NFL 2023 Changes

[VikWings]

8 hours ago, buckeye said:

I get the nostalgia aspect of the navy helmet, but I just don't see how a mismatched helmet versus jersey is a better look. Give me this anytime.

 

This looks so much better aesthetically but for a throwback accuracy sake I prefer the navy. Now if they were to switch to them full time? Royal gloss all the way.

 

Same goes for the Vikings. I love how the throwback looks with the matte but it kinda bothers me their not using the old deeper purple at the same time.

[VikWings]

On 10/16/2023 at 7:51 PM, FiddySicks said:

This is a perfectly fair point. The current look is a cheap imitation of the first Super Bowl look, but I’m totally fine with that because the uniform set they won their first Super Bowl in is my favorite sports uniform of all time. Even a downgraded version of that is still better than the original 70s look that they were awful in, or the entire alarm clock disaster. 
 

My biggest gripe with the Bucs is that they “modernized” their flag and ship logos. The original flag is just a perfect logo, and again is the reason I’m as big of a Bucs fan as I am, and the reason why I’ve wasted so much of my life on this weird sports logos “hobby”. Both of the “upgraded” logos are enormous downgrades from the original, and is the one thing that was kept from the disastrous alarm clock era,  from which everything should’ve been incinerated and then stomped and spat on. 

 

On 10/16/2023 at 7:58 PM, ruttep said:

I'll be honest, I never even realized there was a difference. The original does look cleaner without all the silver/grey shoehorned in.

 

The old logo is definitely so much better, I remember when that came out when I was a kid I thought it was so cool and was in Disney world that season and made my parents buy me things with that logo on it at the wide world of sports. 

 

The old one actually looks like a pirate flag, the new one just looks like 'ask my corporate design team to come up with a pirate flag.' the gray outline is so unnecessary as well.

[The_Admiral]

4 hours ago, MCM0313 said:

I suspect being a laughingstock had more to do with being owned by Hugh Culverhouse. Other teams could have dressed in hot pink and called themselves the Unicorns, and they would still have run roughshod over Tampa. 

 

It's since been retconned into "creamsicle orange," but the Buccaneers wore basically the same color as the University of Tennessee and no one ever called the Vols [MOD EDIT], so I don't know why anyone ever entertained this "it's a soft color" deal.

 

Edited October 17, 2023 by officeglenn

[FiddySicks]

And I get the argument that the old logo was more “hokey” than the current one, but that was the point! That particular rebrand was such an all around win and such a big upgrade over the winking pirate that there are actually good parts of it that get ignored. But be of those is the continuity the logo upgrade had with the original aesthetic. The original logo was based off of an Errol Flynn/Captain Hook theme, and any time you try to brand something g around their look, it’s going to come across as inherently goofy. They had frills and feathers and silk and a bunch of other things that don’t really mesh with the attitude of football. So with the rebrand, they instead focused on the calligraphy, which was BRILLIANT. It evokes those old pirates without them actually having to appear. Yes it’s flat, it’s rigid, and it’s kind of hokey, but that’s what they were going for! 
 

The current logo, otoh, just looks like they tried to make the original flag look like a Chevy truck badge. It’s stupid, overly flashy, and just perfectly American, specially Florida American. I hate it. 

[Blast_Brothers]

I had always rationalized Tampa Bay's continued use of the new flag logo as "it's simpler, so it's better suited for digital/social media use", but seeing them side by side, I don't even really think that's the case. It's like they got rid of the weathered/textured look and then felt obligated to add visual noise back in somewhere else.

 

But I think the worst thing the Bucs could do their brand would be to pull a Miami and get a full throwback set instated as alternates. I feel like the Dolphins only pull it off because their normal and throwback sets aren't radically different from each other.

[Ark]

The creamsicle uniforms are just great, that shade of orange is beautiful.

 

So I wouldn't mind if they went back to the throwbacks full time. Especially because their early 2000s uniforms are better than their current uniforms and they aren't going back to those. 

[FiddySicks]

15 minutes ago, the admiral said:

Buccaneers wore basically the same color as the University of Tennessee and no one ever called the Vols a bunch of homos, so I don't know why anyone ever entertained this "it's a soft color" deal.

You definitely weren’t in my house after Manning lost to Florida for the fourth time, apparently. 
 

