MDGP

Broncos: Denver's original jerseys were famously brown and yellow, though the overall execution was generally underwhelming (if you ignore the ugly vertical striped socks). I personally think that the scheme is one of the best out there when done right, so I wanted to bring it back. This jersey is actually inspired by the team's original logo, a football player riding a bronco. The jersey is brown with yellow numbers and sleeve stripes. While the logo's pants feature off white chaps, I decided to give the team yellow pants with a brown stripe to match the helmet. Finally, the team's socks match the jersey with two yellow stripes on a brown background.

Raiders: At this point the Raiders might be most famous for their repeated relocations, being one of two teams to relocate three separate times and play in three separate cities: Oakland, LA, and Las Vegas. The team has also worn three different colors in their history: Black, Silver, and Yellow. I wanted to make a design that acknowledged this history of threes. The white jersey features an adidas style stripe on the sleeves with black on top, gold in the middle (replacing yellow to represent Vegas), and Silver on the bottom with solid black numbers. The pants are the traditional silver with a separated double stripe, black on the front and gold in the back. The socks also feature a double stripe, but with a black background and gold and silver stripes. Finally, the helmet is plain silver, matching popular early 50s helmet designs.

Chargers: The Chargers takes its cue from 1920s jerseys and takes on a blue and yellow Eagles' vibe. The jersey is light blue with a yellow shoulder yoke and yellow numbers. The helmet design features a traditional spoke leather design with two light blue and two yellow spokes that cross at the top of the helmet. The pants are white and feature blue-yellow-blue butt stripes, and the socks feature a series of alternating white, yellow, and blue stripes.

Chiefs: Kansas City is famous for its extremely traditional design, and I wanted to give them a design that would look extremely traditional during the 1930s. The jersey features a red-yellow-red adidas style stripe on a white jersey with red numbers with yellow outlines. The helmet is red with a yellow three stripe design inspired by the Bears' helmets of the same time period. The red socks match the helmet with yellow adidas style stripes. Finally, the team sports plain yellow pants, as many teams who wear white pants today were still wearing bright colored pants during that time period.

Cowboys: The Dallas Cowboys are known for having two specific jersey eras, the original shoulder yoke with a star design, and the blue and silver jerseys they've worn (with some variations) since 1964. I wanted to create a hybridization of the two styles for this concept. The jersey is the classic home white with blue numbers and a blue shoulder yoke. No silver is found anywhere on the jersey, a staple of the cowboys' look. The helmet and pants flip the script removing all white, replaced with a silver base with blue double stripes. The helmet also features a simplified version of the logo, removing all outlines and just leaving the blue star. Finally, the socks are solid blue.

Commanders: Washington's a bit of a tough team to find concept for. They don't really have the same volatility of designs that other teams had in the era, mostly sticking to extremely simple designs with almost no ornamentation. The times they did have ornamentation, it was usually a native american head, which as I've noted multiple times, I'm not touching. This left me with 1 and a half real options for a concept that hadn't been worn in real life. I didn't want to go with another mashup so I went with the 1956 jerseys. While UCLA stripes and their single stripe variants were a staple on Washington's white jerseys, the maroon versions only featured such stripes during the 1955-56 seasons. Both jerseys featured gold-white-gold UCLA stripes, plain gold pants, and plain maroon socks. However, the 1955 jersey featured a maroon helmet while the 1956 jersey featured a plain gold helmet. Ultimately I picked 1956 simply because I liked the look slightly better. The jersey is modeled by Hall of Famer Dick Stanfel, a first team all pro in each of his three seasons with the team.

Eagles: I've previously noted that several of the concepts were inspired by the Eagles jersey above. Starting in 1941, this jersey was worn in some capacity for a decade, including during the famous Phil-Pitt Steagles season during World War 2. Interestingly enough, the jerseys were originally black, but the team quickly reverted back to its traditional jersey before the 1941 season ended. The shirt design features both a white shoulder yoke and a white side panel, along with white numbers. The helmet features a painted design, with green on the sides and silver on top, a sort of predecessor to the team's iconic wings. The pants are plain silver and the socks are green with a white double stripe that would become the base for the team's entire look. Hall of Fame halfback Steve Van Buren models this design.

Giants: The Giants also follow the theme of being the inspiration for another one of my concepts. This jersey was worn during only during the 1936 season and is a bit out of its era in both directions. The white jersey features a red shoulder yoke with blue side panels, collar, and numbers. The helmet is white with a pretty bizarre helmet design. The front features a red panel that looks more like a blob than anything that extends down around the bottom ridge of the helmet. The pants are red with white-blue-white butt stripes. Finally the socks mismatch everything with a blue-red-blue adidas style stripe. College and Pro Hall of Famer Mel Hein models this jersey.

Colts: The Colts sport the jerseys of the Baltimore Colts, but not the Baltimore Colts that became the Indianapolis Colts, the Baltimore Colts that existed before the Baltimore Colts joined the NFL. Basically, this is similar to what I did with the Buffalo Bills. The jersey is a very standard look of the 1940s and 50s, a green jersey with white numbers and northwestern stripes with matching socks. The helmet is silver with a single green stripe while the pants are plain silver. This jersey is modeled by our old friend Y.A. Tittle, who got his start in the AAFC before moving to the NFL with the Colts in their only NFL season in 1950.

