HOOVER

Thank you for correcting me...my Jets example would be the better example. This new rule allows for a new physical 3rd helmet which can be a different color. So the Lions can keep the Silver, keep the Blue, and add...Black? White? Oof. Unless the NFL says you can only have 3 total looks in helmets...which is probably how they'd enforce the rule. That would mean the Lions could have a primary look on Silver, a throwback look on Silver, and then a Blue or Black or White as the alt. Otherwise, a team could make multiple looks out of just decal changes on one color shell and have more than 3 helmet looks. My guess is that the Lions will have 2 shells, but 3 looks (Primary Silver, Classic Silver, some other color for its Color Rush/Alt).

In quickly trying to digest this new 3rd helmet rule, the last line of the policy seems to be the most significant: "Each alternate helmet color must be tied to a specific optional uniform and cannot be mixed/matched with primary uniforms or mixed/matched with another optional uniform." So, for example, if the Lions debut new uniforms, they could do something like this: 1. Primary (New Home/Away) + Primary Helmet 2. Classic (Barry Sanders or Thanksgiving) + Classic Helmet 3. Color Rush + Color Rush Helmet Or, the Jets can now have a Green Helmet for their home/away Sack Exchange uniforms, a White helmet for a Namath throwback, and a Black helmet for Color Rush. This may not be as horrible as it originally sounds.

Don't shoot the messenger:

These White/White combos don't suck at all...in large part because the teams wear White helmets. I always advised my clients: White helmet = White pants. If you wear a dark pant under a White helmet & White jersey, you're just going to have a very unbalanced, bottom-heavy look. The exception was teams that had a very light color that they wanted to use for a pant, such as the Chargers with Yellow pants or the Buccaneers with Creamsicle Orange pants, or the Dolphins in Aqua pants. Even then, it's slightly unbalanced and just doesn't look as good as White/White/White/contrasting sock. Examples of this being a bad combination:

I hope you’re right, because that number font is hot trash.

Agree. Tom said he was big on the Texas Orange version, which also would have been a debacle. To your point, Tan just doesn't fit with Cleveland. I do still think Tan or Sand would make perfect sense for Arizona down the line, or maybe Jacksonville, if they wanted to lean into a Jax Beach theme (I can hear your collective groans, but I can totally see Tony Khan being for this). :censored:, I shouldn't have put that out into the universe. That'll be their City Connect uniform for sure in 2030.

Also, for anyone who has wanted a Tan or Sand primary or alternate for a team, they pitched one for the Browns and it was beautiful: Perhaps not right for the Browns, but swap out the Orange for Arizona's Cardinal Red, and that could've been a strong and unique look that made sense for that particular franchise. Another fun note on that: they pitched the 49ers on an all-Gold uniform, but since the 49ers' Gold is so drab on the new matte fabrics, it didn't look great. That's why they pivoted to the Black Color Rush uni.

One of the most fascinating parts of the Uni-Watch Tom Andrich interviews are his comments on helmets. Nike had nothing to do with them after 2012. The NFL took helmet design away from them and kept it in-house with the teams and league. Not running to Nike's defense, but we pinned a decade's worth of bad helmet designs - Jags, Bucs, Browns, Titans, Commanders, Falcons, Jets, alternates for the Saints and many others - on the Swoosh, when in fact it was the teams and league who had final say. Andrich says it was incredibly frustrating as they could not create a whole head-down design, only uniforms. The teams came up with what they wanted the helmet to be and sent them to Nike and Nike had to work with it.

This was another one of those ideas that Andrich pitched and I have to say, I love the mixture of Silver/Gray into the New Orleans color pallete: Of course, I'm a huge fan of when Army, Colorado, and UCF do it, so it immediately caught my eye. Would love to see the Saints adopt their home throwback/away CR uniforms as their primaries, with an updated Gold helmet to match, but a modern alternate for them could include some Gray/Silver/Anthracite to create a new era look for them. To date, these are one of my favorite uniforms of all-time: And I'm always pounding the table for Atlanta to bring Silver/Grey back in their next uniform redesign, essentially using the 90's Deion uniforms with the helmet below, swapping Red in for Gold: Any way you shake it, Black + Grey makes an incredible base for almost any other color.

I did the same. Excellent content. And I'm going to post a few things from the 1st interview he did with Tom Andrich, because I believe that article is not behind the paywall. The first one is something that, as soon as I saw it, I said..."oh no". This was one of multiple rough ideas Tom presented when the NFL came back to Nike a year after Nike nearly sabotaged the relationship by making a huge City Connect-type presentation to NFL execs. The NFL was not at all happy about the City Connect gimmick, but wanted to spike sales so they asked Nike for ideas. This ultimately led to Color Rush. If we see snow-capped mountain sleeves on new Denver uniforms in a few weeks, perhaps this is where the idea was born.

Holy :censored: we need a uniform leak.

All-time great post. Love it.

On it’s own, this helmet is really nice.

Absolutely cannot stand defensive backs wearing numbers between 10-19. Makes me want to :censored:ing vomit.

Literally stole the word from my fingertips. I do like the White helmet with the Navy mask, if they were to use that.

This design, with an updated logo & design elements on a modern template would not be terrible. Not suitable for the NFL, but perfectly balanced and attractive for a team in the UFL, for example, or a college program on a growth track.

Glad to hear the alt helmet will be updated as I didn’t care for it. Rotating pants might get really scary. More legible numbers and less WCF is a win. I’d bet that LaPorta jersey is some kind of CityConnect fan jersey series; the NFL would never let a team put a Black & White Shield logo on the collar for a gameday uniform.

The shard stripes are a relic of the 90’s and deserved to die there. They don’t belong anywhere in current football aesthetics.

I want to agree, but that last gradient helmet has me giving you side eye. I'll long be a proponent of the Falcons wearing these uniforms: But with this helmet:

Agreed.

Just because it works for UCLA doesn't mean it would work for the 49ers. That Light Blue is way less bold/contrasting than Red, and then you have to factor the 49ers helmet stripe in. This may have been an upgrade for the Bruins, but it does not work for San Fran unless you're doing a drastic redesign and getting rid of the helmet stripe altogether.

The 49ers wore Red facemasks from '96-'08. It wasn't an improvement. Some looks truly are timeless and don't need to be modernized. Here are two of them: However, if you're asking for a future alternate, I'm sure you'll eventually get it, and this is what it would look like:

This is what Riddell is currently hawking:

Riddell has been selling a Teal Jags helmet with Gold facemask, but I thought a couple of these lesser-seen concepts could be interesting: Also saying for the millionth time, but I really wish the NFL would start letting teams with Black in their color scheme use Black helmet hardware.

This is most likely what it is. Aren’t they rumored to be doing a Throwback uni this season?