NFL Color Rush
Again, this was only used if teams such as the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers (the latter before the arrival of Vince Lombardi) played each other and had similar jersey colors.
[citation needed] It would not be the AAFC (which partially merged into the NFL in 1950) that would change the status quo, but the mainstream adoption of television.
Due to the technical limitations of TV, programming could only be broadcast in black and white, making it hard for fans to tell their teams apart.
[2] The NFL began to allow exceptions as part of leaguewide promotions, beginning with the league's 75th Anniversary season in 1994.
In 2009, the NFL celebrated what would have been the 50th season of the American Football League by allowing each of the original eight AFL teams to wear AFL-era throwback uniforms.
The Seattle Seahawks, Minnesota Vikings, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Detroit Lions, Tennessee Titans, New York Jets, Atlanta Falcons, Los Angeles Chargers, Los Angeles Rams, New England Patriots, Cincinnati Bengals, Washington Commanders, Arizona Cardinals, Denver Broncos, and Houston Texans are the teams that have completely redesigned their uniform since Nike took over.
However, on October 30, 2015, the NFL announced the initial "Color Rush," a series of four Thursday contests in which all eight teams will wear specially designed alternate uniforms.
[4][5] The initial rollout featured the Carolina Panthers and Tennessee Titans wearing their regular alternate uniforms (with the Panthers debuting "Carolina blue" pants), while the Dallas Cowboys revived their white "Double Star" uniforms from the mid-1990s (while debuting white pants) and the then-St. Louis Rams wore a yellow version of their 1973–99 throwbacks for the games.
[9] The 2017 season also featured at least one team, the Buffalo Bills, wearing their Color Rush uniform on a Sunday afternoon game (coincidentally this game, dubbed the Snow Bowl, occurred during a lake-effect snowstorm which made the Bills players more visible than their opponents, the all-white wearing Indianapolis Colts).
On April 10, 2018, the league announced that Color Rush promotion would be discontinued under the terms of the new Thursday Night Football broadcast contract.
The Browns also debuted end zones painted with the stripe pattern found on their Color Rush jersey.
[11] Positive fan reception for the new uniforms was so strong that the Browns later switched the Color Rush design to be their primary home jersey, which it remained through 2019.
Since NFL rules dictate that players wear the same helmet throughout the season, only the decals can change, and the shells remain the same color.
This was the only time that combination was used, as they adopted a modified color rush uniform as their home set in 2020, with a white version of that jersey created for away games.
[20] The NFL issued a statement admitting their "standard television test did not account for color blindness for fans at home that became apparent last night".
Aside from red-green, the NFL also avoided brown-purple (Browns/Ravens) and yellow-bright green (Rams/Seahawks) matchups, requiring one of those teams to wear white uniforms in those games.
[15] The Packers and Giants non-participation contrasted with another tradition-rich team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, who fully embraced the Color Rush program and received a positive response from their fans over the all-black look.
[27] Other teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, and Tennessee Titans went with their existing alternate uniforms for the Color Rush program, as opposed to creating a unique uniform for the games, while the Kansas City Chiefs simply matched their red jerseys up with their red pants—a look that the team had been sporting at times in recent seasons.
In 2017, the Washington Redskins proposed a bylaw which would permit teams to opt out of Color Rush program participation.
