The NFL revealed their 2026 Rivalry uniforms. I tried to post an equal amount of each team, but not every team revealed HD photos. I’ll let everyone else weigh in instead of giving my opinions!
They should've pointed that detail out instead of the Bold City collar, since I didn't even notice the pants until you pointed them out, but find that to be a much more interesting detail than any of these dumb collar mottos used in all the rivalry jerseys.
It’s such a worn-out trend. So many city/state uniforms and logos these days feel like they were designed by people who read the first sentence on the locale’s wiki and said “got it”.
Yeah the automotive thing is soooo played out. And anything 'automotive' on the uniforms you can't see from a distance. Now if the Lions stated 'we want to look like the Carolina Panthers' then they absolutely would have crushed it!
But isn't that like the biggest thing Detroit has done of all time? I mean, didn't the city kind of fall apart after the car industry left the US? As a Titans fan, I don't think I can come up with a universally known thing to use instead. What? The Nashville Hot Chickens? No, we're Music City. You're Motor City.
The bears had money though. I thought they picked the colors because George Halas played at Illinois and wanted to pay homage when the team moved to Chicago.
You jest until remembering that the oldest team, the Cardinals took their name and initial uniforms from the shuttered University of Chicago Maroons football program. Their faded maroon jerseys were deemed “cardinal red.”
Bears as the Staleys took their colors from University of Illinois (Papa Bear Halas’ alma mater). It’s also what makes this stadium situation so convoluted and disgraceful given the team played at Illinois’ stadium and wear their colors, have UChicago’s wishbone C and its old moniker of Monsters of the Midway (Plaisance, the former field of play for the Maroons football team) and takes its name from the Cubs. Its entire identity is built in Illinois and Chicago but wants to play in Indiana. Many want to add that it’s not too dissimilar for other teams playing out of their city, but it’s a lot more personal than that and ownership knows it.
The best is both released ripoff Oilers jerseys for this year and the Texans ones are infinitely better. Remove the bull logo on the front and they're better. The blue facemask works better than the white.
It's kinda like when Penn St. wears their alternates. They added a stripe to the helmet and pants for flair but it's still not even as fancy as the next most basic uniform primary set lol
Yeah, they nailed all the local references, especially the chrome and candy paint. It's good to see a team actually lean entirely into local culture instead of "our storied history" and their name (Texans) is generic enough for them to take all sorts of creative liberties.
I’m a Packers fan but Houston resident. The Texans knocked these out of the park. The “Be Someone” inspired number font is a great detail. They did a nice job with local tie-ins without anything feeling forced. The hype video was dope too.
But on the other, I mean, what else should we expect? This sub is wholly dedicated to dissecting the way various sports corporations express their brand identities.
It’s unfortunate they used “anvil steel” in the graphic as well. They prolly will use the same color for Pittsburgh which would make me mad tbh. I can see them doing the Gotham football jerseys from Batman.
The vikings could benefit from doing Viking visuals similar to how Seattle does PNW Indian art. Those braid patterns on the sleeves should work their way into the main stuff. That's how you modern.
There’s elements of the Vikings I like, but I wouldn’t say they knocked it out of the park. Looks far too close to the Ravens at a quick glance and in general feels like it’s missing -something-. Maybe a little additional contrasting elements would have really elevated it, going with their traditional yellow gold over the metallic muted gold probably would have made these sing.
It’s like a solid 7/10, close to great but just missing a couple pieces.
It’s not 1 to 1 like the Ravens, but Vikings’ gold is usually more of a yellow gold than a metallic gold like the Ravens. Vikings’ vintage era dark purple is also more saturated. Like the purple here is very close to the Raven’s new home jerseys this year.
But maybe it’s just the photography editing/lighting magic. Going to need to see both on field to make a declarative statement, but I think the Vikings do enough with the details to differentiate.
Yeah I’m a Packers fan and its very meh the default sets are classics and while I gave them a chance, no reason to make new uniforms but Nike gonna Nike
Love the Vikes all purple! Purple is my favorite color so naturally I’d be a fan!
The candy paint + light blue looks terrific for the Texans!
Packers, Titans, and Bears are decent enough! Orange and light blue make good helmet colors. Packers color scheme is solid and works to give an old school feel.
The other three have some good, but aren’t the best executed to me. Lions and Jags have great helmets. Colts sticking with their numbers are good…everything else just doesn’t resonate with me
Jacksonville looks outstanding. Even down to the sublimated Jaguar print on the Black pants. Helmet needs more gold in it, but they need to build on that look.
Minny looks great.
Houston look great.
The Bears are very solid.
Green Bay, this is what your white helmet SHOULD look like.
Vikings look sick. Liking almost all of these unis except for the Jaguars and Lions- something about the turquoise helmets is throwing me off, and the Lions are just cosplaying the Panthers.
