VyCade's NFL Team Uniform Rework Project (Complete)

[VyCade]

Welcome!

 

I've been working on my own version of every NFL team's uniform for some time now, and now that they're finished, I'd like to share them with others who enjoy concepts like I do.  I'm not going to have any rules about how many sets each team can have, so some teams will have three alternates while some will have zero.  It really just depends on what I thought of in the moment when I made them.  I'll be ordering these by nickname since that's what I'm familiar with because of all the Madden '05 and NFL Street 2 I played when I was a kid, and I should be uploading decently frequently since these are all done already.  That said, I hope you like what you see in this thread.  Let's get started.

 

(1/32) Chicago Bears

 

Not a whole lot I wanted to change with the Bears.  I did change the helmet to include their bear logo though.  I didn't wanna get rid of the C entirely because of how much of a huge staple it is, but I find it not to be exciting enough.  I feel like the branding of the Bears leaning more into the ferocity of their namesake would be good for them.  Outside of the helmet, I aimed to fix the consistency issue that their uniforms have.  You're gonna hear me talk about consistency a lot throughout the course of these posts, by the way.  I think inconsistency between a kit's home and away sets is just bad uniform design (looking at you, Giants).  For the Bears, I opted to take the pattern from their aways, set that as the universal scheme, and went from there.

 

[VyCade]

(2/32) Cincinatti Bengals

 

On to the Bengals now, and changes need to be made.  Granted, the Bengals' uniforms aren't bad in terms of consistency or colors or even the general idea, but there's an issue: Balance.  The distribution of orange within the different sets can be fine at times, but is often completely lopsided.  Take their default road set, for example.  It has a white jersey and white pants, but the only instances of orange to be found anywhere are the chest wordmark, Nike logos, and number outlines.  Obviously the helmet, too, but not even the names have an orange outline.  Then, you get their orange alternates, which have a default set with the opposite problem.  It would make sense to use the pants from their aways with it to balance things out, but they tend to opt for the other white pants they have where the stripes are orange.  Combine that with their helmet and this results in a set that's about one degree of separation away from a color rush design.

 

Knowing all of this, I wanted to avoid having the final product feel like one color's presence was dominating the other.  I also melded elements from each of their three most recent kits together.  This is the result.  The striping patterns are based on the current kit, but the way they're implemented and how the colors are balanced are heavily inspired by the Ickey Woods-era uniforms.  On top of that, the font is from the Chad Johnson days.  I also included a kit with no orange at all, since we do see the rare white Bengal tiger every now and then.

[VyCade]

(3/32) Buffalo Bills

 

I don't think the Bills should've changed the colors of their helmets back to white.  Their red helmets, while more of a practical measure when first implemented, ended up playing host to the franchises biggest successes.  Four straight Super Bowls showcased those red helmets and--while their success is seeing an upturn in recent years--it still bugs me whenever I see them with white helmets.  I also think the current kit doesn't have enough red in general.  To me, the Bills' color identity relies more on red than any of the other teams that have red and blue as their colors.  Maybe that's just me, but it's not like I'm making the jerseys red or anything.  Besides that, I imagine some people would want the old standing buffalo back.  I can understand that, but the current logo is a lot more dynamic and feels like it makes much more sense as a helmet logo than one that's just...mulling around.

[VyCade]

(4/32) Denver Broncos

 

As much as I love the Broncos' Orange Crush jerseys, I don't think orange should be their primary color.  Much like the Bills, the history of the team plays a big role here.  The antithesis to the Bills' red helmets, the Broncos' orange jerseys have spelled postseason disaster in many situations, especially in Super Bowls.  I don't think Peyton Manning has ever been more brutally beaten in the postseason and I KNOW there's never been a bigger Super Bowl deficit than the 45 points Denver lost to San Francisco by.  Combine that with John Elway finally winning it all the FIRST YEAR they started wearing blue at home and won that game IN that blue, and the choice is clear to me.

