2024 NFL Changes

[PurpleHayes]

3 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

As for the Patriots adopting red as their primary color because they were playing in a division with three other teams that all had blue jerseys at the time of the American Football League's founding, those teams - Buffalo, Houston, and New York - would all have been wearing white jerseys whenever the Patriots donned a color jersey - red or blue - against them. I'm chocking the adoption of red as the team's primary color - British redcoats be damed - as a brain-fart on Billy Sullivan's part.      

 

Redcoats, shmedcoats?

[Carolingian Steamroller]

12 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

On the first point, it wasn't Parcells who changed the uniforms. I was working in the press in Boston at the time and it was James Busch Orthwein - along with league officials - who were the driving force behind the changes to the Patriots' logo, uniform, and color scheme hierarchy.  

There was a desire on the part of Orthwein to establish a marked transition to his ownership of the team from the 3-1/2 year tenure of his immediate predecessor, Victor Kiam. Orthwein wanted every vestige of Kiam's reign -which  including not only subpar play on the field, but sexual and verbal harassment of reporter Lisa Olson in the Foxboro stadium locker room that resulted in a lawsuit being filed against the team - to be erased. The league felt it was a shrewd PR move.

Further, it wasn't lost on either Orthwein or league officials that, despite playing in the NFL's sixth-largest television market, the Patriots ranked 26th out of 28 teams in merchandise sales at the time. It was hoped that changing the team's logo and its primary color would drive increased merchandising.   

As for the Patriots originally using red as their primary color because they were playing in a division with three other teams that all had blue jerseys at the time of the American Football League's founding, those teams - Buffalo, Houston, and New York - would all have been wearing white jerseys whenever the Patriots donned a color jersey - red or blue - against them. I'm chocking the adoption of red as the team's primary color - British redcoats be damned - as a brain-fart on Billy Sullivan's part.      

 

Those are details as gooey and rich as molasses.

[SantosD_]

 

This has been a reliable source...

[shaydre1019]

5 minutes ago, SantosD_ said:

 

This has been a reliable source...

My question with these are:

1. it's not a throwback

2. If it's a color rush, would it be replacing green?

3. If it is in fact legit, why would they use that hybrid font and Agency nameplate font? is that even allowed or does it have to be current or legacy typefaces being used?

[SantosD_]

12 minutes ago, shaydre1019 said:

My question with these are:

1. it's not a throwback

2. If it's a color rush, would it be replacing green?

3. If it is in fact legit, why would they use that hybrid font and Agency nameplate font? is that even allowed or does it have to be current or legacy typefaces being used?

great points, also the nike logo placement is wrong

[Sec19Row53]

13 minutes ago, shaydre1019 said:

My question with these are:

1. it's not a throwback

2. If it's a color rush, would it be replacing green?

3. If it is in fact legit, why would they use that hybrid font and Agency nameplate font? is that even allowed or does it have to be current or legacy typefaces being used?

They're more like guidelines

[/Pirates of the Caribbean]

[oldschoolvikings]

2 hours ago, Brian in Boston said:

Agreed. Even as a child I picked up on the disconnect between the Patriots  being named for the  American colonists that engaged in a revolution against British rule, while simultaneously wearing red jerseys that aped the color of the coats of the British infantry units that said colonial forces had battled. 

 That’s probably why they dressed that little guy on the side of the helmet in a blue coat, I’m guessing. 

[GriffinM6]

23 minutes ago, SantosD_ said:

 

This has been a reliable source...

This is definitely a concept. The template is different than the retail jersey one they've been posting all offseason.

[bob95]

Think there’s a chance there getting a white throwback and he just posted that picture because it looked close

[Brian in Boston]

1 hour ago, oldschoolvikings said:

 That’s probably why they dressed that little guy on the side of the helmet in a blue coat, I’m guessing. 

Which only served to call more attention to the fact that for 33 years the Patriots on the field played half of their games each season attired in a jersey that made them look like the military force that opposed the namesake mascot on their helmets.  

Goofy.  

[Brian in Boston]

3 hours ago, Carolingian Steamroller said:

Those are details as gooey and rich as molasses.

It really wasn't treated as a big a deal at the time. At least not by the press in New England. Orthwein's purchase of the team from Kiam had been a big deal, as were the rumors that swirled about him trying to relocate the team to St. Louis. The Patriots securing the first pick in the 1993 NFL Draft had been a BIG deal. Orthwein's hiring of Bill Parcells had been an even BIGGER deal.  The fact that a press conference had been called to announce changes to the logo and uniform? Decidedly NOT a big deal.

