Cleveland Browns Unveil New Uniforms

[DustDevil61]

11 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Take the old jerseys, but pair them with gray pants, to tie into the gray mask.  Orange-Brown-Gray, Orange-White-Gray.  Would look really good with the brown and orange.

 

Hell, then they could jump on the gray bandwagon and go all-gray color rush, with the bright orange helmet.  Could be among best in league.

 

 

 

I've actually thought of this idea, and it doesn't really seem too bad an idea. Ideally, Color Rush™ should be showcasing obscure/historical colors in the form of throwbacks, fauxbacks, and non-shoehorned-solid-colored pajamas, so simply I'm thinking of the pre-2015 Browns brown uniform with white replaced by gray/silver, helmet stripe included. The gray facemask would fit right in with that. Or, you could even get the 1950s drop- or up-shadow look as well.

 

[SFGiants58]

9 hours ago, DustDevil61 said:

 

I would accept this under only one condition:

 

 

As I've stated before, if we can have the Los Angeles Lakers, Indianapolis Colts, Utah Jazz, Los Angeles Dodgers, and so forth, we should've had have the Baltimore Browns. I also would've been perfectly fine with the Tennessee Oilers as well. Get off my lawn.

 

Yeah, I'd rather have the Ravens. I've never liked the Browns' name all that much. With the Brown family owning the Bengals, it just seemed weird to me (a team named after the family that owned another team). The departure of the Browns would have been the perfect opportunity to lock it away in the annals of history. A slight modernization (like BringBacktheVet proposed), with a new name that had ties to the Browns' franchise lore (e.g., "Bulldogs," with the 1999-2014 bulldog logo) would have been best. I'm sure this would eventually end in a Charlotte Hornicats-style mess, but it would have been good to have a new identity.

 

I don't like the Oilers' branding either. That stance isn't just me going "death to floating stripes," but also that the uniforms, logos, and colors don't do anything for me. It's the classic "You're supposed to like it, why don't you like it!?!" sports identity for me. The nostalgia-gasm people have for them (accompanied with "Back when men were men!"/"Wussification of America"/"Now the refs would ban them for life!" crap) is off-putting to me. I like the Texans' and Titans' logos and uniforms (with the right combinations, in the case of the Titans) far more than anything the Oilers wore.

[The_Admiral]

Oilers pros:

- a primary logo that aces the doodle test 

- consistency of striping

- well-suited to an ideal color balance: white helmet/blue jersey/white pants/blue socks, plus three viable road sets (blue/white, white/blue, and white/white, you could pick based on what the home team wears)

- owning a color

 

The Titans were cool in 1999-2000 but aged poorly. The Oilers had a timeless set.

[tigerslionspistonshabs]

The entire franchise needs a re-do

[Gothamite]

27 minutes ago, the admiral said:

The Titans were cool in 1999-2000 but aged poorly. The Oilers had a timeless set.

 

Eh, I don't know.  I think the Titans' numbers were bad from the start, and the flaming thumbtack is bad. 

 

But other than that, I think either of these combinations is better than anything the Titans ever wore.

 

   

[raz]

42 minutes ago, the admiral said:

The Titans were cool in 1999-2000 but aged poorly. The Oilers had a timeless set.

 

But it took them a while to nail it. First the blue helmet with no red on it, then the silver set (which I kind of liked), then the blue helmet with the red outlines, then finally the classic white helmet. 

[Sec19Row53]

22 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

 

Eh, I don't know.  I think the Titans' numbers were bad from the start, and the flaming thumbtack is bad. 

 

But other than that, I think either of these combinations is better than anything the Titans ever wore.

 

   

1 - I think you mean Oilers up there that I bolded.

 

2 - I disagree if you DID mean Oilers :-)  No examples posted, but I loved the 60s rounded numbers as well as their Columbia blue helmet years (uniforms and helmets).

