By Perry Griffith IV
First of all, you should understand that it ain’t easy being green, especially when there’s another way more storied and successful franchise who rocks the color in Green Bay. The Jets are the other green team, the one who’s like a friend, but you’re not sure about committing to them.
Whether you like the new Jets’ unis or not, they needed to change things up. The uniform they had the past 20+ years had a pretty solid run the first dozen-or-so years record-wise. But this decade that’s coming to a close was rough. The exiting uniforms weren’t even really “new,” as they were sharpened-up throwback unis from the Namath era, but with a crisp italic font added to the mix. This italic font will continue to be utilized in the brand new unis (later on my issue with them keeping it around).
Jets management announced these new uniforms before last season even started, so we’ve been expecting these for a while, and they’ve had plenty of time to design an excellent look. Since that time, people have designed some excellent mockups that got me hyped for the eventual revealing. A lot of mockups used the other old Jets logo used before the throwbacks returned… the one with the jet wing sticking out of the top. Here’s an example I love with a clean overall look and traditional football style:
But now the new uniforms have been revealed. I was partially disappointed in them at first, but I’m now a bit more sold on them. My first thought was I’m not a fan of black being added to the color scheme. It reminded me of when my New York Mets went over ten years with black being seemingly forced into their blue-and-orange scheme. On the other hand, though, Jamal Adams in the all-black uni looks like a superhero/mythic football god.
I also wasn’t crazy about the shiny green helmets initially, but they’ve also grown on me a little bit. So the overall look of the uniforms is sitting better with now, but what’s still bothering me is that they’ve kept one foot in the old boat in a couple of ways when I would’ve preferred they go with a completely different look.
First, they only slightly modified the logo. They removed the background ‘NY,’ and moved the football in-front of ‘JETS’
Second, as I mentioned before, they kept the italic font. I’m not sure what the thinking was behind holding on to some aspects of the old logo. Not that it had to be a completely new logo, because I would’ve fine with them bringing back the wings logo depending on the overall look. The remaining elements from the old logo just prevent these new uniforms from feeling like big enough of a change in my mind.
Ironically the shoulder stripes remind of Darnold’s old team, Southern Cal., and the Jets really know how to make their USC QBs feel special, don’t they? I imagine the all-white uniforms will look super fresh as well… I thought Jets looked their best in the all-white throwbacks. This is me being positive after clearly not being blown away by the revealing at first. At the end of the day, we Jets fans should be excited about the actual players we’ll have on the field and our new ‘QB whisperer’ of a head coach. And as Adams said during the uniform press conference, if you don’t like the new uniforms, you maybe need a drink. Cheers to the haters.