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49ers' New Black Alternate Uniforms Look Like Their Old Black Alternates

It's a revamp.
Grant Cohn|
Sep 21, 2017; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brian Hoyer (2) looks for a receiver during the first quarter against the Los Angeles Rams at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Sep 21, 2017; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brian Hoyer (2) looks for a receiver during the first quarter against the Los Angeles Rams at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images | Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

For months, the 49ers have built suspense about the unveiling of their new rivalry uniforms which they will wear in the regular season finale against the Seattle Seahawks.

On Thursday, they finally revealed to the public what these new uniforms look like. Check them out.

It turns out the 49ers revamped their all-black uniforms from 2015. Those all blacks were extremely unpopular, and the 49ers stopped using them after 2017.

These all-black uniforms are slightly different. The helmet is black instead of gold. The numbers are in saloon font, which is a nice touch, and they have gold shadowing, which is necessary considering the old all-black uniforms had red block numbers and zero gold anywhere. They looked like Arizona Cardinals jerseys.

These jerseys look more like something the 49ers would wear, but they still have a distinct Arizona Cardinals or Tampa Bay Buccaneers feel, because black-on-black never has been and never will be a 49ers color scheme. It looks forced and goofy, the kind of jersey a lower-tier franchise would wear.

The 49ers made these jerseys because black-on-black jerseys sell well. Fans like them. And no team can pass up an opportunity to make an extra dollar. Still, imagine the Raiders coming out with a red-on-red jersey that has black and silver numbers. It would look ridiculous.

The 49ers' best alternate uniforms are their white-on-white 1994 jerseys. Those are historically relevant because the 49ers wore them in 1955 as well, so they're double throwbacks. As opposed to the new black-on-blacks, which the 49ers used sporadically from 2015 to 2017, three of the worst years in franchise history.

Fortunately, the 49ers will wear these uniforms just once this season -- call it a soft launch. If fans like the jerseys, the 49ers probably will wear them more frequently in the future. If fans don't like the jerseys, the 49ers will phase them out.

What an interesting season this will be for the 49ers. They're coming off a six-win year, they restocked their roster with lots of rookies and journeymen, they're sitting on more than $45 million in cap space, they haven't lowered ticket prices, and now they have a new uniform to sell. They're asking their fans to fork over more and more cash while adding players such as Marques Valdes-Scantling and Skyy Moore.

Maybe if the 49ers sell enough black-on-black uniforms, they'll be able to afford to keep Jauan Jennings.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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