It’s not the colors. The reason I ever became a Bucs fan is because of the similarities to UT. It’s the creepy ass winking pirate, and the fact that it’s in two different shades of orange. When I was a kid, I legit could not make out the logo as a pirate. It just looked like a blob to me. Then one day it hit me what it was, and ngl, it felt somewhat unsettling. It’s like one of those hidden picture tricks where it’s a demon clownface hiding in plain sight in the fluffy bunnies fur or some :censored:. 

[ruttep]

1 hour ago, Blast_Brothers said:

I had always rationalized Tampa Bay's continued use of the new flag logo as "it's simpler, so it's better suited for digital/social media use", but seeing them side by side, I don't even really think that's the case. It's like they got rid of the weathered/textured look and then felt obligated to add visual noise back in somewhere else.

 

But I think the worst thing the Bucs could do their brand would be to pull a Miami and get a full throwback set instated as alternates. I feel like the Dolphins only pull it off because their normal and throwback sets aren't radically different from each other.

 

And because everyone knows that their throwbacks are significant upgrades on the main look. I think the creamsicles are an upgrade on the regular Bucs uniforms, but not by as much.

[tBBP]

Warning: long post/lots of replies incoming.

 

11 hours ago, pokecat12 said:

THANK YOU!!!!!! As much as I love them, they went to Pewter Power for a reason. The Pewter/Red dominant made a difference in their attitude. Just listen to Warren Sapp as he grew up with them down the road from his home in Orlando. The Yucks! If they make an appearance a couple times a year I'm happy. 

 

I'll let you hear this from someone who grew up with the creamsicles during the Yuc years: me, right there in the west Florida panhandle. Tampa was actually pretty good for about four seasons...It doesn't get talked about, but the Bucs were right back in the NFC title conversation just three years after their first. (And if not for a questionable penalty call, they actually may have beaten the Cowboys in that '82 playoff game.) But man did the bottom fall out just the next season; the season after that was McKay's swan song, and from 1985 on through about 1993, all you saw down in Tampa was yuc, yuc, and more yuc.

 

1993 is when the tide started to change, though it really didn't manifest until '97, the year of the big rebrand. Let me tell you...at first sight, young 10th-grade me didn't know what I was looking at when those new uniforms showed up on the 10pm news sports segment. Gray helmets and pants? (Nike's done a great job of leading the charge on completely ruining the novelty of this, but back in '97 dark gray helmets/pants were unthought of—AND they paired them with black cleats, which at that point had been out of vogue throughout most of the league.) That said, the first time I saw them on the field, I was sold..and that was it. (I think I remember those jerseys shooting straight to the top of the best-selling list for that season, as well.) Suffice it to say, the energy completely shifted down there in ways that you really had to just be there and have grown up with them to understand. 

 

11 hours ago, buckeye said:

I get the nostalgia aspect of the navy helmet, but I just don't see how a mismatched helmet versus jersey is a better look. Give me this anytime.

 

I legit wonder how the Giants haven't reverted to this as their primary away. I get the nostalgia of the Y.A. Tittle-era sets their current primaries emulate, but this look right here is it. (With the proper royal blue shell.) I think we're far-enough removed from 1998 that the GMen can reclaim these as their new primaries again.

 

11 hours ago, GFB said:

 

Nothing from the lips of Trent Dilfer requires serious consideration.

 

Well, dude did once say in a presser that he'd be the quarterback of a team when they won the Super Bowl. He wasn't wrong...just wasn't the team he originally said that about. (Hint: it's the team he somehow got voted into a Pro Bowl with...along with about half the dang squad.) But beyond that...yeah, no serious consideration. I agree with that. Dude should've stayed a color analyst; he was pretty good at that before he turned into Sean Salisbury 2.0.

 

11 hours ago, the admiral said:

I guess I'm the only person who believes in creamsicle orange full-time for the Buccaneers. Vivid colors are back in style, everyone loves wearing magenta suits on postgame shows, so wearing a garish football jersey should be no issue. The logo can use some Cardinals/Panthers fine-tuning, of course, and there's no reason to commit to all the other details of the '76 uniform, but it's a better team color to build a brand around than dark red and warm grey.

 

A few things:

 

YES, vivid colors are back in, have been for a while now. And that creamsicle orange is just too great a color to be mothballed. That said, we really should consider what a road set for the creamsicles in current fabrics/at all, and that's about the point where I lose interest. If they do a creamsicle road throwback, red numbers and white pants with proper orange socks are a MUST.

 

As for logo fine-tuning? Cardinals-esque, yes. Panthers-esque? HECK to the naw. That thing still looks like it's on a PCP/acid trip.

