The Redskins Blog

VIDEO: Evolution Of The Burgundy & Gold

Here’s an interesting video from NFL Films that gives the background of the Washington Redskins’ team colors and uniforms.

Here’s some tidbits from the piece, which is entitled “The Evolution of Colors:”

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Redskins Uniforms Ranked Mediocre?

(AP photos)

This post is dedicated to you uniform junkies — and I know there are tons of you out there.

Uni Watch — the popular ESPN.com site that looks at everything about uniforms in athletics — is in the midst of releasing its “Power Rankings” of uniforms in professional sports — the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL.

Where do the Redskins stack up?

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Redskins Jerseys Technologically Superior

Perusing the comment sections on the blog and fan forums over the last 24 hours, I was surprised to see that while many fans are happy that the uniforms look mostly the same, others were passionately negative about the Nike Redskins approach.

Of those people, most were justifiably jaded by the hype machine behind yesterday’s unveiling, following months of speculation on false concept jerseys.  Others were upset that there were no gold pants, some wanted a total makeover, and “Dale C” was certain that he had spotted pink in the new Redskins jerseys.

I assure you that it’s not pink, just poor lighting.

But what fans should celebrate is that the Redskins chose tradition and substantive change, upgrading the jersey design to the best available options in the league.  Yesterday, we learned the specifics of the new technology, including cutting edge ‘Flywire technology,” “zoned mesh ventilation,” and aircraft-grade aluminum belts.  Seriously.

In total, the Redskins were one of only 10 NFC teams to make all nine available jersey upgrades.  In the NFC East, it was only the Redskins and Giants that elected for the state-of-the-art technology, while the Eagles elected to make no changes at all.  The Cowboys made eight-of-nine possible upgrades, but elected against the Flywire technology, which locks the jersey collars to the players pads.

For Redskins linebacker Brian Orakpo, that technology was the best feature of the new jerseys, as he shared his thoughts with the media in New York (via CSNWashington): Read more »

Full Redskins Nike ‘Elite 51′ Jersey Gallery

via @NFL

Jersey-mania rages on, as NikeInc.com has released a full concept album that illustrates the changes made between the old Reebok jerseys, and the spiffy new Nike ones.

Just as forewarning, the changes are small, and will require a hi-def television to capture on gameday.  Perhaps the most important changes are coming to the technology of the jersey, which is made of lighter-weight material, and will come with improved ventilation for the players.

Here’s a technical explanation from the NikeInc website.  Evidently, the Redskins have selected the most innovative model on the market:

Keeping with their traditional design aesthetic, the uniform is completely engineered from the inside out. The new uniform focuses on creating a system where the baselayer, padding, jersey and pant work in concert with each other. A few of the new innovations include increasing sleeve articulation for better range of motion and integrating new four-way stretch fabrication to provide a streamlined shrink-wrap fit.

Sounds fancy.  So what features does this spaceman jersey actually have?

• LIGHTER - The Nike jersey and pant, wet or dry are lighter than previous versions
• FLYWIRE TECHNOLOGY - Eliminates layers, reduces weight, and provides lockdown fit
• ZONED MESH VENTILATION – Provides cooling zones for optimal thermoregulation
• ZONED STRENGTH - High tenacity, stretch material, for lightweight lockdown strength.
• CUT FOR MOBILITY – Four-way stretch, hydrophobic materials enable range of motion wet or dry.
• STRETCH TWILL NUMBERS – Four-way stretch even on numbering system
• CUSTOMIZABLE BASELAYER PADDING – Nike Pro Combat Hyperstrong baselayer with integrated lightweight, Deflex padding offering customizable flexible protection.
• DEFLEX PADDING - Lightweight, flexible impact protection integrated into top “hit zone” areas
• ALUMINUM D-RING BELT - Aircraft-grade aluminum D-ring belt reduces weight.

Here is the full gallery of uniform updates for the 2012 season (as worn by Durant Brooks. Or Rich Parson. Or maybe James Tuthill): Read more »

Leonard Hankerson Gets Some More Redskins Gear

Almost from the moment he was drafted in the third round, wide receiver Leonard Hankerson has been tweeting pictures of himself in Redskins gear. It was a cool story, interesting enough that I talked to the longtime friend who provided Hankerson with the burgundy and gold accoutrements, but apparently a few twitpics of himself wearing borrowed clothes wasn’t enough for Hankerson: late Sunday, the former Miami wide receiver tweeted a picture of himself in a pretty authentic-looking Redskins uniform.

Before I re-post Hankerson’s picture, let me make it very clear that no uniform numbers have yet been issued; as far as I know, Mike Furrey is still on the roster and is still the person who would officially be wearing 85. [UPDATE: Furrey is apparently no longer on the roster; according to his website, he's the head coach at Kentucky Christian University. Still, no numbers have been issued to draft picks that I know of, so that point remains accurate.] THIS IS NOT OFFICIAL IN ANY WAY. That said, it still looks pretty freakin’ cool.

Based on the background signage, it looks like this shot comes from a photo shoot for a Topps football card — presumably something to do with the one from the company’s high-end “Inception” line that Hankerson tweeted on Wednesday. Here, look: Read more »

The First Fan-Created Uniform Of 2011

If it’s February, it must be time for the offseason ritual of posting fan-created uniforms! Last year was all about the rumored gold pants, which eventually became less “rumored” and more “actual pants,” and before that the black uniforms that never were.

