Newly Discovered Prototype: 1965 Washington Redskins

Last week, I received an email from contributor Leo Strawn. To sum up, Leo stated that he was interacting with a man who wanted verify the story on the 1964 Redskins prototype helmet he had just purchased. The story goes that during the middle of the 1964 season, the Redskins created his prototype helmet with the spear logo but waited until 1965 to adopt it. Mr. Strawn then contacted me to see if I had seen anything in my research that could confirm the man's story. I answered that I had not, but that I would do some digging and see if I could find something. I did.

During the 1964 season the Redskins wore their single-feather helmet for the 7th straight season after having begun its use in 1958. I found no mention in the Washington Post backing up the man's claim of the spear-helmet turning up during the 1964 season.

I expanded the search and began searching January through May, 1965. JACKPOT!

A Washington Post article from March 20, 1965, stated...

"The Redskins decided yesterday to change their helmet insigne with an Indian headdress on both sides instead of the single feather on top. Also considered was the Indian head emblem of the club, wearing the headdress."

This 'smoking gun' clearly illustrates that the change wasn't decided until 'yesterday' (March 19, 1965) rather than at some point during the 1964 season.

But that wasn't all. The article included a photo of a man wearing the 'headdress' prototype. However, that prototype never saw the field.

Two additional articles from July 25 and July 29 paint a somewhat altered picture. The July 25 article states...

"Paul Dube of Arlington reports that he and a friend have written to the Redskins to protest the proposed change of the helmet insignia from a feather on top to an arrow on the side."

At some point between March and July, the Redskins scrapped the 'headdress' logo and changed to an 'arrow' on the side - what we now refer to as the 'spear' logo. 

The July 29 article (written in the form of a 'letter to the editor' stated...

"Note to Redskin chief Ed Bennett Williams: Alan Goldstein, a college student who lives in Wheaton, is heartbroken over the elimination of the symbol...Alan writes that he was watching TV and saw pictures of a Redskin scrimmage and knew immediately that something was wrong...It seems the feather on the helmet is no more..."The insignia (the feather) has become a symbol to us Redskin fans," writes Goldstein. "It doesn't seem like the Redskins without it. I have talked to several other fans and they agree. You don't see the Rams changing their helmets. I think that in view of the way the fans have supported the Redskins through the past lean years, the Redskins can do us one small favor and give us our symbol on the helmet back. Thank you."

There's a lot to digest here. Even back in the 60s, fans didn't like change for the sake of change. Also, the sense of entitlement was strong, as well. Basically, 'you guys stunk but we still supported you,' which was followed by "give us OUR symbol back." (The Redskins had not had a winning season since 1955 and that span also included back-to-back 1-win seasons in 1960-61.)

After all, "You don't see the Rams changing their helmets." I wonder how modern Rams fans would feel about this gentleman's argument in 2020.

Using the newspaper photo from March 20, I put together a color image of the helmet using the same darker shade of burgundy from the 1964 helmets.

I have seen photos of many NFL helmet prototypes. There was Paul Brown with a table full of Bengal prototypes including a primitive version of the striped helmet that would eventually be modernized into their current helmet that began use back in 1981. There was the photo of Tex Schramm holding the infamous Cowboys' 'boot logo' helmet. The Jaguars were originally to have silver helmets with a leaping Jaguar logo. That design got nixed due to a solid resemblance to the Jaguar automobile logo. The Texans were to originally have had a white version of their current helmet when they began in 2002. There was also the infamous 49ers' 'one-day' helmet that was so offensive to Niners fans that the team scrapped it completely after a single day. Somehow, this Redskin prototype was lost to the ages...until we stumbled across it and brought it back out into the light.

Bill Schaefer

Hog Day Afternoon

Hog Day Afternoon
by Rob Holecko

We resume our look back at past Super Bowls that we are adding to our database by taking a look at Super Bowl XVII.  Super Bowl XVII was played on January 30, 1983.  This was the latest a Super Bowl had ever been played.  The players' strike had resulted in a loss of seven weeks of games during the season and the ninth and final week of regular season games were played in the first weekend of January.  With teams playing shortened schedules, not all teams played the same amount of divisional games, so they abandoned divisions and just seeded the top 8 teams in each conference 1-8 and played a sixteen-team tournament, with the Championship being Super Bowl XVII.

The Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins reached this game, and the 'Skins rushing attack of John Riggins behind one of the greatest offensive lines ever, known as the "Hogs", and also led by QB Joe Theismann and season MVP K Mark Moseley, won the game 27-17, with Riggins breaking for a touchdown on a key fourth down late in the game.

We are proud to add this game to our database.

Two later Super Bowls were also played on January 30, in 1994, the Dallas Cowboys won their second of two back-to-back championships, beating the Buffalo Bills in Atlanta for the second year in a row in Super Bowl XXVIII

Six years after that, the St. Louis Rams culminated their fantastic 1999 season, also in Atlanta, by stopping Kevin Dyson one yard short of the end zone and defeating the Tennessee Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV.

These Super Bowls also are now in our database.

And now, we are also proud to debut a new segment that will run all week leading up to the Super Bowl.  It's a daily Super Bowl trivia question brought to you by our website historian, Tim Brulia.  It's called, "Do You Know As Much As Timmy B?"  Here's Tim with the first question:

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What four instances did the "home" team of the Super Bowl NOT wear the home jersey that they normally wore that season? Bonus: can you tell me why?

Put your guesses in the comments and look for the correct answer and another question tomorrow!

