The Lost History of the NFL: A Throwback Concept Series

[MDGP]

15 hours ago, fortunat1 said:

So glad that I found this series. I love all of the jerseys so far, as well as the idea behind it all. I always appreciated the usage of shapes and patterns in place of logos on football uniforms, as well as old school brown pants, so this thread has quickly become a favorite of mine.

 

The Dolphins, Seahawks, and Ravens stick out as favorites so far. I look forward to seeing how you continue the series, as you've been able to do so much with vintage/traditional designs.

Thanks for the comment, fortunat, I'm glad you're enjoying the series! Miami is probably my favorite of the ones I've unveiled so far as well. Though, I've been trying to balance unique and traditional designs, so there are a few waiting in the wings I think can give it a run for its money.

[MDGP]

 

Packers: The 1933 Green Bay Packers were very good... against everyone not named the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. The Packers were a combined 5-2-1 against other teams but a dismal 0-5 against the two NFL Championship Game participants. While this season is on the whole pretty forgettable, I chose this jersey for the specific reason that this jersey matchup actually happened twice during that season, and I'm a sucker for throwback games featuring actual matchups. The look is simple, a plain navy blue jersey with yellow numbers, tan leather pants, and a faux leather helmet sporting a design reminiscent of blue spokes (think the bruins logo) on a yellow background. This jersey is modeled by 7 time first team all-pro, two time NFL champion, and NFL/College Football Hall of Famer, Clarke Hinkle.

 

Bears: This Bears jersey was worn for exactly one season, and only 4 times overall. So why did I pick this jersey? I chose it because this was the jersey worn during the Bears' victory in the first ever NFL Championship game, and such important football history deserves to be remembered. The jersey features the traditional bears road sleeve striping pattern, three separated blue-orange-blue stripes, but with orange block numerals. The fabled Bears' orange pants make an appearance as well, paired with navy blue socks with three thin orange stripes. Finally, the look is rounded out with a blue and orange version of the Michigan/Princeton helmet. It wouldn't truly be a Bears design from the 1930s if it were modeled by anybody but Bronko Nagurski.

 

 

Vikings: We're back in the 50s for this Vikings design inspired by the prevalence of home jersey designs with no white during the era (Packers, Steelers, Lions, etc.), and the potential that the Vikings color rush jerseys didn't live up to. Here, they wear a purple jersey with yellow numbers and yellow northwestern stripes, acting as a predecessor to their 1960s jerseys. The pants are plain yellow and paired with socks that match the sleeve design. Helmet logos were almost non-existent in 1954, only the Baltimore Colts featured a traditional logo on the back of their helmets. However, the Eagles and Rams had their famous wings and horns, so I took inspiration from those designs with the Vikings traditional horned helmets. This design features a simple yellow horn across the side of the purple helmet, extending to the facemask area, similar to the eagles wing design.

 

Lions: Our next jersey celebrates a strange quirk of 1950s jersey designs. The Lions were not unaccustomed to a white jersey with blue northwestern stripes and numbers over silver pants with a silver helmet. This was the team's basic look (with variation) for about 4 decades starting in the late 1950s. However, the Lions did wear this jersey for a single game during the 1954 season due to a clash of blues. And during that game some players wore silver helmets while others wore gold. What was the purpose behind this? Well, it was an manufacturing error. The helmets were in fact originally silver, but after being used for multiple years, either the plastic or a resin covering the plastic turned yellow, a very common phenomenon in both materials. However, the raised center stripe was made from a different material, and did not show this effect. This caused the helmets to appear gold with silver stripes down the center. Ultimately, the team would fix the helmets within a few years, and the Lions would not need to wear white until after said fix was made. Because I enjoy this quirk, the Lions are outfitted with a gold helmet and silver stripe. The jersey is modeled by 3 time NFL champion and one of the early greats of the secondary, Jack Christiansen.

[Section30]

Love the vintage horns for the Vikings

[MDGP]

Today we head back to the AFC South

 

 

Texans: One of the things that can get lost in these types of concept series is the fact that it was very common to see plain jerseys during the 20s-40s. The Texans, until about two weeks ago, have always had a very traditional uniform, so they seemed like a perfect candidate to simplify even more, sporting a plain navy blue jersey with plain white pants and plain navy blue socks. The helmet holds all the design details, featuring red bull horns that would act as a slight precursor to the Rams' and Eagles' helmets and a lone white star on the front of the helmet. There weren't any pro teams in the late 40s who sported a from helmet logo, but there had been teams in previous season who did sport one, so it's plausible that a team might try to revive the idea.

