The NFL’s annual meetings begin next week, and in between outlawing cool things that the Patriots happen to be good at (like the leaping field goal block) and making “defenseless receiver” an even broader term than it already is, they also happen to be considering a rule change that’ll bring back great memories (for some of us) and PTSD for some of the rest of us.
Yes, we’re talking the old-school, white helmet, red jersey Pat Patriot jerseys!
(We’ll now take a brief pause for our readers that are old enough to remember Super Bowl XX and need to throw up off the balcony.)
Right now, per NESN, the problem with breaking out the throwback duds is that every team has to use the same helmet color for all their uniforms, and New England is locked in with silver helmets. Fortunately, our friends in the City of Brotherly Love have proposed a rule change that’d let teams get around that:
2017 Resolution Proposal
1. By Philadelphia, Amends the NFL’s On-Field Policy to allow clubs to have an alternate helmet in a color to match their third uniform.
Now we’re cooking with gas! If it passes, that would allow the Patriots to designate white helmets as the helmet color for their third uniform, and that would match the red-on-white vintage jerseys and pants that the Patriots wore from 1961 until 1993, when they switched over to the now-symbol-of-evil Flying Elvis logo and blue-on-silver getup that the team uses to this day.
For those of you thinking, “Hey, hold on, didn’t they wear throwback uniforms just a few years ago?”...yes, they did! The NFL was cool with throwback jerseys and different color helmets until the fall of 2013, when the rule about helmet colors suddenly became a safety issue. Yes, really.
And for those of you thinking “Why not just wear the red jerseys with the silver helmet?”...yes, you can do it in Madden. I get it. It looks like trash and you know it.
What’s everybody thinking - if this rule passes, are you on board with throwback uniforms? Or does that take the Patriots back to a time when they were the Cleveland Browns of football?