Bill Tweaks The Jaguars

Today at the Gridiron Uniform Database, our Bill Schaefer once again turns a team's uniform designs on its' collective head with a complete overhaul.  This time, it's the Jacksonville Jaguars.

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Like last week with the Dolphins, I know that any time I set out to make one of these uniform tweaks I know that I am probably going to rankle some of that team’s faithful.  I know that but again, please bear with me.

In 1995, teal was the trendy color.  San Jose Sharks.  Florida Marlins. Charlotte Hornets.  All of them incorporated teal.  Even the Jags’ expansion partner, Carolina Panthers, used a light Carolina blue that is chromatically very close to teal.  My opinion is that teal makes a very good secondary color, just not a good primary one.  My first job was demoting the importance of teal.  I still retained it as a secondary color.

What to use for a primary color?  Similar to choosing a dolphin grey, I chose the Jaguars’ own shade of gold.  Keeping the same helmet logo, I placed it on a gold helmet with a simple black central stripe and kept the black facemask.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the change Cincinnati made away from their Cleveland-clone uniforms to the revolutionary ones with the tiger stripes.  I decided to use that Bengals concept but in a much more toned down version.  I first thought of adding jaguar spots on the shoulders or the entire jersey. Sanity took hold as my design began to resemble this item to the right.

I settled on the collar and cuffs.  The rest of the jersey was made gold in the style of the Saints’ “one and done” 2002 alternate (left), but I stayed away from the black pants/black socks ‘leotard’ look.  I added four sets of thin shoulder/sleeve stripes utilizing the teal.  Why four?  To my recollection I’ve not seen a jersey with 4 stripes. Two, three, or five?  Yes.  Four?  No.  I also added something new to the numbers – stripes INSIDE the numbers.

Again, similar to Cincinnati and New Orleans (1999), I used basic black pants with a gold stripe panel of jaguar spots.  I didn’t want to use black socks as this would make the uniform look too much like New Orleans so I went with plain gold socks.  I also added a jaguar-spotted belt for good measure.

Would something like this design ever get used?  I doubt it.  It’s just the artistic version of someone who’s assembled thousands of uniform combinations and would like to fix what’s broke.

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Thanks Bill for this new concept -- it's not any worse than what they're wearing now, and I kinda like the leopard print side pant panels.  Maybe for a third alternate I'd add a black jersey with gold pants -- these two jerseys look kinda light.  Of course knowing the Jags, then they'd probably also wear mono-black and mono-gold.  I hope you get a better response to this one than last week.  

There will be no blog update Friday, but hopefully we'll be back Saturday with Tim Brulia's weekly column -- no idea what Tim will be opining about this week, but I'm sure, like all of his columns, it will be good.

In the mean time, voting continues on the fourth group of uniforms in our Best NFL Uniform of All Time contest, plus be sure to join in all the uniform debate fun in our forum.