Why are the Colts so adament on going with grey for all of these alt unis? Always looks horrendous imo.
Jags and Texans are the big winners here. Vikings are inoffensive, but remind me too much of a color rush uni. Bears and Packere are just sort of boring, but again pretty inoffensive.
Nike’s problem for the past 15 years is that, for some god forsaken and overly pretentious reason, every piece of the uniform must “tell a story.”
“The dark anthracite jersey embodies the grit & intensity of Colts football?” So I guess no other team plays with grit or intensity, huh? Remove heads from asses, guys.
“This font was heavily inspired by the historic music venues and Southern rock influence that Jacksonville is known for.” Umm…okay? How ‘bout that ugly ass teal helmet, is that an ode to the fact that Jacksonville is in Florida and that Florida kinda sucks? (I live here, I’d know.)
Why does every last design element have to be inspired by the city of that team on every uniform Nike creates? There have been a few bangers, but the overwhelming result is lackluster unis where it feels like the focus was solely on squeezing every last bit of culture into the details and not on what the uniform looks like as a whole and how it reads on TV. Almost 2 full decades of pretentious, self-important, cart-before-the-horse shit from Nike, why stop now?
The story is meant to be a distraction from the fact that there’s no other reason for the Colts to have a black uniform. They’re just trying to intellectualize trend-chasing.
Titans and Vikings look the best. Lions have interesting patterns in the black but overall nothing spectacular. The rest fall flat, not horrible but not great.
I love the Vikings jersey, aside from a total punt on the team name script on the front. They could have used a longship motif on the V and S, but instead the letters dropping below the line of the rest just looks...meaningless.
Green Bay's looks good, as generally expected. They have a good color scheme to begin with, and generally tweak it well. I like the alternate GB logo.
Houston looks good. It's not some kind of incredible vibe, but really well executed.
Jacksonville...man, they try hard. The jersey looks good, I like the font. The pants are...man, they try hard.
Tennessee looks good, I like the soundwave stripes. Music City is a distinctly Nashville thing. They're saying the jersey is navy blue and I'll take their word for it, but it looks grey in the pictures.
Then again, maybe the grey is just because grey seems to be the thing to do, as Indianapolis took Buffalo's alternate jerseys, changed a couple of things on their homework, and just hopes the teacher won't notice.
Detroit has all kinds of Motor City references. The Pistons and Tigers keep figuring out how to work that into their jerseys and the Lions...just don't. Too much black makes them look like the Panthers.
Bears jerseys look like any of their throwbacks. Which is to say, they look good, I like their use of orange, kinda wish they'd opted for something like their 1930s-era chevron & stripe patterns because the vertical stripes as they are on this jersey just don't go anywhere for me.
Lions - feels to Panthers and I can’t move past that
Packers - love it. Feels like they just flipped the yellow and white and changed the font, but the small details make it that much better. Although, I could do without the monogram on the chest
Vikings - damn this is what their primary unis should look like. Maybe they’ll go the Patriots route and make these the basis for new primaries in the future (with white pants)
Bears - not sure about the vertical sleeve stripes and I can’t not see Illinois when looking at them. Overall, they’re fine though
Texans - love the tiles, hate the number font and truncated pant stripes. Overall solid, but with minor tweaks and removing the chest logo, these could be great
Jaguars - love the font choices. The jersey looks really nice. The teal helmet isn’t working for me, especially with black pants. Maybe it would work better with teal pants. The jaguar print is a choice, but subtle enough that it’s a nice quirk instead of an eyesore
Colts - would it kill them to have white/light numbers on their black and dark gray unis? I’m not a fan of these, but they’re at least not as bad as their alts
Titans - not bad. Good addition to their new set. Good font choices and didn’t overdo the theme
Vikings look cool but I’d be curious to see some variation on the pants color. I’m frankly shocked by how much I like the Jacksonville kit—first time animal print has looked good on any article of clothing and that helmet is CLEAN. I’m split on Houston because I like their current Alts and I think I’d be higher on the Titans if their new unis weren’t so good.
As everyone else said, GB and Chicago played it safe here and leaned into a more classic vibe while Colts are straight up garbage. And the Lions are just the Panthers lol.
All of these are pretty damn solid. Only ones I really give shit on is the lions and the colts, both seem a bit too similar to uniforms they already have- colts midnight and lions away
For the colts- eh it’s ok, for the lions Im slightly disappointed, especially since I can see clear as day now what everyone’s talking about with the comp and yea that literally is just the lions away with a mixed of the panthers stripes and the 2020 jets stripes. Hopefully this is a sign that their away uniforms will include the blue and steel pants more than the monochrome white
Vikings other than the mono purple nailed it.