[The_Admiral]

19 minutes ago, rjrrzube said:

But it took them a while to nail it. First the blue helmet with no red on it, then the silver set (which I kind of liked), then the blue helmet with the red outlines, then finally the classic white helmet. 

 

Oh, for sure, but they definitely arrived at something that worked. In a perfect world where the league stopped Bud Adams from moving the team to Nashville, maybe the Oilers could have gone back to the Futura numbers when the league got obsessed with eliminating varsity block around the early 2000s, but that's the only element I liked from the earlier sets. 

[tBBP]

While I do realize it really ain't easy to try to objectively explain something so subjective as aesthetics, I have yet to see a good explanation from anyone who's in the camp as to why they hate/don't like the Titans' numbers. I personally don't see the problem with them...sure they could use a modest touch-up, but at this point they're going on 20 years with this look (which I'm concerned is about to become swooshkateered into some hot-fangled mess come the off-season), and if nothing else at least the numbers look like they belong to an actual well-designed font (a la the Philadelphia Eagles and the 1998-2008 Jacksonville Jaguars)...just fancy enough to be different yet restrained enough to be elegant, or attractive. Contrast that with stuff like the Browns' numbers now, or the ship-sail thing with the Vikings, or even the present-day Jaguars (which look entirely too robotic to me--although similarly-styled Oklahoma State might be one of my favorite number sets...see what I mean about subjectivity?? )

 

In dealing with the Browns--and to change course on this topic--I think of something @andrewharrington once opined, in how their color scheme--orange, brown, white  gray--also seems to mimic the autumn colors, quite fitting for football season. The other thing I always think of is how their former seal brown and orange didn't so much complement each other but rather in a way clashed with each other. It's an interesting case study in color theory that I've been toying with in my own pet projects, of how certain color combos, when used the right way, can give off some subtle but noticeable vibrations, to great effect. Once I saw that for myself, I really began to enjoy the Browns' color set and uniforms (& fan gear/stadium graphics) that much more.

 

(And then of course they went all Rollerball on us and mucked it all up and such...)

[FiddySicks]

Gridiron Labs (same people who did that great Astros concept logo I posted a few days ago) , did an AWESOME Browns concept that I absolutely love. 

 

Crazy simple, yet SO good. 

[SFGiants58]

2 hours ago, the admiral said:

Oilers pros:

- a primary logo that aces the doodle test 

- consistency of striping

 

The Titans were cool in 1999-2000 but aged poorly. The Oilers had a timeless set.

 

Point one: while the Titans' logo doesn't pass the "doodle test," the Texans' logo does. It's also far more striking than the Oilers' old logo. Besides, the "doodle test" isn't the be-all-end-all test of whether or not a logo is good.

 

Point two: that was the worst feature of the "classic" Oilers set. If the uniforms had red as the center stripe color, it might have been better, but having Columbia Blue as the center color leads to a kind of striping that only the Bulls, Spurs, and inaugural Wild uniforms can get away with, the floating stripes:

 

 

 

Floating stripes look ugly in football, no matter the color scheme:

 

 

The center color of a striping pattern should NEVER be the same color as the background. It's why I wish Florida would redo their white jersey and pants stripes to match their alternate helmet:

 

 

The graphics may blow, but the striping pattern is much more pleasing. 

[Jezus_Ghoti]

Slapping this unique and timeless number font on the current Titans uniforms would take them pretty close to not-needing-an-upgrade territory for me. 

 

 

[The_Admiral]

51 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Point one: while the Titans' logo doesn't pass the "doodle test," the Texans' logo does. It's also far more striking than the Oilers' old logo. Besides, the "doodle test" isn't the be-all-end-all test of whether or not a logo is good.