Well, if I'm being honest, it was to me. Then, as now, I was a sports branding enthusiast. I was extremely interested in seeing what the team would unveil. That said, my hobbies notwithstanding, what the sports press corps in New England was interested in was who Parcells and the Patriots were going to select with the first pick in the NFL Draft. So much so that it was repeatedly made clear to those reporters attending the unveiling of the new uniforms and logo that absolutely no questions regarding the draft should be asked and none would be answered.  

In any event, as I mentioned earlier, Orthwein's interest in clearly delineating between his tenure as owner of the team and that of Victor Kiam was a big part of what drove him to pursue updating the Patriots' logo and tweaking the team's color scheme. I also learned from a source with the team that Orthwein couldn't understand why the on-field uniforms of a team named after the patriots of the American Revolutionary War were red, the color worn by British infantrymen. Great minds think alike!  

Combine the owner's desire to put his own stamp on the team with the league's interest in generating more merchandising revenue in a market that was punching well below its weight in said metric, and that's what inspired the Patriots to adopt blue as their primary color, introduce silver to their color scheme, and replace "Pat Patriot" with the  "Flying Elvis".    

[MCM0313]

16 minutes ago, Brian in Boston said:

It really wasn't treated as a big a deal at the time. At least not by the press in New England. Orthwein's purchase of the team from Kiam had been a big deal, as were the rumors that swirled about him trying to relocate the team to St. Louis. The Patriots securing the first pick in the 1993 NFL Draft had been a BIG deal. Orthwein's hiring of Bill Parcells had been an even BIGGER deal.  The fact that a press conference had been called to announce changes to the logo and uniform? Decidedly NOT a big deal.

Well, if I'm being honest, it was to me. Then, as now, I was a sports branding enthusiast. I was extremely interested in seeing what the team would unveil. That said, my hobbies notwithstanding, what the sports press corps in New England was interested in was who Parcells and the Patriots were going to select with the first pick in the NFL Draft. So much so that it was repeatedly made clear to those reporters attending the unveiling of the new uniforms and logo that absolutely no questions regarding the draft should be asked and none would be answered.  

In any event, as I mentioned earlier, Orthwein's interest in clearly delineating between his tenure as owner of the team and that of Victor Kiam was a big part of what drove him to pursue updating the Patriots' logo and tweaking the team's color scheme. I also learned from a source with the team that Orthwein couldn't understand why the on-field uniforms of a team named after the patriots of the American Revolutionary War were red, the color worn by British infantrymen. Great minds think alike!  

Combine the owner's desire to put his own stamp on the team with the league's interest in generating more merchandising revenue in a market that was punching well below its weight in said metric, and that's what inspired the Patriots to adopt blue as their primary color, introduce silver to their color scheme, and replace "Pat Patriot" with the  "Flying Elvis".    

Even if he eventually gets replaced, Flying Elvis will always hold a special place in my heart. He was the first logo/helmet that I realized was new and different from what the team had worn just the season before.
 

1993, Flying Elvis’ first season, was my first season being interested in football. I actually only really started paying attention in the last two months or so of the season. The previously moribund Pats, with their new uniforms, just so happened to go on a hot streak to end the season, and sometime in I think December my dad went to the grocery and brought home one of those 25-cent helmets that you put together yourself, with the decal/stripe sheet there for you. We didn’t realize yet that the blank white stripe wasn’t actually part of the helmet so we put it on anyway. Later somebody stepped on it and it broke but we glued it back together and I still have it somewhere. I was almost in awe at how beautiful it was, with that gorgeous silver base and the sleek logo. The Patriots became “my” team for awhile. It was glorious seeing them blossom into a playoff team in 1994.  
 

I was pretty disgusted when they downgraded to navy in 2000. They were no longer “my” team by then anyway. I loved the Rams with Kurt Warner coming out of nowhere to bury opponents under an avalanche of passing touchdowns. 
 

My Rams fandom took a bit of a hit with the switch to navy and gold, but they were so much fun to watch that I still liked them. And then, five months after 9/11, I became a firm disliker of the Pats when an unheralded quarterback from That School Up North led them to a Super Bowl upset over those high-flying Rams. 
 

I had gone from loving the Pats to despising them in the space of less than a decade. They still had Flying Elvis on a silver helmet, but the darker blue made it a much more sterile look. And as an OSU fan (and eventually two-time alum), I felt like I was obligated to root against a player who went to Meatchicken…plus there was Belichick’s robotic personality and, soon, Spygate and Deflategate, and the Pats - once 26th of 28 teams in merchandising despite playing in the #6 media market in the country - became Public Enemy #1 for football fans, their face-heel turn complete. 
 

