Bathysphere

Even if I can accept reality for what it is (reality being how teams choose to handle their histories), there are definitely good reasons why people fixate on this, and they make for a good debate that will probably never be solved. One reason is that the sports franchise as an entity is made up of the people whose performances and decision-making form a timeline that sets the stage for events today. Just as Bert Bell founding the Eagles in 1933 set tipped the first domino that culminated with them winning a Super Bowl in 2017, it was Paul Brown founding the Browns in 1944 that set off the chain of events which led to two Super Bowl championships and an MVP in the last 20 years for the Ravens. You could even say that, more directly, it was the performances and decisions made by the Cleveland Browns players and staff in 1995 that set the stage for the Baltimore Ravens to acquire their foundational Hall of Fame players John Ogden and Ray Lewis in 1996. In that way, one could argue that the Browns history prior to 1996 is part of the Baltimore Ravens history. Another thing that’s hangs people up (ESPECIALLY the type of brain which congregates here) is consistency. While the Ravens are resigned to have no reverence for such players in their “history” as Otto Graham or Lou Groza, the Titans continue to hold players who only wore Oilers jerseys in high regard, and not to mention some of their best players, Steve McNair and Eddie George, can be seen in highlights wearing both Titans and Oilers jerseys. And on top of that, the Ravens keep a Colts player in their ring of honor despite him being irrelevant to the “history” of the team that takes the field in Baltimore today. It’s enough to make your head spin and your brain to demand answers, rules, uniformity, such. But the real answer that everyone will have to live with is that these things just work on a team by team basis as their prior history recommends, and none of the decisions made by one team can or should affect how another handles their history. I mean, it would have been a shame if the Raiders left their brand and history in Oakland a few years ago just because they had to leave. Instead, they exist as a historical franchise and brand that have persisted by setting up shop in (or “Raiding”) different cities as needed over time. For the Browns/Ravens, the team had to move (at least if you listen to what Modell says. I wasn’t around for that and don’t know all the history), though it was apparent that you cant have the Browns without Cleveland due to their historical significance there, so it was decided that the history of Cleveland football was the history of football in Cleveland, and that was that. For the Oilers/Titans, the Oilers simply decided to reinvent themselves when they moved to a new home (I mean, we love the brand, though it was arguably on the verge of being incompatible with modern tastes and sensibilities) without losing sight of the Warren Moons and Earl Campbells that got them where they were to that point. Though, Houston was too good a market to not have pro football in, so they filled in the blank by giving them a new franchise that would make its own history. So, as it has been from the start and always will be: • The Ravens are a team in Baltimore that started operations in 1996 with the staff of a team from Cleveland that suspended operations in 1995. • The Browns are a team in Cleveland that existed from 1944 to 1995, suspended operations, then resumed in 1999 under new management. • The Titans are a team in Tennessee which used to be called the Houston Oilers and took relocation as an opportunity to reinvent their brand, though still revere the team that they were prior to today. • The Texans are a team in Houston that started operations in 2002 with no prior history or legacy behind it, only that which was to be made by the Houston Texans. Now, basketball is a whole other beast which I have no interest in prodding.

The Houston Oilers are DEAD. The Tennessee Titans KILLED THEM. And to this day they honor their demise by wearing their tattered skins three weeks out of the year and, I suppose, sweating their blood from their armpits for the remaining weeks. It’s horrible but it is the truth that we are forced to live with. I would be surprised if the O-word has even been uttered in a Texans-operated facility in the last two decades.

ing goddammit crapping hell HoF: WBB PW1: TBB PW2: TBB PW3: WBB W1: TWW* W2: WBW* W3: WWW* W4: WTT* W5: TBB* W6: WBW W7: TBT* W8: BBB* W9: TTT*

