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George Noriega Tweaks the NFL (NFC West Edition)

Reader George Noriega has embarked on a minor redesign for all NFL teams’ current uniforms. When George reached out to me earlier, he proposed “a weekly submission of tweaks to various teams that IMO (and also based on reader feedback) would address a lot of the comments and criticisms we see every week on Monday Morning Uni Watch.” He isn’t looking to change much, but feels his tweaks would enhance the overall look for each team.

Some of George’s tweaks have already run as parts of larger lede articles (including two of today’s, but in order to keep the divisions together, they’ll also be seen here). I’ll be running George’s tweaks by Division over the next couple weeks. If you missed his AFC West concepts, click here. Click here for his NFC North tweaks.

Today we’ll look at his proposals for the NFC West Division. Here’s George — enjoy!

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NFC West Tweaks
by George Noriega

Just a quick rundown of the concept and an example of what I would be looking to do:

  • (1) For all teams, tweaks would be based off their current templates, so I’m not looking to do complete overhauls i.e. Cardinals, Commanders and Rams would keep their current templates
  • (2) Mono uniforms are OK i.e. Pats all-blue, Jets all-green, Saints all-black, etc., but also…
  • (3) No leotard/yoga pants look, regardless of whether pant stripes break the look up
  • (4) No plain white socks; socks are either contrasting color to the pants or striped

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Arizona Cardinals

Home: White/red/white/red
Away: White/white/red/white socks with red and silver stripes
Alt. 1: White/red/red/white socks with red and silver stripes
Alt. 2: White/white/white/red
Color Rush: Black/black/black/black

Notes: I shrunk down the ridiculously large “Arizona” wordmark on the front of the red jersey… stripes are added to the red pants to complement the white pants… White socks with a pattern mimicking the stripes on the red pants are introduced, to be paired with the red pants… These tweaks IMO vastly improve the Cardinals new unis, and have a similar look to the 1990’s era Cardinals, which IMO was pretty much the best look they’ve ever had.

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Los Angeles Rams

Home: Blue/blue/sol/blue
Away: Blue/white/sol/blue
Alt. 1: Blue/blue/blue/white socks with two blue stripes
Alt. 2: Blue/white/blue/white socks with two blue stripes

Notes: Gone are the gradient numbers on the home blues and the weird rubbery accents on the numbers on the road whites…minor change to the blue pants as the white-to-yellow gradient stripe is tweaked to visually match the yellow pants with side-by-side stripes… completely eliminated are the superfluous bone/”dishwater” alternates… with the tweaks, the Rams now look visually closer to the classic “Greatest Show on Turf” era unis but provide a nice updated look for the modern day.

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San Francisco 49ers

Home: Gold/red/gold/red
Away: Gold/white/gold/red
Throwback/Alt. 1: Gold/red/white/red
Throwback/Alt. 2: Gold/white/white/red

Notes: Why have 2 different logos on the helmets, a modern and a throwback/classic? Since they incorporated the 49ers Saloon wordmark on their chest, I’m eliminating the modern logo so the Niners now have their classic logo on all their helmets. Uniformity, what a concept!

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Seattle Seahawks

Home: Navy/navy/wolf grey/navy
Away: Navy/white/wolf grey/navy
Alt. 1: Navy/navy/white/navy
Alt. 2: Navy/white/white/navy
Throwback: Silver/blue/silver/blue striped socks
Color Rush: Navy/action green/action green/action green

Notes: I was never a fan of the Seahawks mono navy look, so the navy pants are eliminated from this set…the striping on the white and grey pants is slightly modified, changing the 12 feathers from navy blue to Action Green to provide that pop of color missing on the current set… the throwbacks add stripes to the socks reminiscent of the 1976 to 1982 set… with the elimination of the navy pants, and aside from the highlighter green monstrosity, the Seahawks have a REALLY nice set with these tweaks IMO.

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Thanks, George! Stay tuned for more of George’s tweaks over the next week or two.

 
  
 
Comments (23)

    Pretty good! The only tweak I strongly disagreed with was the elimination of the Seahawks navy pants. The mono-navy scuba diver look may not be great, but white over navy, and action green over navy are two combos that are sorely missed. I would have preferred eliminating wolf grey entirely if the number of pants colors “must” be turned down.

    I struggled with that one, because I know that it’s become an almost iconic look for the Seahawks, going back to the 2002 redesign when they went head-to-toe blue:

    link

    But in the end, with a set of gray and white pants/navy socks, plus the fact I was never crazy about the all-navy look or navy pants/navy socks leotard look, it felt like eliminating those was the way to go.

    I think i would have made the Cardinals stripes black/white/thick red/ white black again to tie them into the alternate more and the grey doesn’t work anyway

    Totally agree with the striping comment. Ditch the silver, make it black. I hate the mono red and black crap, but having pant stripes makes it tolerable, and makes the non-mono looks soo much better.