Anyway, whatever happens from here, I will always have a soft spot for the royal-blue-and-red Flying Elvis logo and the helmet it adorned. And I hope that, whatever the Patriots’ next aesthetic change is, they bring back royal blue…or Pat…or both. But I hope they don’t completely get rid of silver, because it’s the color that seemingly launched them into prominence. 

[Red Comet]

3 hours ago, GriffinM6 said:

This is definitely a concept. The template is different than the retail jersey one they've been posting all offseason.

 

I can't think of a more 2024 thing than Antonio the Clown getting legit jersey leaks from the inside. 

[rfraser85]

1 hour ago, MCM0313 said:

Even if he eventually gets replaced, Flying Elvis will always hold a special place in my heart. He was the first logo/helmet that I realized was new and different from what the team had worn just the season before.
 

1993, Flying Elvis’ first season, was my first season being interested in football. I actually only really started paying attention in the last two months or so of the season. The previously moribund Pats, with their new uniforms, just so happened to go on a hot streak to end the season, and sometime in I think December my dad went to the grocery and brought home one of those 25-cent helmets that you put together yourself, with the decal/stripe sheet there for you. We didn’t realize yet that the blank white stripe wasn’t actually part of the helmet so we put it on anyway. Later somebody stepped on it and it broke but we glued it back together and I still have it somewhere. I was almost in awe at how beautiful it was, with that gorgeous silver base and the sleek logo. The Patriots became “my” team for awhile. It was glorious seeing them blossom into a playoff team in 1994.  
 

I was pretty disgusted when they downgraded to navy in 2000. They were no longer “my” team by then anyway. I loved the Rams with Kurt Warner coming out of nowhere to bury opponents under an avalanche of passing touchdowns. 
 

My Rams fandom took a bit of a hit with the switch to navy and gold, but they were so much fun to watch that I still liked them. And then, five months after 9/11, I became a firm disliker of the Pats when an unheralded quarterback from That School Up North led them to a Super Bowl upset over those high-flying Rams. 
 

I had gone from loving the Pats to despising them in the space of less than a decade. They still had Flying Elvis on a silver helmet, but the darker blue made it a much more sterile look. And as an OSU fan (and eventually two-time alum), I felt like I was obligated to root against a player who went to Meatchicken…plus there was Belichick’s robotic personality and, soon, Spygate and Deflategate, and the Pats - once 26th of 28 teams in merchandising despite playing in the #6 media market in the country - became Public Enemy #1 for football fans, their face-heel turn complete. 
 

Anyway, whatever happens from here, I will always have a soft spot for the royal-blue-and-red Flying Elvis logo and the helmet it adorned. And I hope that, whatever the Patriots’ next aesthetic change is, they bring back royal blue…or Pat…or both. But I hope they don’t completely get rid of silver, because it’s the color that seemingly launched them into prominence. 

 

I wouldn't mind an updated version of the '90s Pats look. They could even add a red alternate if they wanted to.

 

Now that Belichick AND Brady are gone, this would be a good time to leave navy behind. Maybe they'll do this next year, when they are eligible for new uniforms.

[The_Admiral]

5 hours ago, Brian in Boston said:

Further, it wasn't lost on either Orthwein or league officials that, despite playing in the NFL's sixth-largest television market, the Patriots ranked 26th out of 28 teams in merchandise sales at the time. It was hoped that changing the team's logo and its primary color would drive increased merchandising. 

 

The Boston sports market up through the early '90s, where you had three successful and well-established teams in the other sports and then this weird unpopular screwup halfway to Providence, which was the NFL team, will always be so quaint to me.

[MalibuSunrise]

4 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

 

The Boston sports market up through the early '90s, where you had three successful and well-established teams in the other sports and then this weird unpopular screwup halfway to Providence, which was the NFL team, will always be so quaint to me.

 

Oh I long for the days of those epic 6-3 victories over the Jets & Colts. 

[655321]

32 minutes ago, rfraser85 said:

 

I wouldn't mind an updated version of the '90s Pats look. They could even add a red alternate if they wanted to.

 

Now that Belichick AND Brady are gone, this would be a good time to leave navy behind. Maybe they'll do this next year, when they are eligible for new uniforms.

 

Double down on the navy *and* add another shade of blue!

[bowld]

Might be a mistake, but my helmet source still shows the following teams as having a  tbd helmet-

 

* Ravens

* Vikings

* Packers

* Jaguars

* Jets

 

Jets are the team I am unsure about. Perhaps they have a third helmet coming out that they haven't shown us yet?

[MrAstrodome]

1 hour ago, 655321 said:

 

Double down on the navy *and* add another shade of blue!

It Patriots South not Texans North!

[Froob]

14 hours ago, SantosD_ said:

 

This has been a reliable source...

Please be real. These are beautiful.