Okay, this is :censored:ing ridiculous. Whenever ripall90 gets computer time, this whole thread turns into Ripall’s Opinions Bonanza. Not that it’s being helped by other posters responding to everything he says, but, dude: what is your end game in clogging up the NFL Changes 2022 thread with your ideas for what what you like in uniforms, then arguing tooth and nail when people inevitably disagree with you based on 20+ years of discourse that has laid the foundation for this forum’s prevailing convictions? Yes, this board has a long history of dogmatically supporting historical designs over most new aged ones and it has formed into something like a hivemind to the outsider. Yes, you are actually allowed to disagree with the hivemind, which has been done plenty of times before without any fuss. Id like to single out @CaliforniaGlowin, who has been the model for vocally supporting wacko designs and accepting criticism for them with no skin off of his or any other users’ backs. But, disagreeing this LOUDLY, relentlessly clapping back at every single post dissenting from yours, fighting feverishly for Jesse Alkire’s designs like they were your life’s work and this forum is the Shield itself deliberating on whether or not to accept them as the new look of the league, acting as though you bring wisdom from the mythical outside world of what actually makes uniforms “cool,” trying to “gotcha!” other posters as if somebody will finally break and be like “oh, you’re right! That Panthers helmet concept we don’t like *is* just like that one Boise State helmet! It is cool actually!” so you can score a W; it’s bad forum etiquette, it’s obstructing the day to day course of conversation, and it’s getting you NOWHERE. NOBODY is going to change their opinions for you and you refuse to adjust your posting to reflect that. You think you’re posting about the uniforms, but you’re really just posting about YOURSELF. Nobody here who’s lasted longer than two weeks before storming off in a huff throws such long and winded tantrums about what they do and don’t like. I hate to say it, and I really never wanted to join back in on the piling on after basically starting it because it’s not a pleasant spirit to post in, but it’s just sad at this point how shamelessly unaware you are of how nearly everything you say and how you say it has been documented hundreds and hundreds of times on this website since it’s launch as being the antithesis of how the forum approaches sports uniform discussion. Like, it’s uncanny, as if you know exactly what you’re doing to push other posters’ buttons. This is a place that people come to for DISCUSSION, not ARGUMENTS. If reading the posts here and listening to the opinions that differ from yours angers you to the point that you’re essentially writing novels daily to futilely attempt to make people see your point of view for the absolute fact that you believe it to be, forcing your way into being the focal point of discussion for as long as you’ve posted here, then you would be doing yourself and your blood pressure a huge favor by seeing your way out. You don’t have to be this mad. That is purely up to you. Im sorry that this community is not the place for you to get your personal uniform thoughts off of your chest, though apparently there are plenty of folks in the “real world” who would be pleased to hear you out. If you continue this rate of madposting, then I’ll assume either you’ve learned nothing or you’re a troll. I will similarly challenge other posters to stop replying as the guy is pathologically unable to stop himself from replying back and making himself even more mad. Im just sick of this thread becoming page after page of Ripall90 vs the world, and it isn’t the world’s fault.

Yeesh, Coastal Carolina called..

As expected. Against the Broncos in their brand new white over navy. Great work, guys. Way to show our friends across the pond the best of what American Football has to offer. Yeesh. Back when they announced the switch back to teal, longtime equipment manager Jimmy Luck stated that they would continue to wear all-black in London “like we always have.” True, that they’ve never worn any other combo since starting their London residency in 2013, though for most of that whole time, they wore all-black there because it was the primary uniform then. Now, they’ve essentially designated it as their “London best,” not to be seen on American soil until future notice. It’s kind of silly that they’ve punished it for being such a bad primary uniform by literally exiling it overseas. I’ll miss the days from when I was a kid when you could show up to a big home game and be surprise greeted by the team decked in badass all-black getups (the first of their kind!), though today, I’ll take all the appearances of the teal jersey in the Florida sunshine that I can get. 8 games, 7 unique combos. HoF: WBB PW1: TBB PW2: TBB PW3: WBB W1: TWW* W2: WBW* W3: WWW* W4: WTT* W5: TBB* W6: WBW W7: TBT* W8: BBB*