 

Don't get me wrong, though.  All of that isn't to say there's no value in that orange as an alternate.  There definitely is, but blue needs to be front and center.  However, I don't like the navy they currently use and decided to revert them back to the proper royal blue from back in the day.  I also created something of a hybrid logo for the helmet.  It's essentially the classic logo, but with the current font used for the D and the current bronco coming out of it.  I've found that, while their very rarely seen full-body horse logo is terrible (you can find it on the site if you're unfamiliar), the upper half of it works fine by itself.

[VyCade]

(5/32) Cleveland Browns

 

Not much to do differently with the Browns.  Thankfully, they wised up and reverted their usual kit recently.  All I really changed was making the striping on the jersey consistent with the pants and helmet, adding a hip logo, and bringing back the old orange pants.  I didn't pair them with the aways, though.  It'd be too much orange without the home jersey's brown to balance it out.

[VyCade]

(6/32) Tampa Bay Buccaneers

 

I changed a decent bit with the Bucs, starting with the logo.  I removed the flag part of it because the flag being held up by a saber while already having crossed sabers on the flag is redundant.  I also added red pupils to the skull and adjusted the colors and shading to have more orange and make the sabers pewter.  Speaking of the pewter, I don't think it should have as much  of a presence as it does currently, so I made it more of an accent color.  There's still a decent bit of orange, as there was previously, and I've also added an orange alternate and adjusted the color of the helmet and the football in the logo accordingly.  As for the default helmet, I made it pure black because I thought that it looked like a cannon ball that way.

[VyCade]

(7/32) Arizona Cardinals

 

Around the mid-2000s, there became some strange fascination with piping in the NFL.  The Cardinals, the Jaguars, the Bills, they all had good-to-great uniforms at the turn of the century and ALL switched to their worst kits in franchise history before the end of the ensuing decade.  The latter two teams have at least attempted to course-correct since then, but the Cards have been using their current uniforms for 17 years, if you can believe that.  I guess they wanted to hold onto the memory of their one Super Bowl appearance, but the kit is trash.  This isn't the UFL, man.  Piping is old hat and was never good in the first place.

 

My soap box moment aside, the addition of black was also a bad idea from the start.  The shade of red Arizona uses is too dark for black to work with it, so I changed the scheme back to just red and white and removed the thick, black outline from their logo.  Another thing I did was make the Arizona flag a hip logo.  The flag being on the sleeve of their previous kit's aways had a certain charm, but it was a bit much, not to mention highly inconsistent with their home.  The hip logo is a simple nod that should feel less in-your-face compared to its original implementation.

[jbird669]

As a Broncos fan, your reasoning is spot on. I wish they'd use blue pants with their white jerseys. Actually, I'd prefer the orange pants, but I'd take the blue. 

[VyCade]

(8/32) Los Angeles Chargers

 

I'm of the opinion that the Chargers currently have the best uniforms in the NFL.  There is very little I would change.  All I did was remove the helmet numbers (that always felt like more of an NCAA thing to me) and adjusted the numbers to look like the wordmark seen in the image.  Also--and this might be a point of contention--I'm not fan of the yellow pants and chose not to include them.  Outside of those minor things, this kit rips.

[VyCade]

(9/32) Kansas City Chiefs

 

The Chiefs already do a lot right, so the changes for them are relatively minor.  I switched around the yellow and white/red for the stripes.  Made more sense to me that way, but it's probably a preference thing.  I also made it so the stripes aren't separate on the red pants like they are irl.  That always annoyed me.  The biggest change, though, is that I swapped the black in the logo for yellow.  I've never understood why so many teams have colors in their logos that aren't part of their scheme, so I went ahead and rectified that.

[shadyloaf]

For the Chiefs, the arrowhead on the helmet needs to face forward on both sides.

[VyCade]

6 hours ago, shadyloaf said:

For the Chiefs, the arrowhead on the helmet needs to face forward on both sides.

