“If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you are! And you should know that!”
— Crash Davis, Bull Durham
Good Saturday Morning, Uni Watch readers — I hope you’ve all had a pleasant week.
Most of you probably recognize the above quote, from the fantastic movie Bull Durham, and while it was referring to some unusual idiosyncrasies of one of the movie’s protagonists — Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh — it might just as easily be referring to the recent sartorial choices on the New York Jets.
Almost since the Titans of New York became the New York Jets in the early 1960s, the team has famously worn green; their informal nickname is “Gang Green,” and they have been one of a handful of teams to have worn a single color (green) and white. That changed a bit during the 1990s, when the team added black face masks and black as an accent color on the uniforms. When the team went back to their “throwback” uniforms (1998-2018), black once again disappeared from the uniforms. However, when the team redesigned for the 2019 season, black came back as a uniform accent, the black facemask returned, and…of course…they joined the BFBS fad three decades too late by introducing an all-black alternate uniform.
But the team would largely keep the black as a separate entity, wearing the all-black uniform three times in 2019 and twice in 2020. I don’t want to pick on the Jets, but they were pretty terrible then (7-9 in 2019, and an awful 2-14 in 2020). They weren’t much better in 2021, going 4-13. However, during Week 8 against the Bengals (who would go to the Supe last season), the team somehow won, 34-31, while wearing their black alternate uniforms. Whether it was just to mix things up, or perhaps because they felt some mojo from the black pants, the Jets wore their black pants with their white jerseys, for the first time ever, the following week against the Colts. Unfortunately for the Jets, it didn’t end well (they lost 45-30). They wouldn’t wear black pants with the white jerseys again that season.
Fast forward to 2022. Gang Green wore their “classic” green jerseys over white pants in all three pre-season games (against Philadelphia, Atlanta, and finally against the Giants. Gang Green had returned.
Only, it hadn’t quite returned. From Opening Day through Week Three, the Jets went mono-white three consecutive weeks — two of which were home games (against the Ravens and Bengals). They lost both games. Now, early season games frequently feature home teams wearing white jerseys, because it’s pretty hot and some teams view that as an advantage. And it’s understandable they’d wear white on the road, as most teams wear color at home, regardless of the weather. But through three games, Gang Green did not wear either their green jersey (despite two home games), nor their green road pants. Again, nothing too unusual, but a bit odd for a team nicknamed “Gang Green.”
Their fourth game of the season was a road game against the Steelers — who always wear black jerseys at home — so that would mean a fourth consecutive week without a green jersey. But, perhaps thinking the white pants weren’t quite providing them with the winning juju, the Jets decided to wear their alternate black pants, for only the second time in history. They won.
There are probably a dozen reasons the Jets won that game, but wearing black pants likely wasn’t one of them. Still, sports figures (and teams) can be a superstitious lot, so with a Week Five game against the Dolphins, perhaps they sought to bottle up some of that Steeler-win-magic, and for their third consecutive regular season home game, the team again wore white jerseys. And, you guessed it, black pants.
So, two straight victories, both in white over black. With the team scheduled to wear white jerseys against the Packers for Week Six (against the Green Bay Packers in their mono-green fauxbacks), would they try to keep the streak in white/black alive? Of course.
Week Seven is approaching and the Jets are playing the Broncos in Denver (who will be wearing orange jerseys). Will they seek to keep the white/black streak going? What do you think?
So that will be six consecutive weeks in white jerseys and four consecutive weeks wearing black pants, despite green being their primary color and with pant options of both green and white. No matter what happens this weekend, the Jets will again be wearing black pants at home against the Patriots in Week 8, as they’ll be sporting their all-black alternate ensemble, this time complete with their new alternate black helmet. So that will be five consecutive weeks wearing black pants. Gang Green isn’t very green these days, are they?
But a streak’s a streak.
As Crash Davis and Annie Savoy (of Bull Durham fame) would argue…
Crash Davis: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie Savoy: You most certainly did.
Crash Davis: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie Savoy: Yes you did.
Crash Davis: I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.