The 2011 uniform conversation hasn’t developed that kind of specific narrative yet, but that didn’t stop reader Andrew DeFrank from suggesting a few changes.

(Obligatory note: these are FAN-CREATED RENDERINGS, and not authentic, official or anything like that.)

DeFrank doesn’t have any professional interest in this — at least not yet. He’s a fifteen year-old who’s a big fan of the Redskins and Paul Lukas’ UniWatch, and he created these using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and, he says, “templates made by designers much better than me.”

Which isn’t to say that he just haphazardly threw stuff together for no specific reason. Here’s the thinking on the jersey/pants/socks redesigns:

“Our asymmetrical striping on pants and jerseys (red, white) is nice, but we have symmetrical striping along our helmets and gold pants (and those are different!).” He notes that the asymmetrical striping issue was discussed on UniWatch and linked here, and goes on to explain “First off I matched up the striping. Along the pants, they are all now the same style, and along the jerseys, I changed up the striping a little. Now, the TV numbers are along the upper arm, leaving an extremely thin and irrelevant stripe below that. So, I moved the numbers to the shoulder, and now have the striping running along the upper arm, replacing those numbers. I also added the classic ‘spear’ logo along the stripes. I added the striping pattern to the socks to top it all off.”

The helmets are more drastically changed, and came from a totally different approach.
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On Assymetrical Helmet Striping, And Other Links

I love some good uniform chatter in the offseason. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time you know that. But I still manage to be impressed at the extent to which the folks over at Uni Watch pay attention to that stuff. For example, today a Uni Watch reader writes in with an extensive dissection of team uniforms that use two or more varieties of striping, and the Redskins are held up as an example of What Not To Wear.

He writes:

Another really bad one is the Redskins. I’ve always hated the fact that they’ve gone with symmetrical striping on the helmet and asymmetrical striping on the pants. They had the opportunity to match things up with the introduction of the gold pants, which has created an awesome and coordinated bottom-half combo but has done nothing for the overall mish-mash. (I’d love it if they just switched the helmet stripes to match the new pants and socks.)

You can see what he’s talking about here in the photo above: the stripes on the pants are asymmetrical — that is, burgundy on one side of the center line and gold on the other — while the stripes on the helmet are symmetrical: each side of an imaginary center line would have gold, burgundy, and white in that order.

This seems like an incredibly specific thing to notice, and I say that as someone who was obsessed with the gold pants and was just this morning complaining about the typeface on the Pro Bowl jerseys. I can honestly say that in all of the countless Redskins games I’ve watched over the last three decades, I have never once had this complaint. Does this bother anyone else out there?

Meanwhile, here are a whole bunch of other links to Redskins-related stuff worth reading: Read more »

More Fan-Created Redskins Uniforms

I don’t know why I do this. Every time I write about a fan-created Redskins uniform, everyone goes insane for three and a half weeks. But this was running around the internet today, so I’ll post it here with one caveat: THESE ARE NOT HAPPENING. They are not real.

They were debunked in a thread on ExtremeSkins last month; for some reason they resurfaced today — along with similarly imaginary designs for the other 31 NFL teams — and were promptly debunked again in no uncertain terms by NFL PR guy Brian McCarthy. THEY ARE NOT HAPPENING.

So, with that warning up top, here are two different fan renderings of hypothetical Redskins uniforms based on the Nike Pro Combat unis that college teams are wearing. Click to enlarge.

That one is via @ChadDukes. This next one is from here. Read more »

A Reader Imagines The Gold Pants

Let me be very, very clear about this right up top: THIS IS A READER’S IMAGINING CREATED WITH PHOTOSHOP. It is not created by the team, and in no way reflects anything real. As of now, the only news we have regarding gold pants is what general manager Bruce Allen said on the radio yesterday: i.e., nothing.

If it were 1998 and this were a Geocities page, I would put this in enormous flashing text surrounded by unicorns and blinky lights: Reader’s Rendering, Not Authentic.

But even if it’s not authentic, it’s still very, very cool looking. It’s from Reader Urko in Spain, and he did a heck of a job. If the gold pants really do exist, and they really would look like this, I’m even more onboard than I was yesterday.

It doesn’t hurt that it’s Devin Thomas scoring a touchdown in the mud in front of the eventual Super Bowl champions, but seriously: heck of a job all the way around on this one by Reader Urko.

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More Uniform Talk. Hooray.

So while I was watching first-round pick Trent Williams take his headshot, general manager Bruce Allen took to the airwaves on ESPN980 and talked to Kevin Sheehan. Fortunately, Gary Fitzgerald of Redskins.com was listening, and he’s posted a look at the meat of what Allen discussed:

On a contract extension for Donovan McNabb: “We know there will be a time and place to address that. Right now we’re focused on trying to have a good mini-camp, a healthy mini-camp and seeing what we can accomplish this weekend. There will be plenty of time to have those discussions.”

On restricted free agent Rocky McIntosh: “I’m sure he will sign his tender in a very short time.”

On Albert Haynesworth: “”He wanted to work out with his personal trainer and he says that has worked for him in the past. He did that when he was with the Tennessee [Titans] franchise. He went back to that routine and hopefully it works out for him.”

Allen is a master at playing his cards close to the vest, so, honestly, there’s not a lot of news there. But perhaps the most interesting bit of non-news had nothing to do with playing the game of football at all.
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