Carolingian Steamroller

The deal that Model struck to move his team to Baltimore stipulated that everything Browns, the history/name/logos/uniforms, stayed in Cleveland untouched and untainted. So technically, the Ravens are an expansion team and the Browns are the original club with a year or two missing.

Yep, the finish on that helmet looks really sweet. Could easily make this the permanent home set, or even pair with the navy jersey like the Bills.

True but they mostly had the basics down in year 1. The changed the number font a couple times and switched the pant stripe colors but that's about all.

Could always go back to being the Football Team...

I think most people would be content if the Texans just went with the red lids full time. Their set is maybe a tad bland in that it's navy over white like some other team but the font is solid, the sleeve design is nice. I might consider swapping the colors on the white pant stripe but I think the one they've had still works ok. Maybe just rolling with the red helmet adds a little spice? I get wanting an update but I think if you've stumbled upon a modern classic right out the gate, there's no reason to change. Just ask Jacksonville and Carolina.

That's one reason why I've wanted the Bears to switch the colors on the numbers. It would distinguish the Bears from the Broncos and Bengals orange jerseys and it would be more in keeping with how they originally wore orange jerseys in the past:

These looked better today. I don't know whether it was just the shock effect wearing off or (more likely) the lighting indoors in Texas was much more flattering than the shadows on a cold night in Chicago. I'm still not crazy about it but now I'm not demanding it be handled like toxic waste. I'd certainly like to see the socks stick around. Definitely go back to the undershirts matching the jerseys like in 2020.

The red Giants jerseys are in mothballs somewhere right?

This begs the question, would the NFL be better served with the swoosh on the jersey front as opposed to the sleeve? Maybe it gives the sleeve another half to full inch of space to work with?

The Packers have really only worn their current set since the 60's. They are also a classic example of design shifting to fit the shrinking space on the jersey as they used to have five stripes as opposed to three. One thing we don't often bring up is that not only are the sleeve shorter (as in further up the arm) but jerseys are also narrower. Compare the size of Gronk's (not a small guy at all) shoulder pads with Mike Alstott.

I think a big defining feature of our current era is all the mixing and matching which the Broncos really cannot claim to have started. A lot of designs today, including Oregon's, aren't that out there and look quite traditional in a vacuum. Remember that in the mid 00's the Ducks had diamond plate on their jerseys and knee pads while VA Tech had asymmetical shoulder designs, we're nowhere near those days. You just don't see a design like the early 00's Rams (with tons of side panel action) any more. What we do have are the blending of elements that were not designed to go together, most especially personified in today's NFL by the Rams and Jets. Weirdly, the idea of wearing multiple sets in a season went through a lull from the 40's through to 2002 when it began to really expand but I cannot find a definitive patient zero for the phenomenon. Maybe, maybe you have the 2002 Bills redesign which had four combinations right away. Maybe you look at the Jaguars introducing black pants? Maybe it was when the Saints started to mix in mono-black at home and really rotating their combinations? My best guess would be the 90's Eagles redesign which right away flipped back and forth between wearing green and white pants on the road. But then why did the concept take so long to reach a critical mass? Did a rule change occur that we're not away of? Does it coincide with Reebok becoming the lone manufacturer? Something happened because all of a sudden the Browns have four different white pants and are wearing orange jerseys.

I remember a white jersey with orange side panels was an option for NFL QB Club 98 on N64.

That's a better look that its been given credit for. The Rams went away from the bone over bone almost immediately. I tracked its usage in this comment after week 3.

That's nice. Should be a good looking game.

The teal flecked helmet from the 2009 redesign was absolute genius. Whatever else you want to say about that set (and folks here have said a lot) the flecked helmet idea was genius. What was especially cool about it was how that shifting color meshed with the overall thesis of that set which was teal at home, black on the road. Great idea in theory. I love it when teams decide they want to have two related but different chromatics for home and away. I don't think anyone in the NFL pulls that off these days. The Rams did it well when they were splitting time between the white horns with the white jerseys and the gold horns on throwbacks. Giants come close but points off for doing it with two different pairs of white pants.

Weirdly, I like the new Guardians all navy jersey better than old one despite the two being substantially identical. Maybe the serifs really add some pizazz my eyes needed? Maybe the white outline on the cap is doing something? I don't know but it's how I feel.