So you made it to the fallacies unit in english? Did they also tell you about ‘fallacy fallacy,’ wherein one assumes rightness sheerly by pointing out a fallacy? Like Ridleylash said, there’s no bandwagon thats keeping classic looking teams looking classic and wacky looking teams constantly changing (or their fans pounding the table for a change) and whittling away at their brand. If anything, I committed begging the question by saying that the Rams shiny accents were bad because they are bad. So I’ll start there and hopefully everything else will come into perspective: The Rams sparkly bits are ridiculous because they ask the uniform to do something that it was never a uniforms job to do. The job of the football uniform is to differentiate the teams that are playing on the field so that they don’t have to all wear the same generic, NFL-branded jersey. When you flip on the tube, you don’t have to squint and recognize that one team has a black signal caller with a jersey with a big number 15 on it and MAHOMES written on the back throwing the ball to a white receiver whose jersey says 87 and KELCE on it to know that you’re looking at the Kansas City Chiefs. You already knew that as soon as you saw those bright red jerseys with white and yellow sequenced stripes on the sleeves. It’s a jersey that has done its job for the last 50 some odd years and to this day, their stands are packed with passionate fans all wearing the same jersey, representing players and teams from several decades and eras. It’s a job well done. Even without any sort of legacy behind the design, if you take the Rams new design and left off the weird vinyl crap, you would have a jersey that does its job perfectly fine by telling us “this is the Rams! not the Raiders! not the Cardinals! the RAMS!” with its royal blue base and yellow numbers and unique horns on the sleeves. When people see the shiny stuff, do they think “oh yes, the classic shiny stuff of the Los Angeles Rams”? No, it’s more like “ah, they sure do have some shiny stuff on there I guess.” It’s unique, though it doesn’t do any job such as differentiating the team or carrying on a legacy. It’s just there to prove that they could put it on there. It begs and promotes itself moreso than anything related to the ongoing brand of the Los Angeles Rams, so it is ridiculous and bad. I know you weren’t talking about the Rams (perhaps a Strawman?), but this just goes to show the logical pattern that dictates most of the dogma on these boards, as I’ve witnessed over the last decade that I’ve posted here. It’s not about teams not breaking from the tried-and-true aesthetic of the game because they’re scared of being scorned by their bandwagon peers. It’s about an aesthetic that the game has taken shape around since it was invented because it promotes the teams brand without mugging for likes from people who will have a completely different taste for what is and isn’t cool five years from now. It’s the reason why the Rams current look won’t last any longer than the Jags last look while the Raiders will be wearing plain black shirts with plain silver numbers till the sun explodes. Even the Chargers and Bengals, who have decidedly ‘modern’ getups, fit the aesthetic to a T with their last rebrands. They have a color scheme that’s unique to them, they have a stripe/logo that is unique to them, add numbers and last names per league regulations, and boom. A good-looking jersey that does its job. Nothing else needed and no fallacies.

Yeah the thing about the ‘unique’ accolade is if you’re gonna use it, you have to at least be able to answer the question “why does no other team want to look like this?” or else you’ve told us essentially nothing. Why does no other team have tiger stripes on their shoulders like the Bengals? Well, because no other team has a literal tiger as their mascot. So the uniqueness is good. Why does no other team have shiny strips outlining their stripes and numbers like the Rams? Well, because it’s kind of a ridiculous thing to want on a football uniform. So the uniqueness is stupid.

I was gonna say “well ackshually its historically accurate,” but man it really is just a shoddy reproduction of they had in ‘94, which it turns out was an even shoddier reproduction of what they actually had in ‘55.

It’s one of the pillars for my neverending rant on why the Jaguars originals were untouchably perfect, which is that teal, black and gold is a tremendous color scheme, yet also a tremendously volatile one. Teal and black without support from gold is sterile. Teal and gold without support from black is harsh on the eye. And black and gold without support from teal is the Saints. All three together? Perfect harmony, warm and majestic like a symphony. There’s a solid reason why the only gold on the original jersey that directly makes contact with teal whatsoever is the cuff stripe, which has an equally weighted black stripe holding it down on the other side. It’s like the original uniforms and color scheme were designed alongside and in accord with each other, while each redesign since, they’ve come up with a design, then carelessly fill-bucketed the team colors in as the complexity of the design would allow.

Do we call it a "throwback" when there was only a one year gap in its usage?

