With a new owner and a new football boss, changes are coming to the Browns.
But the players wouldn’t necessarily mind if a uniform change was part of the plan.
ESPNCleveland.com’s Tony Grossi polled a representative sample of the locker room on the issue, and found unanimous support for some tweaks to one of the league’s most traditional looks.
In fact, Grossi only found one player (wide receiver Josh Cooper) who fully endorsed the white-on-white look.
“I think it’s a new generation of football,” safety T.J. Ward said. “Especially with us being one of the youngest teams, I think the consensus is we kind of all want something fresh, a new look. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the same look, but maybe an alternate or a change-up. But we still have to play football.”
Even veteran kicker Phil Dawson, the only player who has been with the team throughout its second act which began in 1999, can justify an update.
“I look at a lot of pictures of Browns history and I see all kinds of different uniforms,” Dawson said. “So why it is now the actual ones we’re wearing we can’t change? I don’t get. I’ve seen brown on orange. I’ve seen white on orange. The one constant is the helmet, but way, way back they wore white. There have been changes to the uniform throughout Browns history.
“You can probably make a pretty good argument that this city fought so hard to keep its colors when the team left and came back, that some of that [tradition] sentiment is a product of that. So obviously it’s going to be a delicate situation. And I’m certainly not going to be upset if no change is made. [But] guys grumble a little bit.”
The one point no one’s going to argue is that the football is far more important than the fashion. College teams change uniforms often, using garish combinations and outlandish designs as recruiting tools.
But as the Panthers proved conclusively yesterday (when they were embarrassed while wearing a new all-black get-up), the most important part of the uniforms remains who is inside it.