There are four teams in the AFC West: the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, Las Vegas Raiders, and Los Angeles Chargers. The Chiefs and Raiders — two of the most traditional uniform teams in the league — will once again stick with their classic uniforms. The Chargers are actually eliminating a uniform, and the Broncos … well, the Broncos have introduced a uniform redesign, featuring completely new uniforms, plus a fantastic throwback. Read on for more!
Denver Broncos
The biggest uniform news for the AFC West in 2024 comes from the Denver Broncos, who have undergone their first major uniform overhaul since 1997. The team will have four new uniforms: new primary (home and road) uniforms, a third jersey, and an “Orange Crush” throwback. And the team will have multiple pants options as well.
Although it looks similar to their previous one, the Broncos have a new navy blue primary helmet with a semi-ghosted helmet stripe.
Their new primary home jersey is orange, road jersey is white, and the alternate/third jersey is navy blue. When combined with three sets of pants (in orange, white and blue), the the Broncos will have plenty of uniform options.
Primary Home
Primary Road
Alternate Blue
You’ll notice the blue jersey is paired with a new alternate white helmet.
Orange Crush Throwback
While the team will not pair every possible jersey/pants combination during the regular season, each uniform is designed to be worn with any of the new pants.
While the new primary and alternate uniforms (and helmets) have been met with mixed reviews, the real star of the show are the 1977 (Orange Crush) throwbacks.
You can read more about all these uniforms here.
Since the team has two alternates (throwbacks, blue jersey), they can wear any combination of those in up to three games this year, and they will. The team will debut the throwbacks on October 6 (Week 5) against their division rival Las Vegas Raiders, and will wear them a second time in Week 18 (January 5, 2025) against another long-time division rival Kansas City. Since the Raiders and Chiefs have barely changed their uniforms in more than 60 years, both games should have a strong 1970s feel to them.
In addition, the Broncos will wear their blue alternate jerseys in Week 13 (December 5th), a Monday Night prime time football game against the Cleveland Browns. The team has not announced what pants they will pair with the blue jersey/white helmet. You can read more about those games here.
The team has said it will will announce full uniform combinations — with pants and socks — during the week of each game.
Kansas City Chiefs
The Chiefs have no announced uniform changes from 2023 (seen above, note the Nora Hunt Memorial patch) — which should be no surprise, considering their uniforms have changed very little over the years. They don’t have any alternates, either helmets or jerseys, and in fact have perhaps the most basic uniform sets in the NFL. They wear a red helmet and have just two jerseys: red and white. They have two sets of pants, also red and white.
The team probably isn’t even close to getting an alternate (either a helmet or jersey), but there has actually some movement (albeit glacially slow) of late. But don’t get your hopes up.
That’s not to say the Chiefs never mix it up, but they wear red/red/white and red/white/red as their home and away uniforms almost exclusively. Last season (as in seasons’ past), the team did go mono-red — about as close as the team has ever come to a Color Rush uniform. And when they do go red…they go ALL red.
The team will also occasionally pair the white pants with their white jerseys — a look that harkens back to their appearance in the first Super Bowl. In fact, they did so last season against the Packers, who were the team to defeat the Chiefs in Super Bowl I.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chiefs do not release a “uniform schedule,” since they pretty much wear the same kits at home (red/red/white) and road (red/white/red) all season. The rare exceptions are when they go mono-red or white below the shoulders.
Not uniform related, but the Chiefs (and the Kansas City Royals) will likely be seeking greener pastures when their stadium leases expire. And there has been a bit of a kerfuffle over whether the team will play in Kansas or Missouri.
Kansas City is the reigning Super Bowl champion (two years running), and if you’d like to get a sense of how classic and unchanging their uniforms have been throughout their time in the NFL, here is their uniform history.
Las Vegas Raiders
If you think the Chiefs are traditional and resistant to uniform changes, their AFC rival Las Vegas Raiders are equally so. They are another franchise that has changed their uniforms very little for six decades. And while the Chiefs sport two pairs of pants, the Raiders wear only silver. But the Chiefs have only two jerseys, while the Raiders actually have an alternate jersey (with silver numbers outlined in black) they will break out on occasion. But the two looks you see above (silver/black/silver and silver/white/silver) are pretty much what the team will always wear, depending on whether they are at home or on the road.
