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NFL to Feature Color Rush Uniforms on All Thursday Games; What Will the Browns' Color Be?

By Chris Pokorny
William Hauser-USA TODAY Sports

Last year, the NFL experimented with the concept of "Color Rush uniforms" on several Thursday Night Football games. The most memorable one had to be when the Jets faced the Bills in an all-green vs. all-red game that had fans' eyes bleeding. Those two teams actually meet on Week 2 in 2016 on TNF, but there might be a change to the color rush concept this year after the league learned color blind fans had difficulty determining which team was which.

[After last year's game and] amid public uproar, NFL PR man Brian McCarthy released statement the next day, explaining the league's "standard television test did not account for color blindness for fans at home" and that the league would "enhance (their) testing to include a color blindness analysis to better address this issue in the future."

Earlier this month, Lions team president Rod Wood said that all 32 teams in the NFL would be getting alternate Color Rush uniforms for TNF this year. That should perk up the interest of Cleveland Browns fans who were wondering why we never see the team utilize their all-orange uniforms in 2015. This leaked photo would seem to indicate that all-orange is the early favorite for the Browns' Color Rush uniform:

A few days ago, though, Steelers owner Art Rooney said that the Steelers ended up deciding to go with black as their Color Rush uniform (the above chart indicates gold, so Pittsburgh must have made a late change). He also hinted that the league has a solution to solve the color blindness issue, and it really involves just one of the teams having a Color Rush uniform with the other having to go all-White:

"[W]e decided our color option was going to be black, and the default option is going to be white," Rooney said. "When you’re the road team, the home team gets to decide what it’s wearing. If for some reason the Colts would decide to wear white, we would wear black. We just felt black was more of our predominant color [than gold]."

The Browns' only TNF game is at Baltimore, and I would expect them to go all-black, forcing the Browns to go all-white. All hope is not lost for seeing the all-orange uniforms this year, though -- since the all-orange is part of their uniform set, they could end up wearing it at a daytime home or away game.

Do you like the concept of the Color Rush uniforms on TNF?

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