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Well, we'll be back tomorrow with more exciting Super Bowl related content, including another trivia question and Tuesday is also Media Day, and we'll be unveiling here in the blog the uniforms the Giants and Patriots will be taking the field in Sunday.

Go! Chargers! Go!

The San Diego Chargers' team page is live on the website, making it the thirty-second and final team to be added and Sunday was also a busy day around here as far as entering team pages went, with 1936 through 1960 all being completed. Hopefully the rest of those will be done in the next day or two.   As soon as the rest of the year pages are in, we will begin to add the 2010 Team Pages with the weekly head-to-head matchups.

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     There were a couple corrections to the website, first of all with the 1963 Jets, the first year after they changed their name from the Titans, the team that had the green airplane on the side of their helmet, it was determined that they only had one stripe on their helmet, so we made that change to the database.  But the real story Sunday was the discovery by Tim about the 1942 Redskins.  He came across the New York Times from October 19, 1942, where it was reported by Arthur Daley that:

      If it seems odd that the maroon Redskins would have to don blue to avoid clashing with the Dodgers, it's because unlike the baseball Brooklyn Dodgers, the football Dodgers wore both blue and red.  The Redskins and Dodgers must have found themselves in a clashing situation, forcing one of the teams to wear a different color.  Or perhaps with the transportation difficulties mentioned in the article that prevented the band from arriving (I didn't know the Redskins band ordinarily traveled to road games back in the day...♫ "Hail to the Redskins...hail victory...hail to the Redskins....fight for old D.C." ♫) ...perhaps with the traveling issues, the team's gear didn't arrive either and so maybe they had to borrow the Dodgers' secondary unis.  Or all they had was their maroon outfit, which clashed with the Dodgers' red, and as the home team the Dodgers insisted on wearing red...  Anyway, you can see the whole article about the game with a picture here.
     We wonder if this was the only time the Skins ever wound up wearing this color?  With the Dodgers and Cardinals both wearing red at times, could it be possible that blue was worn by the D.C. boys other than just this once in this era?  And was it actually their own jerseys they wore or did they have to borrow from the Dodgers?  If this was the only time that they ever wore blue, it lends credence to the possibility that it was the Dodgers' unis they were wearing. It would be interesting to see if the players wore their usual numbers, and if the numbers looked like the font the Redskins used at the time, or if they do in fact look like the Dodgers' blue uniforms. It is hard to make out any Redskins numbers in the photo in the newspaper article.  Anyway the blue uniform is now in the database.

Is this what Slingin' Sammy looked like on a day in 1942 against the Dodgers?
Note: This amateur-ly colorized picture is not from that game, but a different game against the Bears.

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     P.S. I sorry if there are typos, but I am writing this post for the second time because this happened the first time and I am not a happy camper about it.

Get A Grip!

LaVern (Lavvie) Dilweg of the
Green Bay Packers wearing
"grip strips" in the late 1920s

     The Falcons, Saints, Bucs and Seahawks team pages are in, we now are more than halfway done in getting all the team pages in.  Of course once that is done there are still all of the year pages and head-to-head matchups to come, but our immediate goal as we work towards the official launch of our website is to get the team pages done, and we are certainly on our way.
     Speaking of launching the website, one of the things that must be done before that can happen is the choosing of a domain name, our permanent location here on the internet.  On Wednesday, we finalized our new domain name, and Tim & Bill's Football Uniform Project can now be found on the web at Gridiron Uniforms (gridironuniforms.com).  The new name of the website will be 'The Gridiron Uniform Database.'
     Also Tuesday we launched our forum, a place where web visitors can gather to discuss the uniforms in our database as well as submit changes and corrections, and ask questions.

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     It was also a busy day for Bill as work continued on updating the Redskins uniforms.  In the interest of completeness and accuracy, we made the decision to depict the stripes on the Redskins pants more accurately.  In the image to the left, you can see how the Packers' pants stripe is symmetrical, while in the Redskins' example in the middle, you can see that the stripe is not symmetrical, therefore the decision was made to depict it separately for both left and right side views.  This did, of course require a total overhaul of all of the Redskins' team pages.  Shortly after this, a similar situation was also discovered with the Philadelphia Eagles images, and work will continue on those as well.

1933 Dodgers

1933 Giants

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     Another on-going discussion we are having here at the Gridiron Uniform Database is the proper location of the "grip strips" on the uniform, which was worn by teams such as the 1933 Brooklyn Dodgers and the late 1920s Green Bay Packers as in the picture at the top of this entry.  (Read more about the Packers' Grip-strip uniforms here at the Green and Gold blog).  Is the location of the strips, which aided ball carriers by helping to prevent fumbles as they carried the ball, adequately depicted in our '33 Dodgers database image to the left?  Or would utility dictate that the strips would have been naturally placed more to the inside of the arms, where the ball carrier would be naturally holding the ball.
     In this picture (right) from the October 23, 1933 New York Times, a Brooklyn Dodger ball carrier is stiff-arming a New York Giant defender, but it is hard to tell exactly whether or not the placement of the grip strips differs greatly from the graphic or not.  The picture also gives a good image of the '33 Giants front uniform number pattern, as we have depicted above.
     The Steelers and the Bears paid homage to the "grip-strip" styles in their 1994 throwbacks, however they were purely decorative at this point, as in the modern-day, NFL rules did not permit uniforms to help ball carriers grip the ball.

Barry Foster carries the ball without any extra grip help from his uniform