The sole time the Raiders broke the above protocol last season happened in a matchup against the Chiefs, when they donned the white jerseys with silver numbers (and the game was played on Christmas, so relatively few people saw it).
The Raiders will have one slight addition to their helmets this season. They have added a memorial helmet decal to honor their Hall of Fame Center, Jim Otto, who passed asay earlier this year.
The Las Vegas Raiders have added a decal to the back of their helmets in honor of late Hall of Fame center Jim Otto, who passed away in May at the age of 86: https://t.co/klMvHLsPKD pic.twitter.com/x3jEdo3yTn
— Andrew Lind (@AndrewMLind) August 11, 2024
Also, while not quite uniform-related, the Raiders have also unveiled a new 65th Season logo.
More than a logo. More than a shield.#RaiderNationhttps://t.co/7AYFnGG0w9
— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) July 15, 2024
Most teams wear anniversary logos as uniform patches, but the Raiders are not generally one of those teams. It did not appear on the uniforms during the preseason, and likely won’t once the season starts.
Los Angeles Chargers
With most NFL teams either adding new helmets or alternates, or simply maintaining their current uniform wardrobe, the LA Chargers are actually going in the opposite direction this season, and will be eliminating one of their alternate uniforms.
The Chargers introduced their current uniform design in 2020, which featured powder blue and white jerseys as their primary home and road, including a set of white and gold pants (as seen above), which they have mixed and matched each season. In addition the team had a royal blue alternate, as well as a navy blue Color Rush set. While I never liked the pairing of the royal pants and socks (for that yoga pants look), the jersey was fantastic.
For four seasons I held out hope they’d at least once pair the royal jersey and socks with the gold pants, which would have almost amounted to a fauxback of the unis the Chargers wore from 1974-82. Alas, twas not to be. This year the Chargers will not be wearing their royal blue alternates, reducing by one their uniform set.
The Chargers are one of those teams who do release a Uniform Schedule, and they’ll wear their powder blue jerseys eight times, their white jerseys eight times, and their navy alternate just once, a Week 12 (November 25) Monday Night Football matchup against the Baltimore Ravens.
The team hasn’t announced if they are permanently dropping the royal blue alternate, or if this is just a one year thing.
It should be noted that the Chargers are on year five of their current redesign, meaning they could introduce new uniforms in 2025. To be clear, there are no announced plans to do so, but I’m just mentioning it as a possibility. Last year, as reported by Paul, the Chargers actually queried season ticket holders about a possible black uniform. There is no indication at all that the Chargers would add a BFBS uniform, but if the team does eliminate the royal blue from their uni stable, that could open the door to a new alternate down the line.
Chargers going BFBS is such a Clippersesque move — it would be too funny.
That franchise has become such an afterthought since moving, what a joke. Given how much they had to pay in relocation fess, and the minimum revenue they get as a renter in the Rams stadium, you wonder who was doing the math when they thought this would be a windfall rather than working on an honest stadium deal in SD.
They effectively made themselves irrelevant by becoming a second fiddle tenant in LA. Taking the easy route to a larger market and new stadium where you’ll have no following, rather than putting work in to build your franchise value by actually coming up with a creative stadium plan. Imagine the kind of revenue they could have cashed in on by partnering with SDSU on developing that site.
They could make a semi convincing “storytelling” case that electricity creates light, and so contrast with dark etc blah blah blah, basically they could make a cool black and white uni if they wanted to, probably and somehow spin it to an electrical/lightning theme. That said, they’ll call it LA nights or some tired crap and it’ll be a weak design. The navy with ghosted bolts already serves this purpose anyway.
That photo of the 9 different uniform combos for the Broncos is so bush league, feels like I am looking at a Boise State photo.
I’m definitely not a fan of the mix and match concept with the pants. There is should be a standard home set, standard road set, and then possibly an early season white at home option, if the team has multiple pants. Being in the Philly market I can remember when the Eagles had this down pat; green jersey and white pants at home, white jersey and green pants on the road, with white over white for early season hot weather day games. The mix and match just dilutes the brand.
If we can’t have the Orange Crush full-time, the next best thing would be to get rid of the white helmets and navy jerseys. The white helmet combos look like a completely different team, and similar to Greg’s comment, they just need to pare down. The Chargers’ 4 possible combos is a much better menu than the Broncos’ 9.
