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George Noriega Tweaks the NFL (AFC North 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 any past tweaks, click the following:

AFC East
AFC South
AFC West
NFC East
NFC North
NFC West

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

• • • • •
AFC North 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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Baltimore Ravens

Home: Black/Purple/White/Black
Away: Black/white/white/black
Alt. 1: Black/black/white/black
Alt. 2: Black/white/black/white socks with 3 stripes, black-purple-black
Alt. 3: NUMEROUS, see above (which is actually not an exhaustive list)
Color Rush: Purple/purple/purple/purple AKA The Paul Lukas Special

Notes: With multiple pants and socks color combos, the Ravens have a HUGE number of combos they can pull off, but if we keep to our steadfast rule of no leotard/yoga pants look, it’s, well, STILL a ridiculous number, but not as bad as it could be… instead of matching purple socks with black britches, I thought using a set of socks in their history, white with black-purple-black stripes would be a MUCH better look… a purple-white-purple stripe has been added to the black pants to give them visual consistency with the other pants, all of which now have stripes down the side… personal preference is simple: the Home and Away looks, which they used during their Ray Lewis/Ed Reed heyday.

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Cincinnati Bengals

Home: Orange/black/white/black
Away: Orange/white/white/black
Alt. 1: Orange/black/black/orange
Alt. 2: Orange/white/black/orange
Alt. 3: Orange/orange/black/orange
Alt. 4: NUMEROUS, see above (which is actually not an exhaustive list)
Color Rush: White/white/white/white AKA The White Bengal Tiger set

Notes: With the introduction of an orange jersey and orange pants, the Bengals are the second AFC North team to have a ridiculously huge number of alternate looks, but the tried-and-true orange/black/white/black and orange/white/white/black are my personal favorites… also of note, a minor tweak has been made to the stripes on the pants where they all match now, black and orange stripes on ALL sets of pants except for the White Bengal Tiger set, which remain black and white.

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Cleveland Browns

Home: Orange/brown/white/brown socks with stripes
Away: Orange/white/white/white socks with stripes
Alt. 1: Orange/brown/orange/brown socks with stripes
Alt. 2: Orange/white/orange/white socks with stripes
Alt. 3: Orange/white/brown/white socks with stripes
Throwback: Circa 1946 look, white/white/white/white socks with stripes

Notes: No real changes to the Browns’ main set, but to their alternates: brown pants have a tweak to the stripes, changing from orange/brown/orange to orange/white/orange to be more visually consistent with the other uniform pants… the 1946 throwback has changed the helmet stripe from brown/orange/brown to orange/brown/orange to match the uniform pants striping.

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Pittsburgh Steelers

Home: Black/black/yellow/black
Away: Black/white/yellow/black
Color Rush: Black/black/black/black
Throwback#1: Black/black/yellow/black
Throwback #2: Black/black/white/black socks with yellow stripes

Notes: For 2025, let’s get rid of that all-back Color Rush set and throw it back 60 years to 1965; although they went 2-12 that year, it’s a sharp-looking set!… I know a lot of readers prefer the Terry Bradshaw-era unis, but the current set with the Steelers patch and italicized numbers has grown on me, so we’ll keep those as the primaries.

 
  
 
Comments (0)

    Kudos for fixing the Bengals’ white-pants stripes, which to me have always been the only major flaw in this design (being that while there are orange Bengal tigers with black stripes [link], and white Bengal tigers with black stripes [link], there are no white Bengal tigers with orange stripes).

    Why is it that the Bengals seem to be held to a higher standard for not accurately mimicking their animal kingdom counterparts? I find it strange that they get ‘called out’ while…say, the Eagles and Dolphins don’t.
    Anyway-the modified pant striping clearly elevates the O/B/W options, but the white jerseys would also benefit from using George’s fix.

    I would have fixed the missing logo on the Steelers’ helmet. I can’t believe they have been playing like that all these years.

    As a Steelers fan since 1973, I would like to see either the player’s number on the left side of the helmet or, preferably, ’33 to honor the year they were established. But if they wanted to remove the patch from the jersey and slap it on the hat I certainly wouldn’t complain.

    It’s just a quirky thing that has survived and evolved into tradition. Not everything needs to be “fixed”.

    I’m shocked that I actually like the Ravens black pants more with the leotard look. I’d also love to see how the Ravens would look on the field in your black pants with stripes.

    Once again, great work!

    Thanks!

    I always appreciated that, despite having black pants for both home and away in 1996, the Ravens had a set of socks for each uniform set and avoided the leotard look.

    link

    link

    Steelers in a yellow helmet once or twice a year in the black alt/CR jersey along with the white pants would be a looker!

    Not a criticism of your work, but I hate the logo on the Ravens’ helmet. The B on the bird’s head bothers me and I wish they would get rid of it. Birds don’t have letters on their head. I know dolphins don’t wear helmets and I liked the old Dolphins logo, but at least that was a tongue-in-cheek anthropomorphic logo.

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