Jaguars: The Jaguars feature a similar jersey design as the Colts, a white jersey with blue northwestern stripes, between those blue stripes are yellow stripes. This striping pattern is matched on the socks. The helmet maintains an old-school style front wing inspired by a jaguars ears flaring back. This was a look no longer used at the pro level, but as any college football fan knows, winged designs stuck around considerably longer (see, to this day) than in the NFL. The color scheme is inspired by Michigan and Delaware with yellow wings on a blue helmet. Finally, the jersey is paired with plain yellow pants.

Texans: Houston obviously had a team during the late 1960s, and in my original plans for this series, the Texans would have relocated from somewhere else. However, I decided to just pretend like the Texans had always existed as an early AFL expansion team. First, the jersey maintains the team's traditional navy blue and features red and white cuff stripes inspired by the flag of Texas, which is matched on the socks. The helmet features a white interlocking HT logo with a single red star between the vertical bars of the H. The T's horizontal bar is curved up and tapered to mimic the horns of a bull. You may note that this logo does not include a stroke while the jersey numbers have a red outline. This is directly influenced by the Chicago Bears, who had a plain white logo without an outline for years before finally changing their logo to their current orange C. Finally, the pants are with with a red-blue-red triple stripe similar to the pants design multiple teams in the era.

Titans: Congratulations, fans of Houston! The Oilers are back for the first time since 1996! Bad news, they're the away team and wearing the worst jerseys in franchise history. I don't care what anyone says, these jerseys suck. The shirt features a Steelers style stripe design on the sleeves that are primarily red with smaller light blue stripes and light blue numbers with a red outline. The helmet is silver with a royal blue logo and red-royal-red helmet stripe that doesn't match any of the rest of the jersey. The pants also are silver, but the pants stripe is red-light blue-red.

We're back for the final round of concepts with the NFC North!

Bears: Arguably the most famous alternate uniform in Bears history is the white 1936 jersey with the alternating shoulder stripes. However, that season they also wore an orange jersey in several games. These jerseys feature an orange jersey with three navy blue sleeve stripes and navy blue numbers outlined in white (similar to pretty much every bears alternate orange jersey). The helmet features the same three stripe look as the white jersey as well as the same navy blue pants and orange/navy striped socks. Four time NFL champion and hall of famer George Musso models this jersey.

Lions: The Lions have famously worn their plain blue and silver jerseys throughout the years, most notably on Thanksgiving day. More recently, the Lions have also had a penchant for wearing all silver jerseys. I decided to combine the two together by using their all silver jerseys from the 1944 season. Much like the other throwback, the design is extremely plain, the only real elements are the blue numbers and socks. College and Pro Football hall of famer Alex Wojciechowicz models this one.

Packers: The Green Bay Packers have one of the truly classic looks in NFL history. That history is however relatively new, especially compared to their counterparts of the same eras. The team didn't make green their full time primary color until the 1950s (They'd worn it off an on alongside navy blue). Even when they did make the switch, they apparently didn't know whether they wanted to be a green and yellow team or a green and gold team, so they just wore all three colors! Between 1951 and 1953, the Packers wore these jerseys, green shirts with yellow numbers and two yellow stripes on the sleeves. The socks match this design while the helmet and pants are both old gold with a single green stripe. Luckily it would only be 6 short years before the team found the look they'd settle on (with some alterations) for the rest of their existence. Anyway let's give a big round of applause to the luscious Bobby Dylan, the model for this jersey.

Vikings: I wanted to give the Vikings a classic jersey inspired by their 90s UCLA striped road jerseys. It was not uncommon during the 40s and 50s for a team to wear plain home jerseys and striped road jerseys, which itself was the principle followed by the Vikings during that time. Since I focused on purple the last time I wanted to focus on yellow this time. The jersey features purple-white-purple UCLA stripes on a white jersey. The numbers take inspiration from the 49ers throwback uniforms with a purple outline and drop shadow surrounding yellow numbers. The pants keep the same stripe pattern as the jersey, which appears as a purple double stripe due to the yellow pants. The helmet features the same design as the previous Vikings concept, but with the yellow and purple reversed. Finally, the socks are primarily purple with a yellow double stripe.

Today we reach the end of the second cycle, meaning there's just one matchup left for each team!

Bills: The Bills jersey takes inspiration from the original Buffalo Bills of the AAFC (technically they were the Bisons at the time, but switched to Bills the next season). They have nothing to do with the current day Buffalo Bills (think the Ottawa Senators) but that doesn't stop teams in other sports from honoring the history of earlier teams. This jersey is a near 1-to-1 creation of the original, featuring the same thin silver sleeve stripes, blue butt stripes on the pants, and blue horn on the helmet. However, the horn shape has been altered to more closely match the actual shape of buffalo (the animal) horns and the blue is lightened from a dark navy blue to the Bills' royal blue.

Patriots: Having grown up a Patriots fan, there was always one design element I absolutely loved on the team's 90s jersey, the red and blue double stripe on the pants. I would go as far to say that was the jersey element (either that or Ohio State's helmet stickers) that really got me interested in jersey design to begin with. Here I decided to combine what I'd consider the three eras into one jersey. The 90s double stripe is the overall focal point used on the sleeves, socks, and pants. The color scheme removes the silver from the 90s-current scheme but utilizes navy blue in place of the pre-2000s royal blue color. The numbers are red similar to the road jerseys on the team's various pre-2000 sets. Finally, I chose to return to a white helmet, harkening back to the team's all white looks worn for a majority of the red era.