 

Somehow, I've never noticed this despite watching football for multiple decades, but you are indeed right, so I fixed that.

[shadyloaf]

Nice, yeah it's one of those weird idiosyncrasies with that logo. Ravens have the same weirdness. 

[VyCade]

(10/32) Indianapolis Colts

 

The Colts have a fantastic kit, probably my favorite in the NFL before the Chargers moved to their current set.  There wasn't much I wanted to change, but there was one thing:  The number of stripes.  When I think of the Colts, I'm reminded of Johnny Unitas and his iconic three-bar facemask that he wore.  Essentially, I maintained their current look while changing the number of stripes in each area of the uniform to 3.

[VyCade]

(11/32) Washington Commanders

 

I would've started this thread in, like, 2019 if I didn't spend multiple seasons waiting for Washington to pick a new name.  Now that they have, I find the kit they came up with to be...boring.  The jersey and pants are serviceable enough, but it's nothing special or particularly unique; and  the logo is just a slightly less simple W than they had before.  I get it if they wanna keep a W in there, but it doesn't have to be JUST a W.  Case in point, the logo I made.  Commander isn't actually a rank in every branch of the military, so the insignia that I used for the logo is from the Navy: An inverted star above three bars.  I then incorporated the bars into the rest of the uniform.  I also created a black alternate since that's honestly the best set in their irl kit, but I definitely did NOT put the logo on the front of the helmet like they did, 'cause that just looks straight goofy.

[VyCade]

(12/32) Dallas Cowboys

 

I got a little experimental with the Cowboys, adding red as an accent color, though not without reason.  I think it would make sense for the Cowboys to lean into the "America's Team" moniker that they've had for so long.  I tried to limit the red, as I don't want this to be too transformative, but I think it came out pretty nicely.

[VyCade]

(13/32) Miami Dolphins

 

The Dolphins never needed to modernize.  I don't necessarily hate any of the kits they used after ditching their classic look, but none of them were ever better than what they used to have.  The biggest thing I'm changing here is the logo.  The current dolphin looks better than the old one, but I don't think the sun in the background fits anymore.  Instead, the orange in the logo is now placed on the dolphin itself, replacing the other shades of green that are used to add shading to the logo.  This way, vertical space on the helmet is freed up for the logo to get bigger and the orange provides great contrast with the aqua.  I think the whole kit just pops more this way, as orange has a greater presence overall compared to what they wear now.

[VyCade]

(14/32) Philadelphia Eagles

 

The first thing the Eagles need is a return to the classic kelly green and silver.  After that, they need a more consistent look than they had when they last used that scheme.  This is what I came up with for that.  If you're wondering about the shoulders, I don't know if any of you remember when the Eagles wore their Frankford Yellow Jackets 75th anniversary throwbacks in 2008 (the one that I believe was voted ugliest in NFL history), they did something similar with the shoulders there.  I just adapted it into a less garish color scheme.

[Hawkeye15]

The little treatments on the Chargers numbers is great. I wonder if you could bump them up a little so they hit the number on the vertical bars, similar to how they do in the wordmark? For example, the H only has the stripe in the left leg. You might treat the number the same way, where only one of the two vertical bars gets the horizontal stripe. Great idea though.

 

I'm not as much a fan of the gray yoke on the Eagles jersey. There's just too much gray to green on the jersey. I do like the simplified wing on the helmet and the choice of kelly green.

[VyCade]

(15/32) Atlanta Falcons

 

The Falcons have their worst uniforms in team history right now.  The gradients are trash, it's brutally oversimplified, and the alternate that fades into the pants might be the worst set in the league, bar none.  I reintroduced silver as a minor accent and used their previous font.  I just didn't surround it with lame piping this time.  Beyond that, the only other thing of note is the logo change.  For some reason, outside the initial silver outline in the official logo is another, equally thick, white outline that really doesn't need to be there, so I got rid of it.