What Are Color Rush Uniforms in the Nfl
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The NFL's Color Rush Fad Has Come To An End On Thursday Night Football
This article is more than 3 years old.
Although the Philadelphia Eagles and Atlanta Falcons raised the curtain on the 2018 NFL season this past Thursday, the NFL's Thursday Night Football season is properly getting underway tonight as the Cincinnati Bengals will play host to the Baltimore Ravens. What makes this game interesting aside from the on-field storylines is the fact that both teams will be wearing their relatively normal home-and-away uniforms.
The Bengals will be wearing their typical home uniforms, while the Ravens are throwing an interesting wrinkle into things by wearing purple pants with their white jerseys. This is an intriguing development since the Ravens had previously only wore purple pants with their purple alternate jerseys, otherwise known as their "Color Rush" uniforms. It used to be a guarantee that you'd see one or both teams participating in the Nike-led uniform program for Thursday Night Football games but it's clear that the practice has gone by the wayside for the 2018 season.
While you're still going to see teams break out full or partial Color Rush uniforms this season, you won't be seeing it on Thursday nights. The NFL slightly loosened the rules on uniform choices for this season and part of that loosening included giving teams the leeway to wear alternate uniforms more often and also not forcing them into wearing the Color Rush uniforms for Thursday night games. As such, this has allowed teams like the Rams to embrace their old-school throwback look and it's also meant that this has resulted in the end of the Color Rush program being a league event of sorts.
Judging by the reaction that most of these uniform matchups received while the program was in full swing, it would be a safe bet to say that most of these uniform combinations will not be missed. While the Color Rush program did occasionally give us some matchups that were easy on the eyes, most of them were eyesores. Sometimes we'd get a good matchup like when the Saints visited the Falcons last season.
Most of the time, we got something that was either borderline-ugly or just completely garish. That was the case for the Jaguars and Titans, who wore the same uniforms for their Color Rush games in 2015 and 2016. Each time, it was rough on the eyes and a prime example of why this may have been a bad idea.
It's safe to say that the Color Rush program on Thursday Night Football was a hit-or-miss affair for Nike and the NFL. Unfortunately, the incomplete passes vastly outnumbered the completions and you simply cannot have that ratio when it comes to football and uniforms as well. The good news is that the Color Rush uniforms aren't completely dead -- teams will still wear them as alternate uniforms this season and as the Ravens are proving tonight, some teams are incorporating ideas from the Color Rush uniforms (though this set of purple pants is slightly different from the Color Rush pants) into their primary uniform scheme. It's proof that this wasn't completely terrible and that you can get something good out of anything.
With that being said, I do not believe that many people will miss the days of seeing a team dress up in electric green from head-to-toe so that they can square off against another team wearing all-black. Those days are over and things are getting back to normal on Thursday nights in the NFL.
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What Are Color Rush Uniforms in the Nfl
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/demetriusbell/2018/09/13/nfl-color-rush-2018-nfl-season-no-more-cincinnati-bengals-baltimore-ravens/