 

10 hours ago, oldschoolvikings said:

I understand why Bucs fans might not be crazy about the idea of  full time return to the bright orange, but am I the only one that has kind of soured on the current version of the pewter/red uniform?  I dunno, back in the early 2000's Tampa's original go-round  with this look was IMO about as perfect as an NFL uniform gets, but the new version is just kind... meh. I'm not entirely sure why, but Nike's absolutely terrible version of the pewter pants has a lot to do with it, I think.  The dark charcoal looks bad with the red jersey, but red over white is just bland. And the terminator skull will always be vastly inferior to the original pirate scrawled version of the logo.

 

The funny thing is I halfway agree with this...but I admit my nostalgia glasses are kinda tainting my perspective. For me, it's two things: the current roboticized logo (more on that below), and as you and others have noted, the too-darl pewter. (That color really needs dazzle fabric/metallic flake to really work like it should; the flat matte really doesn't do it.)

 

 

10 hours ago, BBTV said:

There's a member that was in the equipment business and explained the whole blue-colored helmet thing in great detail at some point.  Can't recall the username.

 

I don't remember his name, either, but from what I recall the variation in color had something to do with the plastic molding process. I don't remember much more than that, however.

 

6 hours ago, Lights Out said:

I've long thought that the Bucs could please everyone by simply swapping the prominence of orange and red in their current color scheme. In other words, orange and pewter with red trim instead of red and pewter with orange trim.

 

 

1 hour ago, FiddySicks said:

And I get the argument that the old logo was more “hokey” than the current one, but that was the point! That particular rebrand was such an all around win and such a big upgrade over the winking pirate that there are actually good parts of it that get ignored. But be of those is the continuity the logo upgrade had with the original aesthetic. The original logo was based off of an Errol Flynn/Captain Hook theme, and any time you try to brand something g around their look, it’s going to come across as inherently goofy. They had frills and feathers and silk and a bunch of other things that don’t really mesh with the attitude of football. So with the rebrand, they instead focused on the calligraphy, which was BRILLIANT. It evokes those old pirates without them actually having to appear. Yes it’s flat, it’s rigid, and it’s kind of hokey, but that’s what they were going for! 

 

We had Kurt Osaki to thank for that original rebrand, particularly the first version of the Jolly Roger logo. I've mentioned it several times on here, but dude had a certain Gothic comic-book illustration style about him, and it manifested in the '97 rebrand which, as you said, was BRILLIANT. 

 

(Fun fact: that same guy also gave us the Baltimore Ravens brand identity, and if you study the two closely enough side by side you'll see some of Osaki's style and touch laden throughout both.)

 

1 hour ago, FiddySicks said:

The current logo, otoh, just looks like they tried to make the original flag look like a Chevy truck badge. It’s stupid, overly flashy, and just perfectly American, specially Florida American. I hate it. 

 

As do I, and have hated it since it came out in 2013. It's like they (and by "they" I mean the swoosh folk) sucked all the soul out of it leaving this over-sanitized...thing left in it'd wake. I feel the same way about the current script mark, too...bring back the Totally Gothic for pete's sake!

[Old School Fool]

2 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

You definitely weren’t in my house after Manning lost to Florida for the fourth time, apparently. 
 

It’s not the colors. The reason I ever became a Bucs fan is because of the similarities to UT. It’s the creepy ass winking pirate, and the fact that it’s in two different shades of orange. When I was a kid, I legit could not make out the logo as a pirate. It just looked like a blob to me. Then one day it hit me what it was, and ngl, it felt somewhat unsettling. It’s like one of those hidden picture tricks where it’s a demon clownface hiding in plain sight in the fluffy bunnies fur or some :censored:. 

 

When I was a little kid, I thought the old Broncos D logo was some weird cartoon character swinging a bat. Yes, I'm serious. When someone can't make out what a logo is you know you screwed up and yet here I am a big fan of the Quebec Nordiques logo because it's so bizarrely stupid.

 

The problem I had with the Broncos logo probably would have been alleviated if they, you know, didn't "modernize" the logo in 1992 and ruin all definition it use to have.

 

See this? I know what this is.

 

 

 

And now this?  What were they thinking?

[Ark]

I thought the horse was shooting a laser beam. That was cool.

[PERRIN]

4 hours ago, ruttep said:

I'll be honest, I never even realized there was a difference. The original does look cleaner without all the silver/grey shoehorned in.

While it might take the rough linework too far in some places, this logo is easily one of my favorites of all time. The new logo sacrifices personality for an overly clean look that is simply inferior. Way too much silver, way too much detail, inconsistent stroke width, and  a more cartoonish skull. Super sad that they ever changed it.