If the Jets believe in streaks, how long will they continue to both wear black pants and white tops, eschewing their primary green jerseys? According to the GUD, the Jets are “scheduled” to wear their green “home” jerseys twice — beginning in Week 9 and again in Week 15 — but the Jets aren’t necessarily beholden to wearing green at home. They could continue to go white/black. They’ll definitely be wearing black pants twice more after this weekend and next (Weeks 12 and 16, when they will wear their alternate black uniform & helmet). And what if some team decides to try to disrespect the Jets streak by wearing white at home? Will they go green/black? And what if they lose this weekend and next, while wearing black pants? Will that effectively ruin the black pants mojo?
This could all be moot in a couple weeks, but has there ever been a team who hasn’t worn their primary “home” jersey at all at home for an entire season? (Yes, we know there have been several teams who’ve gone an entire season wearing white at home, and a few where a team has worn white jerseys all season, but those teams effectively declared their white jersey as their home jersey.) If the Jets continue to win in black pants (and white jerseys), will they continue to wear only white or black at home? Again, this could all become moot — and we may find out in Week 9. But so far Gang Green is more like Gang Black.
You have to respect the streak.
The scourge that is BFBS. The Jets uniforms are brutal enough and black makes them even worse.
I get the whole streak thing, though. Silly superstitions are part of sports. I’ve done it myself.
Incredible how every single Washington uniform fix that people are putting together is 100% better than the actual uniforms they have. They had such great striping on their previous uniforms and to go from great striping to no striping is just criminal. When will Nike, Adidas and UA realize that traditional striping on uniforms always looks better than trying to create some new fad.
Also, all of the teams wearing high white socks/tights with no stripes and solid white pants…you look like you have a practice uniform on. Looking back on my playing days, one of the best things was seeing your game pants laid out in your locker. Your practice pants were plain with no striping. But to see your game pants, in a different color, with stripes. That was always such a treat.
Great point about the all-white uniforms looking like a “practice uni”. We wore white/white for the whole week, I LOVED getting to wear the actual game uniform. Even getting to wear the jersey around school on Friday was awesome.
Yes! The striping on the previous Washington uniforms was phenomenal. When they went white over burgundy, it was the best road look in the NFL.
I am all about the superstition but I would almost want the Jets to lose just to stop the black pants insanity. They more or less got their uniform update right except for the BFBS.
Nice touch on the baseball uni tracker, where the Phillies’ sleeve number is the starting pitcher from the game.
Sorry to hijack – that Commies concept is everything they need to do to make their set look dent instead of the offspring of a bunch of Nike-fueled focus groups.
Obviously the white jerseys for the Jets aren’t good luck, otherwise the team wouldn’t have lost games while wearing them earlier in the season. It seems the team could break out the green jerseys, pairing them with the black pants, and all would be good, no? It’s all about the black pants at this point. Wasn’t it the Diamondbacks in 2007 who forced the Rockies in the NLCS to ditch their black jerseys? Not sure an NFL team can try to break the Jets in a similar way, though.
On another matter, has this Sept. 9, 1922 losing of baseball uniforms as the Boston Braves traveled to Brooklyn been covered here before? Retrosheet’s account states: “the Braves lost their baggage in the wreck at Woodlawn this morning and wore the road uniforms of the Dodgers; they also borrowed the Brooklyn bats.”
I remember being happy when the Jets added black in 1989, and I have to admit, I don’t hate the black pants with the white jersey.
Hoping Syracuse v Clemson makes the 5 & 1 tomorrow. Hoping Vilk can throw in a little “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
Any other week, that matchup would be on my radar. But there are so many good ones this week that it may fall short. We’ll see in a few hours.
I couldn’t stand the 1989 addition of black to the Jets. Not as much as I loathed what Glanville did to the Falcons, but still… I wasn’t pleased. And while I liked Crash Davis’ commentary on ground balls being better than strikeouts, I wasn’t a fan of his streak sprech. I’m not superstitious and I wish the Cowboys wouldn’t be, so they could bring back their royal blue jersey and wear it at home.
*That being said*…the current green/white/black for the Jets looks surprisingly good. I don’t want to see the black jersey or helmet, but they can keep the pants if they must.
*speech
Not sprech
1990, to be precise.
As someone who’s younger, I especially love the current Jets set. I think Black and Green compliment each other well. The Jets have sucked for so long, so it’s nice to see the Jets try something new. I think the squad has bought in and they probably love the black unis. I’m really excited to see the all black look (with helmet) vs the Pats!