What parts are salvageable? We can all agree that the helmet and primary jersey color can stay in the garbage. Is it the contrasting sleeve caps? Nope, those have been ugly and contoured the players' forms unflatteringly every time they've been used, college and pro. Leave those in 2010 where they belong. Perhaps the free-floating gold neck spikes? Nope, gold bound only by teal is super tacky, hence why the gold accents was always accompanied by or bordered with black on the originals. It couldn't be the shiny vinyl shoulder appliques that were meant to imply "claw scratches" or who the :censored: knows? Of course not, those were secretly a top five ugliest uni element ever conceived. And I won't even open discussion on those chunky parallelogram pants. What does that leave us with? Looks like the numbers, which I did think were pretty alright for what they were (even though they infernally made them black on the teal jersey for some reason), though I prefer the current ones, and even moreso the original cool cat font from '97. Take that, add black and gold details on the cuffs, put a crawling cat on the sleeve, stick with the all-black helmet, and put a tri-colored stripe on the pants. Now there's a uniform. Great work by the salvage unit. Only grilling you because I have so many times over the last ten years seen somebody say "this is salvageable," maybe accompanied by a pic, and nothing else. Nobody has anything good to say about it except "its salvageable" and it drives me insane because when you pick it apart piece by piece, not a single thing holds up.

Agree to disagree, it and the teal-socked variant are 1a and 1b for me. I think the leggings work better now than they did in the past due to the simple nature of the current set. As for the Rule, it’s definitely a disqualifier if the team is wearing the wrong facemask anyways (like the Bills, who should have a blue mask and would fit the rule well in that case). It works to perfection for the Packers, Saints, Panthers, Bucs, Browns, etc. As for grey masks, my personal opinion would be that- *FBI operatives gag me from behind and take me into custody before I can open that can of worms* Fun fact: this was the original head-to-toe black set. No team had ever worn a black helmet, jersey, pants, and socks together before the Jags in 2002. The Falcons introduced theirs a year later, then the Ravens a couple years after that. Such a cool alt to see as a young fan, since black was already such an integral part of the Jags look before the rest of the league diluted the whole concept with BFBS BS, then it only got ten times worse this last offseason. While we’re at it, they also were the first team to have tri-colored numbers where none of the colors were the base color of the jersey. And essentially their whole jersey design (Black cuffs, secondary logo on the sleeves, tri-colored numbers) would be copied almost verbatim by the Ravens and Bucs shortly after the Jags debuted. Not to mention how the Bengals would copy the full-bodied sleeve cat concept just two years after the Jags came out with theirs. Literally copycats. The Jags uniforms were so brilliant and groundbreaking for the time, and there’s no reason they couldn’t have been timeless.

I think it looks fine if not great for both the Ravens and Jaguars home jerseys because they have a precedent for prioritizing black in their black helmets with black facemasks (Honestly, any team could look at least decent if their shell matches their pants and face mask matches their socks. Could be a rule of thumb.) and their jerseys are cool, unique colors that pair well with black. Doesn’t work at all for their aways, though, because then it’s just an all black and white affair.

The Panthers would regularly wear white at home for daytime games through week 8 or 9 throughout the 90s. People here often fixate on what historical precedents a team has set for themselves, and for better or for worse, this is who the Panthers are.

Should be a good one vs the Giants whites. Not the ideal look for the Giants, but thats about the worst thing you can say about it. Glad they're still holding out on the all-teal, though I'll be miffed if they wind up bringing it out against the Ravens or Raiders. HoF: WBB PW1: TBB PW2: TBB PW3: WBB W1: TWW* W2: WBW* W3: WWW* W4: WTT* W5: TBB* W6: WBW W7: TBT*

I think your question was answered when they stopped doing this 15+ years ago.

Its so strange how the Browns and Chargers home jerseys with white pants are both clearly 10/10 looks and stand tall above most of the rest of the league, yet I still find myself dissapointed when they don’t bust out their colored pants, which might as well make them 11/10 looks. It’s almost not fair that those teams each get two near-equally excellent home unis while so many teams don’t even have one.

This seems to be the norm for stripes applied in white vinyl, though uniforms with white striping on them dont usually feature enough white fabric nearby to show the contrast (another L for contrasting sleeves, a trend which really should have died off in 2013). I noticed this a lot early on in the Jags last set with their “ghost” stripes, though I don’t recall seeing it as much later on so I wonder if they wound up fixing it somehow.