Ugh. Why do so many teams have to go with this so-dark-it’s-almost-black Navy color for their blue.
The Broncos new set looks so trashy compared to the Orange Crush throwbacks.
Chargers navy set should have gone away. Keep the Royal top, and as said in the post, wear the freaking yellow pants with Royal jersey. Add a dark royal helmet while they are at it. White/Navy/Navy/Navy looks hideous.
I think the chargers royal set it pretty darn nice, but it doesn’t have the historical precedent that the (not) powder (please call it electric) blue or the navy sets have, and now that they are roommates with the rams it just looks like a version of a rams uni.
On the other hand, being a San Diegan during the Seau years, I totally understand the love for the navy look, but I don’t get the ghosted lightning bolts or love the mono look. That said, I am perfectly ok with them doing this “homage” to those years, and not a straight up throwback. Doing a full redesign plus adding an accurate throwback is almost a cop out, or a vote of no confidence in the new design. Like we didn’t know if you’d like this new thing, but we know you liked that old thing, so you can have both? Give a new design a couple of seasons to stand on its own, particularly if it’s a winner like the chargers redesign was. I think a navy alt helmet would be a good idea for them to pair with the navy set though.
Agreed. Keep the royal blues, pair them with the gold pants, go full Air Coryell, eliminate the royal pants and the navy set entirely, and you’re good to go.
I still think the Broncos new unis are an upgrade over a set that had gotten pretty dated, but my GOSH is the set dragged down by pairing the white helmet with the navy jersey. I’m aware that that’s an NFL rules thing, but the white-navy-white combo is the only one that’s even kind of good, and the white helmet would pair so much better with the white or orange jerseys IMO. Or better yet they could eliminate the white helmet entirely, and add an ORANGE helmet, which I think would pop really well against the navy jersey.
Why did the Broncos come up with a new shade of orange for the throwbacks?! They already use a better/closer/lighter-than-the-OG shade on the 28 new combos. Just do that. There. Took me this long to be grumpy and otherwise fantastic addition.
It’s too bad that KC hasn’t revived their lone (star) throwback option this season …could have had a Texans v Texans matchup in Week 16!
To me the Chargers look this season appears to be a Jim Harbaugh move. He is known to like uniforms to be kept simple. I would not be shocked if it is white pants all the time barring the MNF game
I hope so.
The same Jim Harbaugh who complicated Michigan’s uniforms by bringing back white pants?
If the Chargers actually add a black jersey, they should have kept the royal and ditched the ‘blue so dark it might as well be black’.
The guy in the navy alternate…can someone show him where the bathroom is already!?
If the Broncos happen to play my team (Steelers) and wear that white lid, I will find the game on the radio instead.
That is so bad. I’m not a fan of the entire set at all, but that is unwatchable.
Admittedly the chargers colors on a black background do pop quite nicely. But save that shit for college teams.
Am I the only one that thinks the new Broncos uniforms are a big time MISS? I’m already looking forward to five years when they will “probably” make the Orange Crush uniforms the everyday uniforms. The new uniforms are just plain bad. Not much better than the previous set worn since 1997. I think it will eventually be like a NY Jets situation; they’ll realize the error and go to a much better look that brings back the past.
Hey, guys: do you prefer the Orange Crush pants striping, or the royal-orange-royal stripes they changed to later that would better match the helmet and sleeve striping?
Would the Raiders look even better with black facemasks? I’ve always wondered….
The Chargers should keep the Royal Blue and ditch the Navy. A black jersey and pants would be dumb at this point. There are already too many teams that wear black or have black alternates in the NFL.
The Broncos new uniforms are a bit trashy. There are too many different combinations. The pants striping looks cheap. The orange jersey /white pants and white jersey /orange pants combos are the best and the white/white is good is well. They will probably have enough negative feedback from the fans that they will need to change the whole set in 2029. They need to simplify. It’s about time for these teams to realize the classic look is what most fans want.
The Raiders have largely stunk for most of the past 35 years but they still have the best uniform in sports.
The Chiefs remind me of the Yankees. Polarizing and at times dominant, but they have a deep respect for tradition. They have had a great design for 50 years and don’t see a reason to change for the sake of changing. Same for the Raiders.