My question is why do we dislike the Jets unis so much? The previous set was atrocious. I thought the shoulder stripes ruined the uniform, as the blended with the jerseys contrasting sleeves. I think the new look is simple, clean, and easy on my eyes! No matter our thoughts, if the Jets keep winning, we will see them rocking black.
The current set is far from the worst thing that Nike has churned out. But it doesn’t say “New York Jets,” like the 1998-2018 set (based on the 1965-77 set) did; it says, “Arena League.” The wordmark above the front numerals, and sleeve stripes that extend past the sleeves toward the collar, are amateur-hour features that also happened to be what we all disliked about the Cleveland Browns’ previous set that was ditched at the first opportunity (although the Jets wisely didn’t put a big honking wordmark on the pants sides as well, the worst uniform feature since the Jaguars’ two-tone helmet). The tapered pants stripes and non-contrasting socks don’t help either. And I’m sorry, but black has no business being in the Jets’ color pallette. None.
I think everyone realizes that the classic 1965-77 sleeve pattern doesn’t look as good shoehorned onto a modern sleeveless football jersey. But the contrasting sleeves and TV numbers were always unique to the Jets; it should always be their signature.
The best thing about the Jets’ current set is the shade of green, which is just about perfect. The numeral font isn’t bad either; whether intentionally or not, it’s reminiscent of the tail numbers of military aircraft. What the Jets should do for their next set is use this shade of green, this numeral font, and the current primary logo, and come up with something that’s closer to the “classic” Jets look of 1965-77/1998-2018. The franchise had most of what little success it has had in its history, in that look.
I was wondering how long it would take for you to chime in Jay!
It’s galling that the NFL forces its teams into templates that don’t respect their trademarks. Contemplate a scenario where the jersey-maker of the Yankees says, “I’m sorry, our looms can’t do pinstriped fabric.” You’d look for a new maker, wouldn’t you?
I’m not so sure about even that, anymore.
Remember which was the only MLB team that did NOT have the Majestic markers mark on it? The Yanks paid for that privilege. Yankee unis today have the swoosh. And it wasn’t because they couldn’t pay enough NOT to.
The problem with all the leagues is forcing all teams to have one (usually shitty) uni supplier. But Manfred can’t be bothered with integrity, he’s got a product (and it’s not baseball) to sell.
I’m surprised by my appreciation of the Jets’ current uniform set; mostly because of the brighter green, with black for contrast. But I do wish they’d return the oval insignia on the helmet, be it green or white.
The GTGFTU is September 26, 2018, Miami Marlins at Washington Nationals
Firstly, the Marlins used that style of uniform from 2012-2018. The Marlins and the braves played eachother 132 times during those seasons.
However, they largely eschewed the grey road uniforms in favor of black ones during the 2013 and 2014 seasons. This eliminates 38 matchups. 98 Possible ones left.
Time to see how many times the Marlins played the Nats while wearing those uniforms. 20 times total, eliminating 78 potential games
Now let’s see which of those games saw the Nats in their home whites. 13 do, which eliminates 7 possible games.
Time to get a little more insular. The nationals player in the back is wearing the number 5. The Nats have had 3 players wear the number 5, and that appears to be Adrian Sanchez, who played with the team in 2017 and 2018. This elimates the 8 games played in 2012, 2016, and 2017, leaving us with 5 games.
Now how many of those games between these two uniforms did Adrian Sanchez play in? Just one. September 26, 2018
Whoops just to clarify, the nats certainly had more than 3 players wear #5, but only 3 during that 2012-2018
Wow Allen!
I just picked that shot because I miss those Marlins uniforms given what we got in exchange.
I know, right? That was some serious detective work!
I really like the Jets’ white over black. Mostly because they committed to having black outlines on the jerseys from the beginning of when these were announced. I wouldn’t have included the black outlines, but because black is on the jerseys, it makes the pants look pretty darn good with it, especially with the green stripe down the pant legs. It seems more balance of all three colors that way.
In a perfect world, they would’ve just stuck with green and white on their primary jerseys, but they didn’t, and that’s why the pants work for me.
that homemade hockey sweater is gorgeous. and don’t dis that logo. i actually love that logo. some kind of psychedelic 80’s skater style leopard? i dig it!
Back in Yoga Pants. Bleeccchh.
Great work again, Todd!
Love the Dugout shirt. If there was a football version, I’d wear that. Guess it would have to say Sideline, though.
I miss football at old Yankee Stadium.
Beautiful wearable projects, Todd!