundy/yellow color matchup has good contrast and pops well.
    Looking at the lede photo from the Cowboys game, it is amazing to me how different their pants can look depending on the lighting and media, sometimes it is just slight difference between the helmet silver and the blueish silver of the pants, in the photo today they are just remarkably different in color.

    “When catching some of the Hawks/Commies game I couldn’t help but think how great a matchup that would have been if they both had more traditionally designed uniforms.”

    I say it’s all the Commies fault.
    If they had a white jersey that mirrored the design of the burgundy one and a pair of yellow pants, there’d be no criticism from me.

    And while the Jets uniforms are no one’s favorite, they looked good in G/W/W playing the Raiders…a road combo never worn in Oakland – and last seen matched up when the silver and black when their home games were played in LA.

    While I hate the Commies unis, at least yesterday they wore maroon socks/tights. Didn’t watch much but they were pretty uniform.

    The Cardinals yesterday were dreadful aesthetically— red from shoulder to toe— such a bad look!!

    The digital clock is actually a live shot of the game clock. It is used as a fallback if the scorebug is malfunctioning. I’ve seen this for the NHL as well.

    I loved the Steelers block numbers. That should be the only thing they wear. My wife didn’t see the difference.

    One question, the Steeler logo wasn’t on the front of the shirt, so why were the captains not required to wear a “C”. I thought the exemption applied only if your team logo was on the front of the shirt.

    Don’t get me wrong, I think the “C” is ugly, stupid, and out of place in a sport not called hockey, but it is what it is. Not like the Steelers to be the rebels. Actually gives me some respect for them.

    the Steeler logo wasn’t on the front of the shirt, so why were the captains not required to wear a “C”. I thought the exemption applied only if your team logo was on the front of the shirt.

    Captaincy designations have always been optional, regardless of whether there are any other graphics on the jersey.

    Pictures of the Browns/Ravens game don’t do it justice. Those colors just POPPED on TV. Bright colors just look so much better on today’s TVs with the insane clear picture we get. It’s why throwback uniforms look so much better than the dreary, dark uniforms so many teams have adopted.

    Seattle going Navy/Grey looks so much better than mono blue.

    That Montreal Alouettes look, I remember the blue being a bit darker, was such a simple but great look. Green Bay/Pittsburgh was a little too much yellow for my liking. The Browns/Ravens was a great looking game, and the NFL at its best in terms of action.

    While the Steelers look so much better in the block font and they did a pretty good job recreating it yesterday, it was not perfect. The back numbers seemed a bit wide, especially the 4 which was very narrow back in the day. Really, the Raiders still wear the perfect font the Steelers wore, except they added a bottom serif on the TV 2 (boo). The Penguins do it perfectly correct.

    link

    link

    I love the Steelers block uniforms when they break em out, I’d love to see them go full 1974 mode and throw some grey face-masks on the helmet for that one game when they go with the block number uniforms

    I say it all the time, in that picture of the cowboys/giants game the Cowboys pants are clearly shiny. Which look better IMO, tells me that if teams want to wear silver pants they could. It’s a matter of standing up to Nike. The Raiders have them too, I think. Which tells me Georgia could too, if they really wanted to.

    I believe that Nike has to get the shiny fabric pants from a different subcontractor than the other uniforms pieces. They also get the Packers uniforms from a different subcontractor – I suspect that all of those come from Ripon. What I don’t know is if the Packers, Cowboys and Raiders are charged for not using Nike’s usual subcontractor which I can’t remember the name of – but it’s not Ripon.

    I hate it when teams can wear different colored pants than their opponent, but don’t. How much better would the Lions/Chargers game have looked if the Chargers wore yellow pants and the Lions wore grey pants???

    I totally agree. That game would have looked so much better with the Chargers yellow pants and the Lions silver pants. Heck even if just one of the team deviated from white it would have been better.

    I’m guessing it’s the picture, but those Cowboy pants look extra blue. I get the whole history of their green-tinged pants, that are now blue-tinged, but I don’t understand why they just don’t now go with silver pants. I do like that color of silver-blue, and it would look sharp if a team had this color pants and matching helmet.

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