Jets: The Jets design is a more simplified, traditional take on the Jet's previous contrail stripe idea. The green jersey features two white shoulder loops as a reference to these motion trails, while also taking inspiration from the team's original UCLA stripes and the extra shoulder loop of the Namath/2000s era jerseys. Overall, 1950s designs were extremely simple, so I paired the jersey with white pants with a single green stripe and plain green socks. The helmet combines the eagles and rams helmet designs with the Washington helmet spear introduced in the 1960s. Each side of the helmet depicts a stylized jet, similar to the Jets' 1980s/90s and now current logos. These jets meet in the front of the helmet similar to the Rams' design. In order to show the motion of the jets, the wraparound design returns, this time with a single white stripe connecting the jet wings.

Dolphins: Originally this design was going to be inspired by the Miami Seahawks, but that team wore extremely boring jerseys and were in general a complete failure, relocating to Baltimaore after just one season in the AAFC. Instead I decided to ask what it would look like if Miami wore their current colors during the 1940s. The jerseys are fairly simple, with two aqua stripes on the sleeves and aqua numbers on a white jersey, orange pants with a single aqua stripe, and aqua socks with two orange stripes. Ultimately if this jersey were green and yellow, nobody would've batted an eyelash at a team wearing this. The helmet on the other hand takes a bit of a swerve from the simple design. This helmet answers the question "What if the Dolphins' unused 1990s prototype helmet were designed in the 1940?" that nobody asked. The design featured a common horizontal split from the era, with aqua on the bottom and orange on top. The top however also features two aqua sections in the shape of dorsal fins in order to mimic a dolphin emerging from just below the surface of the water.

20 hours ago, raz said:

Kinda think the pickaxe should point down, not up. Also, what does the other side of that Bengals helmet look like? 

The reason I think the pick axe needs to be arranged the way I have is because the pick axe design is actually the entire red portion, with the stripe as the handle and the wing as the pick. Basically, the top of the axe is at the front of the helmet and the bottom is the back. If I were to flip the wings down, then the pick would be upside down in relation to the handle.

Regarding the Bengals helmet, I personally would just reverse it and have the C be backwards in the same manner that on the flag of Cincinnati the reverse side of the flag has the backwards C. However, I also realize that would drive a lot of people mad, so I designed a version that would basically mimick the right side of the flag, with the lines meeting at the mouth of the C. Obviously in this case the sides wouldn't be perfect mirrors of each other, but that isn't totally out of the ordinary on NFL helmets.

The last time the NFC West mostly consisted of real designs, so today we're gonna reverse that.

49ers: This design for the 49ers is simple but features notable nods to the team and the City of San Francisco. The jersey is red with an alternating gold and red shoulder yoke, a design style you may be most familiar with via the Michigan Wolverines' throwback jerseys. This yoke design is directly inspired by San Francisco's most famous landmark, with the four gold portions on each sleeve inspired by the openings of the suspension towers on the Golden Gate Bridge. The helmet's wing and stripe design is inspired by the team name utilizing longer, thinner wings to form a pickaxe.

Cardinals: The Cardinals are the only team in the NFL that existed in the 1800s, so there obviously are not going to be any fictional concepts for them. This design was worn during the 1929 and 1930 seasons. The original version was a half split design that I moved up to the shoulders to better fit modern design principles. Otherwise this is a very straightforward recreation, with 4 stripes on the very bottom of the sleeves and mismatching triple striped socks. The helmet, like others in the series features a faint leather helmet design in the team's earlier darker maroon color. Duke Slater, the NFL's first black lineman and reminder that Iowa's O-Line prowess is as old as the game itself, models this design.

Seahawks: No way to beat around the bush on this one, the Seattle Seahawks get a flannel design. It may not seem like it, but this simple green plaid design does in fact take inspiration from another team. It just happens to be a team from a different sport, in a city across the country, worn 4 years before the NFL even existed. In 1916 the New York Baseball Giants were decked out in purple wearing a pattern extremely similar to this design. The design was extremely short lived and never saw the field, but I've actually always liked it and think it could work if tastefully done. So naturally I used it for a stereotype design for a pacific northwest team. All numbers and letters are silver and the pants and helmet both use a dark brown to represent faux leather and the general woodsy vibe of the whole look.

Rams: The Rams have a jersey directly inspired by everyone's two favorite 1920s weirdos, the Duluth Eskimos and the Dayton Triangles. The overall jersey design takes inspiration from Duluth's final jerseys, which featured blue raglan sleeves with thick sleeve stripes on a white jersey. Here, the stripes are recolored yellow to match the Rams Color Scheme. The front of the jersey features a yellow version of the ever popular triangle design inspired by Dayton's on-again off-again use of the shape on their jerseys. However, I added a twist, incorporating a stylized LA into the design as seen in the bottom corner. I also decided to really lean into the blue and round out the look with blue pants and a plain blue helmet. Finally, the socks feature two blue stripes on a white base matching the style of the sleeve stripes but ignoring a potential color match, a staple of 20s NFL design.