 

Jaguars: The Jaguars sport a pretty traditional 1940s look with albeit with an nontraditional color. Here, the look uses a black-teal-black northwestern stripe on the sleeves with teal numbers. While white jerseys were still relatively rare at the time, the teams that did wear white almost always wore socks matching the number colors, so here the socks are teal with a white-black-white northwestern stripe. Hey, remember when the Jaguars wore the ugliest helmet in NFL history with the harsh split gold and black gradient? Well in this world that helmet was a callback to the team's classic look of the 1940s! This type of two-tone helmet featuring a sort of circle of color on the sides with a different color top was worn by the Philadelphia Eagles throughout the 1940s.

 

 

Titans: The Tennessee titans own the double blue look in the NFL, which is why thanks to wanton mismanagement, the currently barely wear one of the colors. I really wanted to focus on emphasizing the double blue, giving both colors a chance to stand out, much like the Titans of the 90s-2010s. Here, they sport a powder blue jersey with a thick double stripe that had been word on a few occasions by a few teams. The look was never a staple, but it showed up enough that I felt comfortable using it. I debated going with white pants, but ultimately chose brown leather to further emphasize the late 20s early 30s look I was going for. Finally, the helmet features a Navy and Light Blue variation of the Michigan helmet with the stripes being cut off about halfway down the helmet, a design choice that was not uncommon at the time.

 

Colts: This is the second and final jersey inspired by the original AFL of this series. American Football was still figuring out its aesthetic during the 1920s and early 1930s, and as a result, there were some pretty loud designs mixed in with what would eventually become the aesthetic we know and love today. I wanted to use the colts to show that variety in one package. First, the jersey features blue raglan sleeves with contrasting white sleeve stripes. This takes its cues from teams like the sleeves of the Green Bay Packers, the Rochester Tigers, and the New York (football) Yankees. The blue pants were inspired by the rapid shift from brown to color pants by teams like the Cincinnati (football) Reds, Brooklyn (football) Dodgers, and the St. Louis Gunners. By 1940, color/white pants were the standard, and only Green Bay and Washington would wear brown leather style pants through the 40s. Finally, the helmet once again is inspired by the helmets of original AFL teams. This felt fitting as the Colts were the first team in NFL history to place their logo on the sides of their helmet (I am not including the Rams or Eagles helmet designs as logos).

[mcrosby]

Great stuff here. I've gotta hurry up with my series before you beat me to all these great ideas. 

[RSL1]

These throwbacks are really awesome!

[logo-maker]

1 hour ago, MDGP said:

Today we head back to the AFC South

 

 

Texans: One of the things that can get lost in these types of concept series is the fact that it was very common to see plain jerseys during the 20s-40s. The Texans, until about two weeks ago, have always had a very traditional uniform, so they seemed like a perfect candidate to simplify even more, sporting a plain navy blue jersey with plain white pants and plain navy blue socks. The helmet holds all the design details, featuring red bull horns that would act as a slight precursor to the Rams' and Eagles' helmets and a lone white star on the front of the helmet. There weren't any pro teams in the late 40s who sported a from helmet logo, but there had been teams in previous season who did sport one, so it's plausible that a team might try to revive the idea.

 

Jaguars: The Jaguars sport a pretty traditional 1940s look with albeit with an nontraditional color. Here, the look uses a black-teal-black northwestern stripe on the sleeves with teal numbers. While white jerseys were still relatively rare at the time, the teams that did wear white almost always wore socks matching the number colors, so here the socks are teal with a white-black-white northwestern stripe. Hey, remember when the Jaguars wore the ugliest helmet in NFL history with the harsh split gold and black gradient? Well in this world that helmet was a callback to the team's classic look of the 1940s! This type of two-tone helmet featuring a sort of circle of color on the sides with a different color top was worn by the Philadelphia Eagles throughout the 1940s.