    I think we have established this season everyone hates the silver stripes on sleeves and pants. Junk it on the numbers as well.
    Should be thin black thick red and thin black combo pants and jerseys. Through in some yellow even wouldn’t be bad. Red jerseys I would stick AZ flag not to make so dull.

    In my opinion removing the word marks from the jersey for every team in the division would be an improvement.

    Am I the only one who likes the modern 49ers’ logo? Mostly because of the changing thickness of the outline.

    I concur! Not only would I keep the modern SF logo, but — this is one of the very few things the 1996 uniforms got right — I would bring back the red face masks. Gray is not classic, nor is it a 49ers color; it’s just old.

    I did a set with a red face mask and it just looked… off? I don’t know, maybe it’s because the uniforms they use are essentially the Joe Montana era threads, I just didn’t like the look of a red face mask on the current set and, like I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, uniform aestheticism is much more subjective than objective.

    The red face mask I think paired better with the 1996 redesign. The red and gold on the redesign always looked/felt a shade darker to me. Plus with the addition of black as a uniform element and a red face mask, all those elements worked together fairly well on the redesign.

    Same thing with the old vs. new logo. With all those classic/”old” elements, the new logo just looks anachronistic IMO, so I went with the classic/”old” helmet logo.

    They’ve essentially gone with the Montana era unis, and even added a wordmark in the old Saloon font (which I think looks fantastic, hence why I didn’t remove it). The only thing missing is the striped socks they wore during that time period, which I also did a set with, but ultimately decided against implementing; if you think the aesthetic reads “old” now, you should have seen it with striped socks!

    These uniforms are almost spot-on to what I watched Montana and Rice play in, and so to me, gray face mask and “old” logo just felt and looked right. YMMV, of course.

    I must admit that the Cards’ road set does look fantastic with red leg wraps…but the cardinal pants are still not suitable.
    Santa Cl…err, San Fran really should dump their throwbacks if they’re gonna keep pairing the gold helmet with them. I’d love to see the ‘57 road set return:
    link

    How about the Blue/Yellow/White of the 1950’s for the Rams? I’d also like to see them remove the split in the horn logo on the helmet.

    link

    I’m going through all the comments getting ideas for little “fixes” here and there, as well as new ideas (someone previously mentioned an “Oakland Señors” throwback), and since Phil ran an article yesterday suggesting this Rams’ uni as a throwback, I’ll probably do one with the current Nike template.

    You gotta fix the Ram’s stupid split-up horns. Return to classic horn design but with new royal and sol colors

    I wish every team would remove their word mark from their jerseys. It smacks of collegiate uniforms and has never looked right on NFL players chests. You’re in the NFL, we know you are the ____ (insert team name/ city here).

    “…the striping on the…grey pants is slightly modified, changing the 12 feathers from navy blue to Action Green to provide that pop of color missing on the current set”
    Chef’s kiss (and I hate using that term!)!
    I’ve long said those Wolf Gray pants needed just that…well done!

    Is it common knowledge that the feather striping on the pants contains 12 feathers? Is this something I missed when they brought out the redesign back in 2012? And yes, they do need the blue pants. Wolf grey is fine once in a while but keep the blue pants

    While there are many changes I would make, given a broader remit than George permitted here (the entire Seahawks kit can get in the bin, except the throwback, as far as I’m concerned) the Rams, especially, are vastly improved. A return to the classic horn, and removing the “Hello, My Name Is” tag would be all they need to return to the top half of NFL uniforms from the doldrums they find themselves in, once you implement this set as shown.

    I think the cards should switch to a silver helmet and pants like Ohio state that would look better than white. The Rams could have real white pants as an alt with the same striping pattern as the yellow. Seattle should just go back to the old school uniforms from the 80’s. SF is good and doesn’t need any alternates.

    I like most of the changes for the Arizona Cardinals. The stupid ARIZONA on the red jersey looks like a 2A high school jersey and needed shrinking or elimination. The all black alternate should never see the light of day again. The all red look is improved, but with a white helmet, needs to go. I would make the white jersey the home jersey with the red or white pants. The socks are a big improvement.

    As another commentor stated, the Rams need the classic horns, not that broken junk.

    I would eliminate one of the 49ers throwbacks, maybe both. I’ve never liked them. The helmet doesn’t match the rest of the uniform. White pants and 49ers just doesn’t mix to me.

    I like the Seahawks blue pants. If one of the pants needs to go, I would toss the white pants.

    Seahawks need larger logo on their throwback unis. The original size they had in 1976 thru the Chuck Knox era. Also miss the 2 inch separation gap between the logos on the back of the helmets on the modern design. Hate Navy Blue too.

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