HomeFootball Dirt32 Teams' Jerseys Ranked From Best to Worst, from Patriots' Classic to...

32 Teams’ Jerseys Ranked From Best to Worst, from Patriots’ Classic to Jaguars’ Disappointing Choices

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The NFL is a business. Its merchandising is an economy unto itself. That puts pressure on each franchise to find a jersey that not only looks great on the field, but flies off retail racks when worn by a superstar. For some teams, like the Kansas City Chiefs or New York Giants or Las Vegas Raiders, they’ve got decades of classic looks on which to fall back and made few tweaks along the way. Others have fallen victim to trends in their years of existence, creating a spectrum of uniforms that may never rise above “average.”

Let’s talk about the deep end of that spectrum. The jerseys that embody the worst trends, whether they’re leaning into non-sensical highlights and patches or glorifying old uniforms that were abandoned for good reason. Let’s talk about the worst jersey all 32 NFL teams have ever worn.

First, a rule. We’re only dealing with post AFL-NFL merger kits, so there won’t be anything before 1970 included here unless a team has worn it as a throwback since. And there may be too much appreciation for the clean simplicity of the 1970s and 1980s, as those older jerseys don’t show up too often. Finally, this list would have been significantly less thorough without the incredible work of the Gridiron Uniform Database, which is an encyclopedia of pro football uniforms across a wide range of leagues and years.

Let’s roll through our worst jerseys in alphabetical order.

Arizona Cardinals:

Aside from the period they wore state flag sleeve stripes, the Cardinals’ uniforms have generally been plain, inoffensive and generally forgettable. But if you wanted to sum up Nike’s approach to the late 2000s and 2010s, this paneled monstrosity would be a prime example. Nice bib, Rashard Mendenhall.

Atlanta Falcons:

The Falcons have some of the best colors in the game and finest uniforms in the sporting world. But in the 2000s they parted ways with their classic looks for a modern update which, fine, whatever. Then, in 2020 they gave us this freshman Photoshop design with an honest to god gradient from red to black, allowing the drop shadows of some strangely jagged numbers to emerge from the depths of, uh, their offensive linemen’s guts.

Baltimore Ravens:

The Ravens haven’t been around for 30 years yet. Their uniforms have generally been a proper, daunting mix of black, white and purple with some well-placed gold accents. The worst you could say is that the black collars occasionally looked stupid.

Buffalo Bills:

Buffalo has some of the NFL’s best uniforms, a gorgeous balance of red, white and blue that pops against the background of a throwback design. In the 2000s, however, they created a jersey that matched the Bills’ play on the field.

Carolina Panthers:

Carolina’s uniforms have been around nearly three decades and haven’t really changed. They’re all solid. Allow me to use this opportunity to lament the loss to stupidly wide shoulder pads that made anyone with true blocking responsibilities look like a sprite from the old NFL Blitz arcade game.

Chicago Bears:

I understand these are a tribute to the pre-1950 Bears teams that wore orange as a primary color. The problem is, Chicago is an old school club with an iconic look and little tolerance for nonsense (aside from the last 35 or so years of on-field results). In these jerseys, they’re a mouth hole and a candle away from being jack-o-lanterns.

Cincinnati Bengals:

Simplicity works best when you’re dealing with a bold foundation like orange and black tiger stripes. These jerseys aren’t terrible, they’re just too much. Between the shoulder cutouts, black collar and paneled nameplates, Cincinnati embodied all the trends of the 2000s at once.

Cleveland Browns:

Cleveland has put in work to make a palette of brown, orange and white look crisp and clean. But orange numbers on a brown backdrop — and a “CLEVELAND” that feels like it’s sitting just a bit too low — makes this feel like an unlicensed knockoff.

Dallas Cowboys:

Look, I’m not here to disparage some of the most timeline uniforms in the game. If I were, however, it would be the jerseys that look like saddle shoes from a distance. The current version of these jerseys are cleaner than their inspiration, however; the mid-90s Thanksgiving shirts that looked like viral marketing for Starter jackets.

Denver Broncos:

It’s difficult to put into words just how significantly the Broncos downgraded from their orange crush, block D-logo uniforms to these marvels of late-1990s Reebok engineering. Fortunately, we have pictures.

Detroit Lions:

The Lions have effectively worn the same uniforms since 1970. Whatever small tweaks they’ve made, like bold black outlines, have panned out.

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