 

 

Titans: The Tennessee titans own the double blue look in the NFL, which is why thanks to wanton mismanagement, the currently barely wear one of the colors. I really wanted to focus on emphasizing the double blue, giving both colors a chance to stand out, much like the Titans of the 90s-2010s. Here, they sport a powder blue jersey with a thick double stripe that had been word on a few occasions by a few teams. The look was never a staple, but it showed up enough that I felt comfortable using it. I debated going with white pants, but ultimately chose brown leather to further emphasize the late 20s early 30s look I was going for. Finally, the helmet features a Navy and Light Blue variation of the Michigan helmet with the stripes being cut off about halfway down the helmet, a design choice that was not uncommon at the time.

 

Colts: This is the second and final jersey inspired by the original AFL of this series. American Football was still figuring out its aesthetic during the 1920s and early 1930s, and as a result, there were some pretty loud designs mixed in with what would eventually become the aesthetic we know and love today. I wanted to use the colts to show that variety in one package. First, the jersey features blue raglan sleeves with contrasting white sleeve stripes. This takes its cues from teams like the sleeves of the Green Bay Packers, the Rochester Tigers, and the New York (football) Yankees. The blue pants were inspired by the rapid shift from brown to color pants by teams like the Cincinnati (football) Reds, Brooklyn (football) Dodgers, and the St. Louis Gunners. By 1940, color/white pants were the standard, and only Green Bay and Washington would wear brown leather style pants through the 40s. Finally, the helmet once again is inspired by the helmets of original AFL teams. This felt fitting as the Colts were the first team in NFL history to place their logo on the sides of their helmet (I am not including the Rams or Eagles helmet designs as logos).

 

For your Indianapolis Colts concept, I feel like it's a missed opportunity to turn the horse shoe on the helmet sideways to create a 'C' on the front or is that too on the nose.

[Bomba Tomba]

5 hours ago, logo-maker said:

 

For your Indianapolis Colts concept, I feel like it's a missed opportunity to turn the horse shoe on the helmet sideways to create a 'C' on the front or is that too on the nose.

I've always wanted to see them do that in real life and have the Bears use the bear head (to reduce confusion)

 

But then again, I'm the kind of person who spits in the face of tradition, so it admittedly would be an unpopular move

[MDGP]

23 hours ago, mcrosby said:

Great stuff here. I've gotta hurry up with my series before you beat me to all these great ideas. 

 

Hey, thanks! I've been following your series (haven't had the chance to really sit down and write out C+C for it yet, so get ready for a single post about 10 teams at some point, haha) and I've definitely like what I've seen so far (particularly the Ravens throwback), and am definitely excited to see where you go with the remaining teams.

 

 

22 hours ago, logo-maker said:

 

For your Indianapolis Colts concept, I feel like it's a missed opportunity to turn the horse shoe on the helmet sideways to create a 'C' on the front or is that too on the nose.

 

I actually didn't go with the sideways C for a few reasons. First, I honestly have never liked any of the C-horseshoe concepts I've seen in the past. To me it comes across like adding extra meaning to a logo that doesn't need it while also ignoring that the U arrangement has its own historical meaning with superstition and luck. The second reason is that kind of easter egg style of design wasn't at all prevalent during that time period. The popular style of art during the earliest years of the NFL wasn't remotely what it was today; team logos were much closer to lithographs and heraldic crests than anything we think of as modern logos. Teams were more likely to be depicted like this:

 

 

And where teams did have more simplified logos, they tended to be really simple about it. Logos with hidden features or meaning within a meaning really didn't become prevalent until corporate design started taking over during the 1960s and 1970s. That's where you start to see the boom of teams like the Colt 45s, the Whalers, the Flames, etc. start to incorporate those elements a lot more. So going with a C-style horseshoe felt too anachronistic to me.

[MDGP]

Alright, back to the Buffalo Bills' least favorite division, the NFC East! The AFC South was all concepts last time, so we're gonna start off with a real one today.

 

 

Commanders: As I've noted before, the 1930s experienced arguably the biggest boom in experimentation of the football jersey, for good and for bad. The era set the modern standard for the football uniform, but also whatever the the hell Boston (pre-relocation) was wearing. The original version featured a native american head logo on the chest. Because I wanted to follow modern NFL numbering rules and in general wanted to avoid the whole controversy in general, that was replaced with yellow front numbers to match the back numbers. Otherwise, this jersey is a faithful representation of one of the team's 1933 jerseys, featuring two yellow and black sleeve stripes with mismatching socks stripes (two yellow stripes). I'll never understand what teams were going for with the helmet design other than it feels a lot like when people new to concepts just use the fill tool to color different panels on a jersey, but it is what it is and it stays.