[MCM0313]

2 hours ago, Old School Fool said:

 

When I was a little kid, I thought the old Broncos D logo was some weird cartoon character swinging a bat. Yes, I'm serious. When someone can't make out what a logo is you know you screwed up and yet here I am a big fan of the Quebec Nordiques logo because it's so bizarrely stupid.

 

The problem I had with the Broncos logo probably would have been alleviated if they, you know, didn't "modernize" the logo in 1992 and ruin all definition it use to have.

 

See this? I know what this is.

 

 

 

And now this?  What were they thinking?

I always thought the Broncos’ D logo was criminally underrated. The horse made it seem almost mythical, like something from a fairy tale or a medieval fantasy or a storybook. But I agree, the older version was definitely better. I hadn’t realized the early-1990s version was so different. 

[FiddySicks]

3 hours ago, Ark said:

I thought the horse was shooting a laser beam. That was cool.

I always thought it was someone taking one of those old mid evil lances and just sorta poking the horse in the nose with it. Like of course he’s rearing up all mad, someone is poking him in the face with a stick. 

[Ted Cunningham]

I go back and forth in my thoughts on the Buccaneers uniforms: Both looks, the original orange and the pewter/red, are solid. For both, it's more about what combinations they wear and how they wear them than any major design elements putting one above the other. When I conceptualize what the NFL would look like if I picked all the uniforms, I go back and forth on which look the Buccaneers would go with. All that to say, I think they're both solid, so I really don't care which way they would go, so long as they use them.

 

As for this logo vs. the current iteration:

 

 

Not only is this the superior mark (with its simpler, more consistent design employing a "ragged" look throughout), it's also fits the era from which it comes: the mid 90s. It feels similar to some styles of clipart that were popular then, especially in Office 97. It has a similar look to these:

 

 

 

While certainly not the same, these all evoke a certain current that was popular at that time.

[Sport]

10 hours ago, tBBP said:

 

As do I, and have hated it since it came out in 2013. It's like they (and by "they" I mean the swoosh folk) sucked all the soul out of it leaving this over-sanitized...thing left in it'd wake. I feel the same way about the current script mark, too...bring back the Totally Gothic for pete's sake!

 

I've said before the 97 logo is superior because it has a message, a point of view, a mise en scene, if you will. It looks like it was lifted off a treasure map. The update has none of that. It removes all the character and sterilizes it. It's genericizes it. It looks like someone took the 97 logo and changed it just enough for one of those crappy websites that sells stock logos. It looks like it was lifted off a party plate for a kid's pirate themed birthday party. It STINKS and I hate it.

[DCarp1231]

25 minutes ago, Sport said:

 

It looks like someone took the 97 logo and changed it just enough for one of those crappy websites that sells stock logos. It looks like it was lifted off a party plate for a kid's pirate themed birthday party. It STINKS and I hate it.

Interesting…

 

[Sport]

10 minutes ago, DCarp1231 said:

Interesting…

 

 

yeah that's totally what I meant

[BigBird34]

9 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

I always thought it was someone taking one of those old mid evil lances and just sorta poking the horse in the nose with it. Like of course he’s rearing up all mad, someone is poking him in the face with a stick. 

We had a Broncos helmet wall clock that we got after the Elway Superbowl, so after logo switch so this was my only reference for the old logo. I was convinced for far too long that the logo was someone punching a horse.

[throwuascenario]

The Broncos and the Buccaneers are the only two teams that I think could and should pull off a hybrid retro look.

 

I'd love to see the Bucs in the creamsicles full time, only replacing the helmet logo with a recolored version of the 1997 logo. I don't see why that couldn't work. I love that color scheme, but the winking logo is godawful and 50 years outdated. Their current away jerseys are really just a black outline and sleeve design from being the old away jerseys. So they can mostly keep those as-is, the black outline really helps out the bright colors on white IMO. Just change the helmet and pants and you're good.

 

The red and pewter is a perfectly solid look too and would be a great forever uniform in its own right. I just like how unique the orange and red is, so fitting for a Florida team. But yeah, the original flag logo was 10,000x better. Just go back to that and that's another really good option.

 

The Broncos should do the same, old colors with current logo. The D logo is too detailed and an awkward shape. The current logo looks so much better on a helmet and is more fitting as an NFL logo.

 

I don't want to see either looks as throwback alternates though. Either go all in on it or don't. Don't water down your identity with two distinct brands.