debo0775

They were SO CLOSE to having a great set. That home red uniform completely ruins it.

Without seeing a helmet, I’d wager that <50% of fans would ID the Browns. With a helmet? 90+% Which is precisely the argument for one helmet.

Pittsburgh and LV is a miss on my part. I guess NO, too. LAR - No. Recent color swap and similarity to Chargers over the past 2 decades. Bengals - maybe. Browns - nope. Their colors and name are in conflict. Casual fans wouldn’t ID them. Philly - good point - take NYJ off of my list. Washington - too similar to KC and AZ The call out on the Browns - “casual fans wouldn’t ID them” - is the barometer I think. The helmet is definitive. The colors are not in the case of most (which is probably an argument for crappy color chimes, but that’s another argument...)

Elaborating, there are a handful of teams that I think can lay claim to their colors being their visual ID: Baltimore Miami Jacksonville Tampa Bay Minnesota Seattle Green Bay NYJ SF Those teams are unmistakably identified by their colors. Maybe another couple of teams could be added. Beyond that, there‘s mostly a muddled mess of Blue/White, Blue/Silver, Blue/Red, Red/White teams (not to mention Chicago and Denver with remarkably similar colors). The NFL is also defined largely by its brand rather than its players (save the superstars). Removing the helmet as the visual identifier for a club would dramatically alter how we consume the NFL in viewership and in public persona.

But they often aren’t the visual identifier like helmets are.

Uniformity, and it's safer for the players. Added mass = greater moment = more probable incidence of injury.

Those uniforms could have been a ton better if they flipped the motif on the shoulders so that the upper body better resembled the Maryland flag. Still not my favorite uniform, but it could have been really, really cool with that one tweak.

I like grey facemasks on a lot of teams that don't currently have grey facemasks.