 

Giants: The Giants are known for their simple blue uniforms these days, but early on they had no real idea what they wanted to look like. This jersey is an anachronistic take on the team's 1929-1930 jerseys. Those jerseys were entirely blue on the front with a white back and circular brown leather patches on the sides of the torso. However, I decided that by making the front white and leaving the shoulders and sides blue, the look could take on a pretty solid away jersey. The brown side panels remain alongside brown pants and a faux leather helmet. And to top it all off, the socks are red with a white and blue triple stripe, because cohesion just wasn't a thing anyone seemed to care about back in the day.

 

 

Cowboys: If the 1930s were a time of experimentation, the 1920s were a time of trying to actually figure out what the hell a uniform was in the first place. One of the less common, but certainly prevalent designs was the horizontal half and half jersey. These jerseys looked exactly like they sounded, the top half was one color (usually white) and the bottom half was a different color. Luckily, the modern jersey actually works pretty well to incorporate that design style while not looking at all out of place. I've demonstrated this idea on the cowboys. Here, the top of of the jersey is silver, covering the sleeves, shoulder yoke, and collar, while the bottom half is navy blue. It also wasn't uncommon for jerseys of the time to include superfluous stripes as well, so I added a white stripe between the two halves. Because this was an early 20s design, both the helmet and pants are a faux leather brown.

 

Eagles: The Philadelphia Eagles are one of the oldest teams having existed almost since the league's founding... Almost. That decade period before the Eagles were officially founded gave me the opportunity to do a concept for the Eagles. During the earliest days of the league, teams sometimes went the hockey route and slapped a logo on the chest. One of those teams was the Columbus Panhandlers, who wore a keystone on their chest. This design seemed like the perfect fit for a team actually from the keystone state (the panhandlers were a team of rail workers working on the panhandle railroad owned by a Pennsylvania rail company, so it actually makes sense). I also had to bring back the Eagles' iconic original color scheme by depicting a light blue keystone on a yellow jersey. Within the keystone, the front number is depicted in white, and the back number is depicted in blue. While the original keystone logo was small, I needed to increase its size in order to fit a number on the front as well (similar to the packers' circle jersey). Small, numerous sleeve and sock stripes were also common during the era, so the sleeves and socks both feature blue stripes on a yellow background. Finally, the pants are a darker faux leather brown paired with a yellow helmet.

[MDGP]

Chiefs: There are only so many ways I can talk about the 30s being a time of experimentation before it starts getting stale. During the time period two variations of stripes came to the forefront to join the triple stripe: the northwestern stripe, and the double stripe. By and large the northwestern stripe won out, and the double stripe would disappear for awhile, never gaining the same popularity of its three striped cousins upon reappearing. For the Chiefs I wanted to try something a bit different from reality be combining the two ideas together, resulting in a double stripe with one thicker stripe on top and one thinner stripe below. I actually like the outcome a lot, and think that even though this stripe didn't actually exist, it fits pretty well next to real designs of the era. The helmet takes a novel approach to the old school triple stripe look (Think Michigan but without the wings, it was a very common variation). Here, the middle stripe extends all the way to the back, but the other stripes are cut off right about where a helmet wing would stop. I also added two more stripes on either side of the helmet that are cut off as well. Those who are familiar with my old concepts may recognize this as a similar design to the "arrow hitting target" I did a few years ago for Kansas City.

 

Broncos: Side panels were extremely popular during the 1930s and 40s, so it only seemed right that the team who revived the side panel look during the 90s and 2000s would get an old school version. This one isn't much more than a recolor of the Philadelphia Eagles look from the era, but this is in line with so many teams wearing the same template with different colors (or the same colors even).

 

 

Raiders: The Raiders are obviously famous for their iconic black and silver color scheme, however their original scheme. However, I decided I wanted to try an idea for this match up inspired by the Los Angeles Rams and Dallas Cowboys, who both famously did not wear their famous secondary color for a period of years. The Raiders look takes inspiration from the team's original black and yellow look, removing all traces of yellow to create a very stark, clean look that fits the raiders well.