Browns: Until the one helmet rule was scrapped, the Browns' recent alternate uniforms have been pretty underwhelming, the brown and orange color rush jerseys and a plain brown jersey, both without any white. I took some inspiration from both of those designs, altering them to fit an early 20s aesthetic. These jerseys feature six vertical orange stripes as a nod to some of the simpler leather strip looks of the day. The sixth stripes themselves represent an early nickname for Cleveland, "The Sixth City" so named for being the 6th largest city in the US at the time. The socks also feature six thinner stripes. Finally, I chose white for the name and numbers because I think the legibility of orange on brown kind of sucks.

Ravens: I'll be honest, my Ravens designs in this series are all pretty subdued. Concepts for any team in Baltimore always seem to be loud and based on the state flag, and I kinda recoil at that. For this design each team color gets its own piece of the jersey, a quirk most famously used by the Giants, but not at all uncommon throughout league history. The helmet is plain black. Helmets in the earliest days were generally either a brown stain color or a single painted color, and it would not be until the turn of the 30s that more ornate designs would become the norm. The jersey goes all in on thin horizontal stripes, featuring four on the chest and two on each sleeve (were these long sleeve they would extend all the way down). The chest number takes a cue form northwestern and uses a white outline to separate the stripes and the number. Gold makes its appearance on the khaki faux leather pants, and also acts as a reminder of that one time the Ravens tried the look. As with any good early NFL design, the socks don't follow any of the rules I set above and feature black stripes on purple socks.

Steelers: The Batman uniform returns on a modern template! Here it is modeled by Ben McGee, and pretty good player on a real bad team.

Bengals: If the 1930s were the first golden age of uniform experimentation, the 1960s were the start of the second golden age. While most teams had pretty standard looks, the founding of the AFL brought about some new ideas to a jersey game that had stagnated a bit in the previous decade. Helmet logos were the standard rather than an oddity, the chargers broke out their lightning bolts, and stripes outside of the most traditional triple stripes reappeared. The Bengals design is inspired by this wave of change. As always with the Bengals, stripes are the name of the game, but here we're going with a less direct tiger representation. The jersey includes striped sleeves, partially inspired by the shoulder stripe/sleeve stripe combo sported by the Eagles during the mid-60s and into the 70s. The helmet takes the city flag of Cincinnati and and alters it to be a wraparound helmet stripe (the wavy lines are also straightened) in a sort of proto-Seahawks look (Obviously they would not exit until 1976, but sometimes I like to imagine one of these teams inventing the idea prior). The pants feature a single version of the sleeves and helmet stripe, and orange stripe outlined in black. Finally, the socks invert the look, with three white stripes with black outlines on an orange background.

Things have been a little too down to earth, let's get weird with it today.

Buccaneers: The Buccaneers brand takes much of its inspiration from Spanish privateers of the 1600s. The jersey features an orange chest stripe on a red jersey, inspired by spain's yellow and red flag. One of the great things about their pewter helmets and pants is that they translate perfectly to faux leather pants and helmets.

Carolina: It's been a while since I've used the old school leather strips design on a team. Carolina features these strips in light blue, arranged in a manner to form a crown, based on Charlotte's nickname, the Queen City, and logo, a crown. While the original version of this jersey would've been all light blue, the modern version includes a black front number to improve visibility as well as incorporate the Panthers' other primary color. The helmet design features panther ears on each side of the helmet in place of an old school wings. While a panther is famously black, I decided to go with white ears, as in many cases actual animal colors were completely ignores (see: Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles). Finally, there's been a lot of dark brown for pants, but there was actually some variation during the earliest days of the game, with some teams opting for a more tan color for their pants.

Saints: They're not going to get more over the top than this one from here on out. The Saints take most of inspiration not from American Football, but from Rugby. More specifically I wanted a design inspired by Harlequins' four quarter jersey design. Functionally, this wouldn't be entirely out of the realm of possibility in the NFL, as multiple teams wore horizontally halved jerseys and at least one team wore a vertically halved jerseys. I just combined the two ideas for quadrants. Here, the saints pair the traditional gold and black with green and purple for a full mardi gras color scheme. The bottom left quadrant contains purple, the top right quadrant green, and the other two quadrants black. The numbers are Clarendon in gold and feature shoulder numbers, a purposeful anachronism (I don't know why, but I've always enjoyed throwback mistakes like the 94-95 49ers). The helmet features a wing style inspired by the famous three pronged jester hats, each colored in purple, black, and green respectively on the gold helmet.

Falcons: The Falcons bring us back down to earth with a considerably more traditional design. Pairing shoulder yokes and sleeve stripes wasn't uncommon in the 1920s, and I felt combining the two would work with the Falcons' color scheme. The jersey features a red shoulder yoke with red sleeves contrasting the white jersey. On the sleeves is an alternating black, white, and red sleeve pattern that, if the sleeves were long like during the actual era, would repeat to the sleeve cuff. The socks while also red, feature a different stripe pattern with black and red stripes eventually meeting the black, white, red stripe pattern at the bottom of the sock. Both the helmet and pants are very traditional to the era; the pants are a light tan while the helmet is painted with black on top and red on the bottom.

Unless there was a change that hasn't been noted in the college football thread, looks like EA got the logos wrong on Notre Dame's sleeves.