 

Definitely true. But the NFL is a league dominated by simple logos, whether that's the star, the G, the horseshoe, the ny, the viking horn. For whatever reason, ornate logos tend not to play well in the NFL. People consider the aforementioned some of the best, but Bucco Bruce and Pat Patriot some of the worst (though I'm not so dumb as not to acknowledge the respective winning and losing traditions of those logos). I like and appreciate the Oilers' and Texans' logos in different ways: the Texans have a well-done modern design that will outlast all its contemporaries, and the Oilers' logo is just a perfect exercise in simplicity. A minimalist oil derrick just sitting there isn't very striking by itself (and it certainly has proportion issues next to other logos, much like the Patriots), but the gestalt of the set is much better than the Texans' death by a thousand tinkerings.

[oldschoolvikings]

1 hour ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

That was the worst feature of the "classic" Oilers set. If the uniforms had red as the center stripe color, it might have been better, but having Columbia Blue as the center color leads to a kind of striping that only the Bulls, Spurs, and inaugural Wild uniforms can get away with, the floating stripes:

 

 

 

Floating stripes look ugly in football, no matter the color scheme:

 

The center color of a striping pattern should NEVER be the same color as the background. It's why I wish Florida would redo their white jersey and pants stripes to match their alternate helmet:

 

 

 

I'm sorry... although I have appreciated many of you're well though-out comments in the past, I'm afraid I must now declare you officially insane.  The Oilers' matching stripe patterns are the absolute pinnacle of football uniform design.  It's all been downhill since then.

[Lights Out]

I personally love the "floating stripes" look. I always prefer consistent striping to inconsistent striping, and "floating stripes" are the epitome of that.

[henburg]

Sorry, double post.

[henburg]

2 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

Point two: that was the worst feature of the "classic" Oilers set. If the uniforms had red as the center stripe color, it might have been better, but having Columbia Blue as the center color leads to a kind of striping that only the Bulls, Spurs, and inaugural Wild uniforms can get away with, the floating stripes:

 

Floating stripes look ugly in football, no matter the color scheme:

 

The center color of a striping pattern should NEVER be the same color as the background. It's why I wish Florida would redo their white jersey and pants stripes to match their alternate helmet:

Yeah, I heavily disagree with pretty much all of this. All of those uniforms you posted are some of the best in football IMO. Also, how do the Wild pull off "floating stripes" better than the Oilers, the team who pretty much popularized them decades before the Wild even existed? 

 

Slapping this unique and timeless number font on the current Titans uniforms would take them pretty close to not-needing-an-upgrade territory for me. 

 

 

That font is solid, I could potentially see a slightly modified version working a new set. However, it always bugged me that the main numbers are clearly stretched while the TV numbers are not, and the TV numbers look much better as a result. (You can really see it between the differences of the 4's and the 9's in this photo)

[DustDevil61]

7 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

Yeah, I'd rather have the Ravens. I've never liked the Browns' name all that much. With the Brown family owning the Bengals, it just seemed weird to me (a team named after the family that owned another team). The departure of the Browns would have been the perfect opportunity to lock it away in the annals of history. A slight modernization (like BringBacktheVet proposed), with a new name that had ties to the Browns' franchise lore (e.g., "Bulldogs," with the 1999-2014 bulldog logo) would have been best. I'm sure this would eventually end in a Charlotte Hornicats-style mess, but it would have been good to have a new identity.

 

I don't like the Oilers' branding either. That stance isn't just me going "death to floating stripes," but also that the uniforms, logos, and colors don't do anything for me. It's the classic "You're supposed to like it, why don't you like it!?!" sports identity for me. The nostalgia-gasm people have for them (accompanied with "Back when men were men!"/"Wussification of America"/"Now the refs would ban them for life!" crap) is off-putting to me. I like the Texans' and Titans' logos and uniforms (with the right combinations, in the case of the Titans) far more than anything the Oilers wore.