 

Chargers: For the chargers I decided to go with Royal Blue and White. While Navy blue would've fit the NFL better during that era, teams in college and the CFL were wearing a lighter shade of blue at the time, so this look isn't particularly out of place in the grand scheme of the sport. Rather than go with a simple triple stripe, I experimented with creating a proto-bolt design on the sleeve, turning the middle stripe into a lightning bolt, echoing the Chargers' famous shoulder stripes. The helmet also features a proto-bolt idea, with a bolt extending from the front of the helmet similar to the Eagles' wing helmet.

[MDGP]

Things have been a little too down to earth, let's get weird with it today.

 

 

Buccaneers: The Buccaneers brand takes much of its inspiration from Spanish privateers of the 1600s. The jersey features an orange chest stripe on a red jersey, inspired by spain's yellow and red flag. One of the great things about their pewter helmets and pants is that they translate perfectly to faux leather pants and helmets.

 

Carolina: It's been a while since I've used the old school leather strips design on a team. Carolina features these strips in light blue, arranged in a manner to form a crown, based on Charlotte's nickname, the Queen City, and logo, a crown. While the original version of this jersey would've been all light blue, the modern version includes a black front number to improve visibility as well as incorporate the Panthers' other primary color. The helmet design features panther ears on each side of the helmet in place of an old school wings. While a panther is famously black, I decided to go with white ears, as in many cases actual animal colors were completely ignores (see: Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles). Finally, there's been a lot of dark brown for pants, but there was actually some variation during the earliest days of the game, with some teams opting for a more tan color for their pants.

 

 

Saints: They're not going to get more over the top than this one from here on out. The Saints take most of inspiration not from American Football, but from Rugby. More specifically I wanted a design inspired by Harlequins' four quarter jersey design. Functionally, this wouldn't be entirely out of the realm of possibility in the NFL, as multiple teams wore horizontally halved jerseys and at least one team wore a vertically halved jerseys. I just combined the two ideas for quadrants. Here, the saints pair the traditional gold and black with green and purple for a full mardi gras color scheme. The bottom left quadrant contains purple, the top right quadrant green, and the other two quadrants black. The numbers are Clarendon in gold and feature shoulder numbers, a purposeful anachronism (I don't know why, but I've always enjoyed throwback mistakes like the 94-95 49ers). The helmet features a wing style inspired by the famous three pronged jester hats, each colored in purple, black, and green respectively on the gold helmet.

 

Falcons: The Falcons bring us back down to earth with a considerably more traditional design. Pairing shoulder yokes and sleeve stripes wasn't uncommon in the 1920s, and I felt combining the two would work with the Falcons' color scheme. The jersey features a red shoulder yoke with red sleeves contrasting the white jersey. On the sleeves is an alternating black, white, and red sleeve pattern that, if the sleeves were long like during the actual era, would repeat to the sleeve cuff. The socks while also red, feature a different stripe pattern with black and red stripes eventually meeting the black, white, red stripe pattern at the bottom of the sock. Both the helmet and pants are very traditional to the era; the pants are a light tan while the helmet is painted with black on top and red on the bottom.

[Section30]

That split Saints set is probably my favorite from this whole series. I'm also a big fan of the Bucs set.

[Coiler]

I love the yellow-blue Eagles  take and all of your Falcons ones.

[DCarp1231]

On 5/7/2024 at 1:09 PM, MDGP said:

Today we head back to the AFC South

 

 

Texans: One of the things that can get lost in these types of concept series is the fact that it was very common to see plain jerseys during the 20s-40s. The Texans, until about two weeks ago, have always had a very traditional uniform, so they seemed like a perfect candidate to simplify even more, sporting a plain navy blue jersey with plain white pants and plain navy blue socks. The helmet holds all the design details, featuring red bull horns that would act as a slight precursor to the Rams' and Eagles' helmets and a lone white star on the front of the helmet. There weren't any pro teams in the late 40s who sported a from helmet logo, but there had been teams in previous season who did sport one, so it's plausible that a team might try to revive the idea.