Didn’t expect this again, let alone as the first repeat combo of the regular season (five different ones in the first six weeks), or even against the exact same team four weeks later, but here we are. Am I double-crazy for being driven crazy by the fact that they won’t try teal socks with this look? Might be a little odd for the only teal on there to be below the knees, but god the fans are sick of uniforms with no teal on them. HoF: WBB PW1: TBB PW2: TBB PW3: WBB W1: TWW* W2: WBW* W3: WWW* W4: WTT* W5: TBB* W6: WBW

At this point, throwing any teams colors any which way onto a regular braisher-striped helmet with the logo slapped on top is like a box propped up by a stick with a piece of cheese under it for uni-watchers. Of course it’s gonna look good; doesn’t mean it has any implication whatsoever on what the team should be wearing. Let alone that the Giants logo would look sharp on there as well, or Kansas or SMU. Swap the colors for black, orange and white with the Bengals logo on there and it’s still gonna look sharp. Or put the colors back and throw on the Cubs logo. See what I’m getting at?

Nice, I hope this is the first of several times they wear this one this season.* HoF: WBB PW1: TBB PW2: TBB PW3: WBB W1: TWW W2: WBW W3: WWW W4: WTT W5: TBB *Proceeds to wear 13 different combos over 17 games and utterly tank any hopes of developing brand recognition again

That’d be more or less the point being made. Fans like throwbacks because: a) they recall a bygone era of the franchise’s history, and b) they look good So you wear a throwback once for an anniversary and everyone goes nuts. Wow, so retro! They look so good! So you wear it a second time and now you’ve got a good thing going. Everybody gets hyped when the throwbacks come out, so now they’re the main alt in the rotation. The rule changes so that you can wear them for nearly half of your home games and they let you add another one, so now here comes the road version from the same era. In any given week you could look like the 2020’s version of your team or the 1970’s version. Fire emojis are reaching critical mass. The throwbacks look so good and everybody is having a good time. This is all good, right? But what about the other 14 games? What if the normal jersey is so boring that it exists only as a foil to the beautiful throwbacks? The problem isn’t that they shouldn’t have the throwbacks. No, it’s that if the throwbacks are good enough to wear for 3 games a year, then there’s no reason that they shouldn’t be worn for 17. It’s farcical that teams will wear good uniforms that everyone loves for 20% of the season and lame uniforms that nobody writes home about for the rest. Im talking specifically about the Dolphins of course, though a similar story goes for any team who has a crummy modern uniform in the first five chambers and a sweet throwback in the sixth. If it looks good enough to bring back, it’s more than likely because the current one doesn’t look good enough to have replaced it.

Shield: We will fine you $10000 if you wear the wrong socks. Ramsey: Okay. Ramsey: *wears the wrong socks* Shield: We are fining you $10000. Ramsey: Wtf this league is evil?? The league is allowed to have standards for a professional image, and the fines for breaking that are exorbitantly high because they’re not supposed to be paid. They know that players will just pay the toll weekly to go crazy if the fine was too low, so they make it so that all you gotta do is wear the same socks as the rest of your team, then you don’t have to pay $10000. It’s so easy. Yet Ramsey consciously chooses to pay it week after week and not only trashes the league for it, but brings the pressing leaguewide safety concern into the conversation. These two things were never meant to be thought about in the same sentence. Yes, the league cares too much about ratings to look out for the safety of its players, and also Jalen Ramsey cares way too much about how the space between his knees and ankles looks to not allow ten stacks to drain from his bank account on a weekly basis. There’s literally zero correlation. That he would use everybody’s worrying over the health and well-being of Tua Tagovailoa to draw attention to his little hosiery crusade is asinine and utterly tasteless, yet everybody’s gonna read into it like “eww the NFL really cares more about the players SOCKS than their SAFETY.” This will have to reach a breaking point eventually. Either the league is going to have to just undeclare socks as part of the uniform and let the players go free-for-all with their individuality concerns, or they will have to crack down and bring back uniformity. If the classic hose setup truly isn’t comfortable enough for the players to perform their best, then the league seriously must come up with a surrogate performance wear that mimics the aesthetic that they are fining players left and right for not adhering to. What an avoidable mess from all angles.

White over teal leggings is back. They’re definitely running with a similar MO to last year when it comes to combinations. Can only imagine who’s pulling those strings. Hopefully they’re just trying to spice up the final days of this set before switching to something more solid and consistent. HoF: WBB PW1: TBB PW2: TBB PW3: WBB W1: TWW W2: WBW W3: WWW W4: WTT