Chiefs: There are only so many ways I can talk about the 30s being a time of experimentation before it starts getting stale. During the time period two variations of stripes came to the forefront to join the triple stripe: the northwestern stripe, and the double stripe. By and large the northwestern stripe won out, and the double stripe would disappear for awhile, never gaining the same popularity of its three striped cousins upon reappearing. For the Chiefs I wanted to try something a bit different from reality be combining the two ideas together, resulting in a double stripe with one thicker stripe on top and one thinner stripe below. I actually like the outcome a lot, and think that even though this stripe didn't actually exist, it fits pretty well next to real designs of the era. The helmet takes a novel approach to the old school triple stripe look (Think Michigan but without the wings, it was a very common variation). Here, the middle stripe extends all the way to the back, but the other stripes are cut off right about where a helmet wing would stop. I also added two more stripes on either side of the helmet that are cut off as well. Those who are familiar with my old concepts may recognize this as a similar design to the "arrow hitting target" I did a few years ago for Kansas City.

Broncos: Side panels were extremely popular during the 1930s and 40s, so it only seemed right that the team who revived the side panel look during the 90s and 2000s would get an old school version. This one isn't much more than a recolor of the Philadelphia Eagles look from the era, but this is in line with so many teams wearing the same template with different colors (or the same colors even).

Raiders: The Raiders are obviously famous for their iconic black and silver color scheme, however their original scheme. However, I decided I wanted to try an idea for this match up inspired by the Los Angeles Rams and Dallas Cowboys, who both famously did not wear their famous secondary color for a period of years. The Raiders look takes inspiration from the team's original black and yellow look, removing all traces of yellow to create a very stark, clean look that fits the raiders well.

Chargers: For the chargers I decided to go with Royal Blue and White. While Navy blue would've fit the NFL better during that era, teams in college and the CFL were wearing a lighter shade of blue at the time, so this look isn't particularly out of place in the grand scheme of the sport. Rather than go with a simple triple stripe, I experimented with creating a proto-bolt design on the sleeve, turning the middle stripe into a lightning bolt, echoing the Chargers' famous shoulder stripes. The helmet also features a proto-bolt idea, with a bolt extending from the front of the helmet similar to the Eagles' wing helmet.

Alright, back to the Buffalo Bills' least favorite division, the NFC East! The AFC South was all concepts last time, so we're gonna start off with a real one today.

Commanders: As I've noted before, the 1930s experienced arguably the biggest boom in experimentation of the football jersey, for good and for bad. The era set the modern standard for the football uniform, but also whatever the the hell Boston (pre-relocation) was wearing. The original version featured a native american head logo on the chest. Because I wanted to follow modern NFL numbering rules and in general wanted to avoid the whole controversy in general, that was replaced with yellow front numbers to match the back numbers. Otherwise, this jersey is a faithful representation of one of the team's 1933 jerseys, featuring two yellow and black sleeve stripes with mismatching socks stripes (two yellow stripes). I'll never understand what teams were going for with the helmet design other than it feels a lot like when people new to concepts just use the fill tool to color different panels on a jersey, but it is what it is and it stays.

Giants: The Giants are known for their simple blue uniforms these days, but early on they had no real idea what they wanted to look like. This jersey is an anachronistic take on the team's 1929-1930 jerseys. Those jerseys were entirely blue on the front with a white back and circular brown leather patches on the sides of the torso. However, I decided that by making the front white and leaving the shoulders and sides blue, the look could take on a pretty solid away jersey. The brown side panels remain alongside brown pants and a faux leather helmet. And to top it all off, the socks are red with a white and blue triple stripe, because cohesion just wasn't a thing anyone seemed to care about back in the day.

Cowboys: If the 1930s were a time of experimentation, the 1920s were a time of trying to actually figure out what the hell a uniform was in the first place. One of the less common, but certainly prevalent designs was the horizontal half and half jersey. These jerseys looked exactly like they sounded, the top half was one color (usually white) and the bottom half was a different color. Luckily, the modern jersey actually works pretty well to incorporate that design style while not looking at all out of place. I've demonstrated this idea on the cowboys. Here, the top of of the jersey is silver, covering the sleeves, shoulder yoke, and collar, while the bottom half is navy blue. It also wasn't uncommon for jerseys of the time to include superfluous stripes as well, so I added a white stripe between the two halves. Because this was an early 20s design, both the helmet and pants are a faux leather brown.

Eagles: The Philadelphia Eagles are one of the oldest teams having existed almost since the league's founding... Almost. That decade period before the Eagles were officially founded gave me the opportunity to do a concept for the Eagles. During the earliest days of the league, teams sometimes went the hockey route and slapped a logo on the chest. One of those teams was the Columbus Panhandlers, who wore a keystone on their chest. This design seemed like the perfect fit for a team actually from the keystone state (the panhandlers were a team of rail workers working on the panhandle railroad owned by a Pennsylvania rail company, so it actually makes sense). I also had to bring back the Eagles' iconic original color scheme by depicting a light blue keystone on a yellow jersey. Within the keystone, the front number is depicted in white, and the back number is depicted in blue. While the original keystone logo was small, I needed to increase its size in order to fit a number on the front as well (similar to the packers' circle jersey). Small, numerous sleeve and sock stripes were also common during the era, so the sleeves and socks both feature blue stripes on a yellow background. Finally, the pants are a darker faux leather brown paired with a yellow helmet.

23 hours ago, mcrosby said:

Great stuff here. I've gotta hurry up with my series before you beat me to all these great ideas. 