 

Jaguars: The Jaguars sport a pretty traditional 1940s look with albeit with an nontraditional color. Here, the look uses a black-teal-black northwestern stripe on the sleeves with teal numbers. While white jerseys were still relatively rare at the time, the teams that did wear white almost always wore socks matching the number colors, so here the socks are teal with a white-black-white northwestern stripe. Hey, remember when the Jaguars wore the ugliest helmet in NFL history with the harsh split gold and black gradient? Well in this world that helmet was a callback to the team's classic look of the 1940s! This type of two-tone helmet featuring a sort of circle of color on the sides with a different color top was worn by the Philadelphia Eagles throughout the 1940s.

 

 

Titans: The Tennessee titans own the double blue look in the NFL, which is why thanks to wanton mismanagement, the currently barely wear one of the colors. I really wanted to focus on emphasizing the double blue, giving both colors a chance to stand out, much like the Titans of the 90s-2010s. Here, they sport a powder blue jersey with a thick double stripe that had been word on a few occasions by a few teams. The look was never a staple, but it showed up enough that I felt comfortable using it. I debated going with white pants, but ultimately chose brown leather to further emphasize the late 20s early 30s look I was going for. Finally, the helmet features a Navy and Light Blue variation of the Michigan helmet with the stripes being cut off about halfway down the helmet, a design choice that was not uncommon at the time.

 

Colts: This is the second and final jersey inspired by the original AFL of this series. American Football was still figuring out its aesthetic during the 1920s and early 1930s, and as a result, there were some pretty loud designs mixed in with what would eventually become the aesthetic we know and love today. I wanted to use the colts to show that variety in one package. First, the jersey features blue raglan sleeves with contrasting white sleeve stripes. This takes its cues from teams like the sleeves of the Green Bay Packers, the Rochester Tigers, and the New York (football) Yankees. The blue pants were inspired by the rapid shift from brown to color pants by teams like the Cincinnati (football) Reds, Brooklyn (football) Dodgers, and the St. Louis Gunners. By 1940, color/white pants were the standard, and only Green Bay and Washington would wear brown leather style pants through the 40s. Finally, the helmet once again is inspired by the helmets of original AFL teams. This felt fitting as the Colts were the first team in NFL history to place their logo on the sides of their helmet (I am not including the Rams or Eagles helmet designs as logos).

That Texans helmet could arguably be used full time IRL

[MDGP]

 

Browns: Until the one helmet rule was scrapped, the Browns' recent alternate uniforms have been pretty underwhelming, the brown and orange color rush jerseys and a plain brown jersey, both without any white. I took some inspiration from both of those designs, altering them to fit an early 20s aesthetic. These jerseys feature six vertical orange stripes as a nod to some of the simpler leather strip looks of the day. The sixth stripes themselves represent an early nickname for Cleveland, "The Sixth City" so named for being the 6th largest city in the US at the time. The socks also feature six thinner stripes. Finally, I chose white for the name and numbers because I think the legibility of orange on brown kind of sucks.

 

Ravens: I'll be honest, my Ravens designs in this series are all pretty subdued. Concepts for any team in Baltimore always seem to be loud and based on the state flag, and I kinda recoil at that. For this design each team color gets its own piece of the jersey, a quirk most famously used by the Giants, but not at all uncommon throughout league history. The helmet is plain black. Helmets in the earliest days were generally either a brown stain color or a single painted color, and it would not be until the turn of the 30s that more ornate designs would become the norm. The jersey goes all in on thin horizontal stripes, featuring four on the chest and two on each sleeve (were these long sleeve they would extend all the way down). The chest number takes a cue form northwestern and uses a white outline to separate the stripes and the number. Gold makes its appearance on the khaki faux leather pants, and also acts as a reminder of that one time the Ravens tried the look. As with any good early NFL design, the socks don't follow any of the rules I set above and feature black stripes on purple socks.

 

 

Steelers: The Batman uniform returns on a modern template! Here it is modeled by Ben McGee, and pretty good player on a real bad team.