 

I have to disagree, and the kicker here is that I'm a big fan of the Ravens' and Titans' brands all in all, and am OK with "The Cleveland Deal" right up to saying that the Cleveland Browns v2.0 is the same franchise and organization as Cleveland Browns v1.0. The Ravens have ironically been more stoic with their look than Cleveland Browns v2.0 and, while the Titans' uniforms have a couple flaws (most notably the Flaming Thumbtack, helmet stripe, and number font), they have a great, memorable color scheme and uniform (in my opinion, of course), though I'd prefer that they emphasize Luv Ya Blue over Navy. If rumors are true that alternate helmets may be on their way back, having one helmet be White and the other Columbia Blue would be the best option.

 

That said, the Oilers had a great and unique color scheme and uniforms and the Browns (both v1.0 and v2.0) have had good looks up until their 2015 redesign. Had the Oilers name/identity stayed around, they would've made a few tweaks (for better or worse) and possibly fixed any minor defects in their look. But diff'rent stroke and such. Of course, having the Titans with their current uniforms and the old 1960s Oilers font (or something like unto it) like @Jezus_Ghoti mentioned above would look fantastic.

 

[SFGiants58]

1 hour ago, Lights Out said:

I personally love the "floating stripes" look. I always prefer consistent striping to inconsistent striping, and "floating stripes" are the epitome of that.

 

I get where you're coming from, and I agree to an extent. Consistent striping works when the pattern is the same, and the colors change to reflect the background:

 

 

 

...or when the center stripe color isn't the same as the background color (in the Braves' case, assume the stripes are white/navy/red/navy/white):

 

  

 

 

 

The "floating stripes" make it look like there's two different sets of asymmetrical stripes. It's just ugly to me, except for basketball trim and the inaugural Wild uniforms (even then, it was a transparent shoulder yoke). 

 

1 hour ago, oldschoolvikings said:

 

I'm sorry... although I have appreciated many of you're well though-out comments in the past, I'm afraid I must now declare you officially insane.  The Oilers' matching stripe patterns are the absolute pinnacle of football uniform design.  It's all been downhill since then.

 

Yeah, I'm not all that inclined to comment on football aesthetics, and comments like my ones above indicate that. It's OK to stir the pot once in the while, and my hatred of the Oilers' "classic" look is such a stir. I just hate how we praise them so much, when I really don't think they're that good. You tweaked the Oilers template to perfection, BTW:

 

 

Just put the classic oil derrick on that helmet, bring in block or Futura numbers, and you'd have a good example of consistent stripes. Please don't consider me insane.

 

1 hour ago, henburg said:

Yeah, I heavily disagree with pretty much all of this. All of those uniforms you posted are some of the best in football IMO. Also, how do the Wild pull off "floating stripes" better than the Oilers, the team who pretty much popularized them decades before the Wild even existed? 

 

I figured it'd be unpopular, but I really don't like the "floating stripes," for reasons I mentioned above. The Wild pulled it off because of an overall "dark" aesthetic, and because it tied into their primary logo:

 

 

A "wheat" or red yoke would have looked awful, but the "phantom" yoke fits. The floating stripes don't work for Florida and Ohio State because they have colors that lend themselves well to being a "center" color. Look at Florida's alternate helmet, and look at Ohio State's classic uniforms:

 

 

The Buckeyes could have done a Packers-style minimization of the stripes (white outlined in black at the center, flanked by two silver stripes outlined in black), but they went the ugly "floating" route. 

[oldschoolvikings]

8 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

Yeah, I'm not all that inclined to comment on football aesthetics, and comments like my ones above indicate that. It's OK to stir the pot once in the while, and my hatred of the Oilers' "classic" look is such a stir. I just hate how we praise them so much, when I really don't think they're that good. You tweaked the Oilers template to perfection, BTW:

 

 

Just put the classic oil derrick on that helmet, bring in block or Futura numbers, and you'd have a good example of consistent stripes. Please don't consider me insane.

 

 

You are too kind, good sir.

 

And I promise I don't really consider you insane.  I meant to add a smiley face... allow me to do it now.