Hey, thanks! I've been following your series (haven't had the chance to really sit down and write out C+C for it yet, so get ready for a single post about 10 teams at some point, haha) and I've definitely like what I've seen so far (particularly the Ravens throwback), and am definitely excited to see where you go with the remaining teams.

22 hours ago, logo-maker said:

 

For your Indianapolis Colts concept, I feel like it's a missed opportunity to turn the horse shoe on the helmet sideways to create a 'C' on the front or is that too on the nose.

I actually didn't go with the sideways C for a few reasons. First, I honestly have never liked any of the C-horseshoe concepts I've seen in the past. To me it comes across like adding extra meaning to a logo that doesn't need it while also ignoring that the U arrangement has its own historical meaning with superstition and luck. The second reason is that kind of easter egg style of design wasn't at all prevalent during that time period. The popular style of art during the earliest years of the NFL wasn't remotely what it was today; team logos were much closer to lithographs and heraldic crests than anything we think of as modern logos. Teams were more likely to be depicted like this:

And where teams did have more simplified logos, they tended to be really simple about it. Logos with hidden features or meaning within a meaning really didn't become prevalent until corporate design started taking over during the 1960s and 1970s. That's where you start to see the boom of teams like the Colt 45s, the Whalers, the Flames, etc. start to incorporate those elements a lot more. So going with a C-style horseshoe felt too anachronistic to me.

Today we head back to the AFC South

Texans: One of the things that can get lost in these types of concept series is the fact that it was very common to see plain jerseys during the 20s-40s. The Texans, until about two weeks ago, have always had a very traditional uniform, so they seemed like a perfect candidate to simplify even more, sporting a plain navy blue jersey with plain white pants and plain navy blue socks. The helmet holds all the design details, featuring red bull horns that would act as a slight precursor to the Rams' and Eagles' helmets and a lone white star on the front of the helmet. There weren't any pro teams in the late 40s who sported a from helmet logo, but there had been teams in previous season who did sport one, so it's plausible that a team might try to revive the idea.

Jaguars: The Jaguars sport a pretty traditional 1940s look with albeit with an nontraditional color. Here, the look uses a black-teal-black northwestern stripe on the sleeves with teal numbers. While white jerseys were still relatively rare at the time, the teams that did wear white almost always wore socks matching the number colors, so here the socks are teal with a white-black-white northwestern stripe. Hey, remember when the Jaguars wore the ugliest helmet in NFL history with the harsh split gold and black gradient? Well in this world that helmet was a callback to the team's classic look of the 1940s! This type of two-tone helmet featuring a sort of circle of color on the sides with a different color top was worn by the Philadelphia Eagles throughout the 1940s.

Titans: The Tennessee titans own the double blue look in the NFL, which is why thanks to wanton mismanagement, the currently barely wear one of the colors. I really wanted to focus on emphasizing the double blue, giving both colors a chance to stand out, much like the Titans of the 90s-2010s. Here, they sport a powder blue jersey with a thick double stripe that had been word on a few occasions by a few teams. The look was never a staple, but it showed up enough that I felt comfortable using it. I debated going with white pants, but ultimately chose brown leather to further emphasize the late 20s early 30s look I was going for. Finally, the helmet features a Navy and Light Blue variation of the Michigan helmet with the stripes being cut off about halfway down the helmet, a design choice that was not uncommon at the time.

Colts: This is the second and final jersey inspired by the original AFL of this series. American Football was still figuring out its aesthetic during the 1920s and early 1930s, and as a result, there were some pretty loud designs mixed in with what would eventually become the aesthetic we know and love today. I wanted to use the colts to show that variety in one package. First, the jersey features blue raglan sleeves with contrasting white sleeve stripes. This takes its cues from teams like the sleeves of the Green Bay Packers, the Rochester Tigers, and the New York (football) Yankees. The blue pants were inspired by the rapid shift from brown to color pants by teams like the Cincinnati (football) Reds, Brooklyn (football) Dodgers, and the St. Louis Gunners. By 1940, color/white pants were the standard, and only Green Bay and Washington would wear brown leather style pants through the 40s. Finally, the helmet once again is inspired by the helmets of original AFL teams. This felt fitting as the Colts were the first team in NFL history to place their logo on the sides of their helmet (I am not including the Rams or Eagles helmet designs as logos).

9 minutes ago, Haz_Matt said:

"All mountains look the same" 

Those are Utah mountains, though both states have mountains in the Rocky range, they're not the same 

I dunno, man. They look pretty damn similar

Packers: The 1933 Green Bay Packers were very good... against everyone not named the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. The Packers were a combined 5-2-1 against other teams but a dismal 0-5 against the two NFL Championship Game participants. While this season is on the whole pretty forgettable, I chose this jersey for the specific reason that this jersey matchup actually happened twice during that season, and I'm a sucker for throwback games featuring actual matchups. The look is simple, a plain navy blue jersey with yellow numbers, tan leather pants, and a faux leather helmet sporting a design reminiscent of blue spokes (think the bruins logo) on a yellow background. This jersey is modeled by 7 time first team all-pro, two time NFL champion, and NFL/College Football Hall of Famer, Clarke Hinkle.