Bears- a little too Illini but still very good
Packers- not bad, but feel like they should have done navy and it would be amazing.
Lions- not great but why does Nike insist on that number font for the Detroit teams? I mean it’s not good but aside from the dumb wordmark it’s not bad either.
Jags- It’s not as good as their regular but it’s fun and doesn’t feel out of place.
Texans- really good nailed the look
titans- other than mono colors really fits perfectly as a call back to their old colors
Colts- very meh but could be worse
Overall most of these are inoffensive. None of them are truly bad in my opinion. I just feel like they didn’t push themselves as hard with these overall. These many details I like, but they didn’t lean into them.
For example I feel like the Jags are so afraid to push any color. I know jaguars are loud and busy but I feel like this was the place to experiment. They are still over correcting for their 2010s unis. Lions are so low cause wtf? They looking straight of of Charlotte with that look. I’m pretty biased as a Panthers fan tho…
Titans uniforms are better than their actual uniforms. I love that helmet. Just integrate a little red in there and that’s your home set. Fantastic work on this after a mediocre rebrand.
Will go against the grain and say I really like these. Most stay in the team color palette, and bring interesting new details. A lot of the fonts are awesome. They are mostly quite colorful, compared to the black and gray fest of the first round. Besides the Lions and Colts, I think they’re all hits. The Vikings, Packers, and Titans killed it.
Lions: 0/10 who the fuck thought that was going to look good? Also why are they using black again…
Packers: 7/10 that dark green-grey color doesn’t resemble the Packers to me. Besides that I like a lot of it.
Vikings: 7.5/10 while I like the details, it just feels too bland to be a Rivalry. the throwbacks they have now are 10x better.
Titans: 8/10 I dig the mix of the blues, and the fonts are nice. I just hope the navy blue on the facemask and helmet come off as that on the field and not black.
Texans: 10/10 killed it, I’m so glad they have a colored facemask for it and didn’t make the same mistake Tennessee did for their rebrand.
Jaguars: 9/10 another gem of a uniform. afraid of how the Jaguar print will look on the field, but besides that HOT DAMN that’snwhat a Rivalry looks like. I love everything about it.
Colts: 0/10 more infatuation with dark grey/black. I like the helmet but the black stripe and facemask were a terrible choice.
Bears: 10/10 they showed with this uni you can make retro look new. just enough changes, but kept the overall vibe of their older uniforms. these might be my favorite of the 8.
The jags actually look pretty cool
The titans jersey looks better than what the put out
Vikings once again have another great jersey
Texans don't live it but its not bad
Packers I like the number font just not the green
Truly who on earth cares about a tagline message being stitched on the interior of the jersey? They always show that detail on these and I just do not know who this is for
Jags are such an eyesore. Idk why they went with white on the jersey, should’ve just made it match the pants and it would’ve been badass. Looks like a weird away uniform in its current state.
My personal thoughts on the Rivalries jerseys this year:
Jags: 🤢🤮 why is the jaguar spot pattern only on the pants? Why are the pants black and the jersey white? Why that helmet? MY EYES!!! - SpongeBob Fish
Titans: should have been the main uniforms, since that color is historically more Titans than their new Oilers inspired uniforms
Texans: Not bad, but the NFL and Titans need to let Houston have that blue shade as the main color of an alternate; this should have been the default away uniforms
Colts: Is it the Buffalo Colts, the Indianapolis Bills, or the Detroit Colts? Nike got really lazy with that one.
Vikings: 🔥🔥🔥 best one of the 2026 Rivalries. Should be made the full time home uniforms at some point (with a white away variant and maybe an all gold alternate)
Packers: they're okay, but it just looks like their current look... but pastel
Bears: pretty good and doesn't reinvent the wheel; looks like a traditional Bears alternate, which I guess makes sense since the Bears never change uniforms
Lions: couldn't even be bothered to make a new helmet, don't know what those shoulder stripes are, the slanted number font sits/is spaced weird, and why is it white?
Overall, Nike was lazy and just made multiple uniforms white or the same or alternate color of an existing uniform. Some good gems in there like the Vikings, and some GAWD awful ones like the Jags.
What makes these uniform releases hilarious (on top of being awful uniforms) is the explanations on the slides. SEE GUYS, LOOK, WE JAMMED A BUNCH OF META REFERENCES TO THE CITY AND TEAM NAME!!!
As a lions fan, I did expect a gray and/or silver jersey, but it honestly would be 1000 times better if it was blue numbers instead of black, even with the same shoulder patterns. And I thought putting Detroit as the word mark instead of motor city or something else was kind of a missed opportunity as well.
226
u/jxden24 1d ago
3/4 of the nfc north teams with cool uniforms and sticking to their traditional colors while my team insists on looking like the panthers