The Draw Play

I give Nike’s designers a lot of crap but in all honesty I rather like what they’ve been doing. Their bolder choices just tend to be really funny at first glance, and the striking differences can be startling, but they are doing good work out there in Oregon. So far the only thing they’ve done that I don’t like or haven’t warmed up to is still the Jaguars helmet, which to me still feels like questionable execution of a cool idea.

Nike’s philosophy seems to be making bold choices and trying things that are new, to try and make everything unique. It seems hit or miss, but overall seems to work. A lot of people hated the Seahawks jerseys when they debuted, but at this point I’ve really come around to loving them (At least the Blue and white ones, the gray ones just look like the white jerseys got wet). But think about it, those Seahawks uniforms really stand out, and looking back at older versions I realize that the Seahawks up to this point had largely really boring uniforms. Like or not, Nike’s version stands out and is very recognizable, and I consider that a point in Nike’s favor.

Same with the Jags, honestly. The Jags uniforms weren’t terribly interesting before Nike took over, and although the Jags unis are kind of wacky they stand out far more than prior versions ever did. Even the helmet, as stupid as it looks, stands out in a very recognizable way.

I think the Dolphins redo was kind of a downgrade though. I actually liked the new logo and helmets, but the uniforms are kind of meh. Needs more orange and I hate the black trim around the numbers, felt unnecessary.

Vikings unis/helmets look fantastic.

Now we have the Bucs. While I can’t comment on the uniforms yet, I can say that while this comic mocks it, I actually like the Bucs new helmet. At first glance yeah, it looks like they took the free transform tool in photoshop and scaled it up then slapped it on. But if you look at it from more angles, and give it some thought, you can see that they actually made it flow with the helmet really well and designed the logo so that it feels as if it’s part of the helmet and not just a sticker slapped on the side. For me, I’ll put this in the “success” list.

Still wish they had brought back Bucco Bruce though.

Edit: I just realized I never talked about the logo itself. I think it’s mostly a lateral move. The crisper lines make it more modern and I have no issues with the skull/sword/football changes. I like how the flag is shaped. I do with they had stuck with the previous red. The old red, which had some purple in it and looked dirty, seemed to fit the “dirty torn pirate flag” style better than the hyper saturated bright red they have now. Now we have a torn pirate flag that looks straight out of the box because of how bright it is. Overall though, it’s just a lateral move. Not really better, not really worse, still mostly the same thing.