Jeffrey Lurie Announces Eagles Will Return to Kelly Green Scheme in 2023
In Eagles fashion news, owner Jeffrey Lurie announced on Tuesday evening that his team will be returning to Kelly green jerseys and matching Kelly green helmets.
The NFL allowed teams to use alternate jerseys in 2018, but Lurie said he wanted his organization to do it the right way.
“We really wanted to go back to the classic, Eagles green, Kelly green jersey, but we wanted to do it the right way, and the right way was to have a matching helmet,” said Lurie at the NFL Annual Meetings in West Palm Beach. “And for whatever different reasons existed, it wasn’t until June of 2021 that the NFL has allowed us to come up with a second helmet.”
He ticked off the names of some great Eagles who wore that color scheme decades ago.
“If you remember the 90s and the 80s with Randall (Cunningham) and Reggie (White) and Jerome (Brown) and Seth (Joyner) and Clyde (Simmons) and everybody, it’s going to be that uniform, and it’s going to be as identical to what that existed as possible,” Lurie said.
The catch is, the new-look uniforms, which will be the team’s alternate jerseys, won’t be unveiled until the 2023 season.
The Eagles are working with Nike to produce them, and Lurie said it will be a two-year process because Nike doesn’t have Kelly green in its current color palette.
In the meantime, the Eagles will unveil a black helmet for the upcoming season that will be worn when the team breaks out its black jerseys.
“Our players love wearing black, and they love all black, so we’re going to match the black jersey with a black helmet and that’ll be this coming season,” said the owner.
There’s another catch. While the Eagles will use black helmets this fall, they may not be able to use them again once the Kelly green helmets are put in play in 2023.
“We may not be able to continue with that once we introduce the classic Eagles green, Kelly Green, but we’re going to try,” said Lurie. “We’re going to try to convince the league that a third helmet and a third matching jersey to helmet is to the benefit to us, our fans, and everybody else because I think we love that, too.
“Anyway, can’t wait to unveil all these plans. We want our fans to know we’ve listened to you. We wanted this from the beginning when we’re able to and 2023 is when we’ll have the introduction of the classic Eagles green, the Kelly green, and this year black.”
Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglesmaven.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.