Bears: This Bears jersey was worn for exactly one season, and only 4 times overall. So why did I pick this jersey? I chose it because this was the jersey worn during the Bears' victory in the first ever NFL Championship game, and such important football history deserves to be remembered. The jersey features the traditional bears road sleeve striping pattern, three separated blue-orange-blue stripes, but with orange block numerals. The fabled Bears' orange pants make an appearance as well, paired with navy blue socks with three thin orange stripes. Finally, the look is rounded out with a blue and orange version of the Michigan/Princeton helmet. It wouldn't truly be a Bears design from the 1930s if it were modeled by anybody but Bronko Nagurski.

Vikings: We're back in the 50s for this Vikings design inspired by the prevalence of home jersey designs with no white during the era (Packers, Steelers, Lions, etc.), and the potential that the Vikings color rush jerseys didn't live up to. Here, they wear a purple jersey with yellow numbers and yellow northwestern stripes, acting as a predecessor to their 1960s jerseys. The pants are plain yellow and paired with socks that match the sleeve design. Helmet logos were almost non-existent in 1954, only the Baltimore Colts featured a traditional logo on the back of their helmets. However, the Eagles and Rams had their famous wings and horns, so I took inspiration from those designs with the Vikings traditional horned helmets. This design features a simple yellow horn across the side of the purple helmet, extending to the facemask area, similar to the eagles wing design.

Lions: Our next jersey celebrates a strange quirk of 1950s jersey designs. The Lions were not unaccustomed to a white jersey with blue northwestern stripes and numbers over silver pants with a silver helmet. This was the team's basic look (with variation) for about 4 decades starting in the late 1950s. However, the Lions did wear this jersey for a single game during the 1954 season due to a clash of blues. And during that game some players wore silver helmets while others wore gold. What was the purpose behind this? Well, it was an manufacturing error. The helmets were in fact originally silver, but after being used for multiple years, either the plastic or a resin covering the plastic turned yellow, a very common phenomenon in both materials. However, the raised center stripe was made from a different material, and did not show this effect. This caused the helmets to appear gold with silver stripes down the center. Ultimately, the team would fix the helmets within a few years, and the Lions would not need to wear white until after said fix was made. Because I enjoy this quirk, the Lions are outfitted with a gold helmet and silver stripe. The jersey is modeled by 3 time NFL champion and one of the early greats of the secondary, Jack Christiansen.

15 hours ago, fortunat1 said:

So glad that I found this series. I love all of the jerseys so far, as well as the idea behind it all. I always appreciated the usage of shapes and patterns in place of logos on football uniforms, as well as old school brown pants, so this thread has quickly become a favorite of mine.

 

The Dolphins, Seahawks, and Ravens stick out as favorites so far. I look forward to seeing how you continue the series, as you've been able to do so much with vintage/traditional designs.

Thanks for the comment, fortunat, I'm glad you're enjoying the series! Miami is probably my favorite of the ones I've unveiled so far as well. Though, I've been trying to balance unique and traditional designs, so there are a few waiting in the wings I think can give it a run for its money.

Back to the AFC East and through our first cycle of the league!

Dolphins: The early 1930s marked the tail end and eventual death of the leather patches on football jerseys. For this jersey Miami uses the chevron design previously used by the Steelers and Bears. However, this uses only two vertical bars, creating an M on the chest. The helmet continues my altering of the traditional helmet wing style, depicting a sunburst similar to the one that has graced the Dolphins' logo since their inception.

Bills: You know the Bills' terrible 2000s uniforms? As it turns out, there's an actual historical equivalent of these jerseys worn by the New York Giants. Everything from those 2000s jerseys is here, multiple blues, a shoulder yoke, a red side panel that doesn't match the pants. The only real difference is the helmet, which takes on the red streak from the team's logo as an extended front helmet wing.

Patriots: The Patriots design is inspired by the famous New England flag that has been flown since before the revolution. To depict this, the jersey is depicted in red monochrome with contrasting white sleeves. The helmet features a design not inspired by the national football league, but rather the American Football League of the 1936-37 seasons (it took 4 tries to create an AFL that actually worked). The Boston Shamrocks and the Brooklyn/Rochester Tigers both wore a small logo on the front of the helmet within a contrasting helmet wing. Here, I depicted the green pine tree as seen on the New England flag.

Jets: The Jets whole concept depicts a prior history in which the New York Titans wore green prior to their blue and gold jerseys. These feature a pretty simple 1930s jersey, with a simple white jersey with contrasting shoulder yokes and butt stripes with barber poll socks. The helmet is anacronysm depicting a double helmet stripe inspired by the Dartmouth Big Green's iconic helmet, which itself would not be worn until 1964. As I noted before, I reserve the right to ignore the rules at my discretion (I believe I only did that for the Jets).

Lots of real throwbacks today in the NFC West.

49ers: You know the famous 49ers throwback that the team wore in Super Bowl XXIX and recently brought back? It, like many of the throwbacks from the NFL's 75th anniversary, is inaccurate due to the league not changing teams' primary helmets. In actuality, the team wore red helmets with a silver stripe. Honestly, it's amazing the Niners ever wore this as a throwback. The original jerseys were worn only during the 1955 season in which the Niners went 4-8 and finished 5th in the NFL West. The jersey is modeled here by Hall of Fame QB Y.A. Tittle.