Remember that the old, script style navy jersey was originally intended to be the away alternate and the block script cream uniform would be the home alternate when that set took over in 2012. That's why the script navy jersey had grey trim long after it became a staple of home games years later. Some time in either 2015 or 2014, Cleveland added the further wrinkle of wearing red undershirts at home, reserving blue for away. In 2019 when the old primary mark was removed from the jersey and the block C became the full-time cap logo, the team streamlined the overall identity. Navy became the lone color for socks and baselayers. I suspect that the decision to leave the new block script navy jersey effectively blank was due to an interest in matching all four jerseys in terms of trim. None of the four have trim different from the navy soutache on the pants (on the navy jersey navy trim would just blend in). I think the red jersey allowed the team to still have more red at home while still maintaining consistency across the identity and it enabled the team to have a home alternate where the script matched the standard home jersey.

My first guess is architecture. Either the First Chicago School which had unbroken vertical lines on the facades such as Or maybe the later works of Mies Van Der Rohe:

I think the better analogy is if Oxford used the nickname "Fighting Irish." It's not just the lack of connection to the name, its also everything that goes with the history. I'm differentiating with other British clubs that do have Irish associations with nicknames like Celtic FC (Glasgow, Scotland) who got the name through their heavily Irish immigrant fanbase. So if most English of the English, Oxford, who once granted an honorary law degree to Irish arch-nemesis Oliver Cromwell, started peddling a stereotyped Irish mascot, I guarantee there'd be hell to pay.

Sigh. That game looked like this 6 years ago: Edit: For the record, had Washington's helmet looked the way it did last year, it would have been much better.

I know. I struggled to find the right terminology and so went with what has been colloquially used on the boards. And now I realize I'm praising the team for referencing an obviously bigoted font. Ugh.

That's really tricky. You have to get the right groups lined up and run it past them. For example, getting the Navajo nation to sign off on a brand identity with a team a thousand miles away in a different state is just making this messier. The Blackhawks have not been forgotten about and a lot of 'Hawks fans accept that its only a matter of time before the logo changes. Then again, there's a lot of good bird head logos floating around out there so for them it will be an easy transition. I think where the Guardians did well was leaning into familiar aesthetics. Not just the base uniforms which remained effectively unchanged but tapping into the old "Caveman" aesthetic from the 70's, the script Cleveland sign, and the baseball logo being reminiscent of the movie Major League. I expected the number font and arched "CLEVELAND" to be irksome but they've wound up looking good (or at least not distracting). Maybe they can put the headspoon back on the jersey? My only gripe is that I miss the red undershirts at home but that's specific to me and predates the name change. So thumbs up Cleveland, you done good.

The monogram has grown on me though I think if they put some variant the winged "G" (maybe without the ball), they'd have a cash machine.

Speaking of icy:

A follow up on the NFL of the past. COLOR TV. Television first started broadcasting in color in the USA in the early 1960's. By the first Super Bowl, all networks broadcast in color, though sales of color TV's would not surpass black and white until 1972. Some of this is apparent in the uniforms and it's reason why we started seeing helmet logos, and in particular high contrast helmet logos, in the early 60's. The most obvious example is the Rams who went from looking like this on TV: To this: But see also the all white "C" of the Chicago Bears, the NY on the Giants, the white horns on the Vikings, the Steelers one side only white circle, etc. We should also bring up the nascent role of NFL Films which was just getting going under Ed Sabol in 1962 (cue Autumn Wind) and which presented bright, high quality color films of NFL games to the public. This was a time of huge expansion for pro-football into the market and maintaining recognizable brand identities was pushed by commissioner Pete Rozelle. See the role the League played in nearly convincing the Browns to adopt the CB monogram. So at a time when media had become decidedly more visual, and teams were being seen on a mass scale for the first time, there was a strong incentive to have as much distinction between teams as possible while creating established brand identities. For a lot of people, the first time they watched an NFL game was in the 1960's and its the first visual impression they got whether in color or black and white. Maybe some people thought of the Packers as wearing blue and yellow in the 40's and 50's but by 1966, you can bet green and gold were seared into everyone minds. Since first impressions matter to an audience, take another look at that SI cover from 1965 and think about how for many of those teams, those helmets remain fixed as the "classic" design even today even though for most of them, those helmet were relatively new. *Also look at how evenly spread out the color schemes are: 2 silver, 2 shades of gold, one orange, one green, one reddish, two white, two royal blue, one black, one navy, one purple.