 

Bengals: If the 1930s were the first golden age of uniform experimentation, the 1960s were the start of the second golden age. While most teams had pretty standard looks, the founding of the AFL brought about some new ideas to a jersey game that had stagnated a bit in the previous decade. Helmet logos were the standard rather than an oddity, the chargers broke out their lightning bolts, and stripes outside of the most traditional triple stripes reappeared. The Bengals design is inspired by this wave of change. As always with the Bengals, stripes are the name of the game, but here we're going with a less direct tiger representation. The jersey includes striped sleeves, partially inspired by the shoulder stripe/sleeve stripe combo sported by the Eagles during the mid-60s and into the 70s. The helmet takes the city flag of Cincinnati and and alters it to be a wraparound helmet stripe (the wavy lines are also straightened) in a sort of proto-Seahawks look (Obviously they would not exit until 1976, but sometimes I like to imagine one of these teams inventing the idea prior). The pants feature a single version of the sleeves and helmet stripe, and orange stripe outlined in black. Finally, the socks invert the look, with three white stripes with black outlines on an orange background.

[MDGP]

The last time the NFC West mostly consisted of real designs, so today we're gonna reverse that.

 

 

49ers: This design for the 49ers is simple but features notable nods to the team and the City of San Francisco. The jersey is red with an alternating gold and red shoulder yoke, a design style you may be most familiar with via the Michigan Wolverines' throwback jerseys. This yoke design is directly inspired by San Francisco's most famous landmark, with the four gold portions on each sleeve inspired by the openings of the suspension towers on the Golden Gate Bridge. The helmet's wing and stripe design is inspired by the team name utilizing longer, thinner wings to form a pickaxe.

 

Cardinals: The Cardinals are the only team in the NFL that existed in the 1800s, so there obviously are not going to be any fictional concepts for them. This design was worn during the 1929 and 1930 seasons. The original version was a half split design that I moved up to the shoulders to better fit modern design principles. Otherwise this is a very straightforward recreation, with 4 stripes on the very bottom of the sleeves and mismatching triple striped socks. The helmet, like others in the series features a faint leather helmet design in the team's earlier darker maroon color. Duke Slater, the NFL's first black lineman and reminder that Iowa's O-Line prowess is as old as the game itself, models this design.

 

 

Seahawks: No way to beat around the bush on this one, the Seattle Seahawks get a flannel design. It may not seem like it, but this simple green plaid design does in fact take inspiration from another team. It just happens to be a team from a different sport, in a city across the country, worn 4 years before the NFL even existed. In 1916 the New York Baseball Giants were decked out in purple wearing a pattern extremely similar to this design. The design was extremely short lived and never saw the field, but I've actually always liked it and think it could work if tastefully done. So naturally I used it for a stereotype design for a pacific northwest team. All numbers and letters are silver and the pants and helmet both use a dark brown to represent faux leather and the general woodsy vibe of the whole look.

 

Rams: The Rams have a jersey directly inspired by everyone's two favorite 1920s weirdos, the Duluth Eskimos and the Dayton Triangles. The overall jersey design takes inspiration from Duluth's final jerseys, which featured blue raglan sleeves with thick sleeve stripes on a white jersey. Here, the stripes are recolored yellow to match the Rams Color Scheme. The front of the jersey features a yellow version of the ever popular triangle design inspired by Dayton's on-again off-again use of the shape on their jerseys. However, I added a twist, incorporating a stylized LA into the design as seen in the bottom corner. I also decided to really lean into the blue and round out the look with blue pants and a plain blue helmet. Finally, the socks feature two blue stripes on a white base matching the style of the sleeve stripes but ignoring a potential color match, a staple of 20s NFL design.

[verbi]

big fan of the seahawks and rams designs for these

[raz]

Kinda think the pickaxe should point down, not up. Also, what does the other side of that Bengals helmet look like? 

[MDGP]

20 hours ago, raz said:

Kinda think the pickaxe should point down, not up. Also, what does the other side of that Bengals helmet look like? 

 

The reason I think the pick axe needs to be arranged the way I have is because the pick axe design is actually the entire red portion, with the stripe as the handle and the wing as the pick. Basically, the top of the axe is at the front of the helmet and the bottom is the back. If I were to flip the wings down, then the pick would be upside down in relation to the handle.

 

Regarding the Bengals helmet, I personally would just reverse it and have the C be backwards in the same manner that on the flag of Cincinnati the reverse side of the flag has the backwards C. However, I also realize that would drive a lot of people mad, so I designed a version that would basically mimick the right side of the flag, with the lines meeting at the mouth of the C. Obviously in this case the sides wouldn't be perfect mirrors of each other, but that isn't totally out of the ordinary on NFL helmets.