Rams: The Rams are synonymous with shoulder stripes, having worn at least one jersey with them every season since 1962. These are the jerseys that started it all. Worn for only two seasons before the Rams' experiment with blue and white, they feature blue-yellow-blue UCLA stripes with matching stripes on white pants. This looks is incredibly underrated and would still make a fantastic look for the team today. The jersey is modeled by The Secretary of Defense, Deacon Jones.

Cardinals: The Arizona Cardinals are the NFL's oldest franchise and one of two charter members that still exist, so naturally they're going to feature jerseys from the earliest days of the league. The jersey for this matchup is based on the team's second ever uniform paired with their socks from the version of the jersey worn in 1927. This jersey featured three large cream stripes on the sleeves and a similar striping patter on the socks, with an added 4th stripe. The original jersey also featured the team's wishbone C logo on the sleeve cuff. Due to constraints of modern templates, this small feature has been removed. Paddy Driscoll, the NFL's original triple threat, models this jersey.

Seahawks: Our only concept jersey of the day has the Seahawks in a double blue color scheme inspired by the team's 2000s jerseys. Thin stripes on both the chest and sleeves were pretty common during the earliest days of the league, so I placed 6 on the chest and 3 on each sleeve as an homage to Seattle's 12th man. Half of these stripes are Navy blue while the other half are steel blue, inspired by the Frankford Yellow Jackets' asymmetrical stripes worn during the 1926 and 1927 seasons. Finally, while a vest majority of teams during the era wore naturally colored leather helmets and pants, several teams wore dyed gear including the Green Bay Packers, who wore similar blue color pants in 1927 and 1928.

I am not letting this series die, damnit! Thanks to lessons learned doing my college hockey redesign series, I've actually made sure that got everything fully prepped and it's just about posting the actual designs, so this time we're actually getting it done!

Today we're moving back up to the AFC North for two wildly different eras of design.

Bengals: Everyone definitely loved and didn't despise those 1930s striped Steelers throwbacks (to be fair I genuinely loved them) so naturally everyone will want to see the Bengals do a similar thing. The Steelers, however, were not the first team to use hoops on their jerseys, as they were somewhat widespread during the 1920s as well. The concept is simple, tigers have black and orange stripes, so the jersey is entirely black and orange stripes. Unlike the Steelers numbers, there's enough contrast for white numbers with black outlines.

Browns: The Browns jersey takes its inspiration from several designs from the 1920s. The chest features a triangle, a nod to the Dayton Triangles who featured the shape on their chests, as well as a nod to the rock and roll hall of fame, famous for its pyramid shape and located right next door to Cleveland Browns Stadium. The sleeves take inspiration from the Cardinals sleeve stripes and logo from the era. This also features an homage to the famous <=B=> logo by depicting the C on the sleeves as a vertical football with the two stripes running through it. Finally, the jersey includes plain brown pants inspired by the darker leather pants color that some teams wore at the time.

Ravens: The Ravens take on a traditional 1960s NFL look featuring a purple helmet and jersey with white pants. I initially thought of black for the helmet, but in my research I discovered that only one team in the NFL or AFL wore a helmet that could be considered darker than the team's dark jersey during that era, the Denver Broncos. And even then it's debatable whether that color blue can be considered darker. Therefore, the purple helmet was used. The helmet features a logo inspired by the Ravens' original shield shape, but flipped sideways to form a B reminiscent of the Packers' iconic G logo. The jersey and socks feature a traditional triple stripe, and the pants have a single black stripe in honor of the Ravens' actual first jersey featuring a single white stripe on the pants. This stripe is somewhat anachronistic, as almost every team by this point had triple stripes on the pants, but Washington did have a single stripe at the time, so it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

Steelers: The Steelers actually existed, so they get their real road jersey from 1963-1965. There's not much to say about these jerseys, the most notable feature being the contrasting yellow sleeves with a black northwestern stripe. This was also during the brief period in which the Steelers did not wear yellow pants. As with the other real throwbacks, this jersey is modeled by Hall of Fame full back John Henry Johnson.

23 hours ago, Haz_Matt said:

I haven't seen any "iconic" or non "bush/minor league" names suggested by the people dumping on the rumored options either 

The Harriers. A bird of prey native to the area that conveys the old tropes of speed and toughness. And it's also the name of a military jet for the ever important "sports iz WAAAAARRRR" and military fetish crowds. To top it all off, it's a legit cool looking bird.

20 hours ago, rfraser85 said:

 

I don't know about sales for U-H, but if the NFL did nothing, how many other college teams may try to do something like this? One imitator may not be a problem, but the potential for cumulative damage may be worth taking action.

 

That said, I agree that shutting everything down may be excessive. The Iowa Hawkeyes have been using Steelers look-alike uniforms for decades, so there may be a middle ground somewhere.

Trademark law isn't like copyright where you retain the right no matter if you choose to defend it or not. Under US trademark law you are required to vigorously protect your trademark or you lose the right to challenge in the future. That itself can lead to the loss of the trademark and/or total genericization of the mark.

16 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Oh great. These are all terrible. And you know that the very worst one of them all, Yetis, is ABSOLUTELY going to win in a landslide. 
 

This league is a perpetually unserious joke. 

Seriously, it's baffling. "Utah Yeti it's almost a rhyme hehehehehehe." What are you people, kindergartners?

Penn State had a weird period where the basketball programs added light blue to the color scheme, making them look like Villanova and UNC.