The Patriots’ new, post-Tom Brady jerseys aren’t as good as they should be

For the past two decades, the Patriots have been their best selves. They’ve done so, for the most part, while wearing their second-best uniforms.

Tom Brady led New England to six Super Bowl titles in blue and white, putting the ghost of Pat Patriot firmly in the franchise’s rear view by burying him under a mountain of success. Now that Brady’s gone, the Patriots are ushering in a new era. They’re hammering home that point with new uniforms that blend their pre-Brady past with an optimistic future.

They’re ... fine.

New England brought back the shoulder stripes of its past (yay!) but overstuffed them with a thick red-and-blue contrast on the away jerseys that make them decidedly different than the Patriots’ old unis (boooo). The red wiring outside the numbers is the continuation of a theme that dates back to Willie McGinest and Drew Bledsoe, and while it looks a little busy there’s at least a reason it’s there.

The home uniforms, which are effectively just Color Rush kits with a little extra polish, look significantly sharper. Red and white shoulder stripes accent deep blue jerseys like perfectly placed strips of fondant. Still, they fail in the same way every Pats jersey from 1993-on have failed.

They aren’t the Patriots’ red-jersey throwbacks.

The Patriots explained away the lack of the throwbacks on a 2012 NFL rule that prohibits players from wearing more than one helmet during the season. While they wanted to incorporate the old red jerseys, the league’s reticence to allow temporary switches made that a problem.

“Our primary uniforms in the modern era have been blue and white and they will remain so,” Jen Ferron, CMO of Kraft Sports and Entertainment, said at the unveiling “We recognize that fans also have an affinity for the red ‘throwback’ uniform and we hope to incorporate that into our uniform rotation in the future.”

“In the future” could mean as soon as 2021 when that helmet rule is up for review. That would be great for New England. But it also avoids the point that the Patriots could have made their throwback their primary jersey THIS WHOLE TIME.

As sharp as Brady looked in the occasional pre-2012 throwback:

He’s no more tied to that era or those uniforms than Wes Welker or Matt Light. Would a return to the kits of a pre-1993 Patriots be some kind of subconscious signal the club is ready to get back to its losing roots? Maybe! But LOOK HOW GOOD THOSE UNIFORMS ARE.

That’s the standard against which every New England uniform must measure. Every one hasn’t been able to stack up. But that’s not the biggest sartorial challenge the Pats face each season ...

The reason why we won’t see the throwback in 2020 is because the team’s existing helmets would clash with any attempt at a 1970s/80s tribute. This is all because of the AFC’s worst logo.

In the Patriots’ official story about their new uniforms, they make it a point to refer to their helmet logo as the “Flying Elvis.” This is a nickname the team has co-opted from the media. It was not made out of love.

The fact the Patriots’ primary logo went from this:

to this:

remains the team’s greatest crime against football. The people (a very specific set of people, but people for sure) are crying out for Pat Patriot, only to be denied time and time again. The colonial comet, clad in a tri-corner hat roughly the height of his own face, remains integral to New England’s identity.

I can understand some of the reasoning behind that. Pat Patriot was the look of a loser — the franchise went 221-270-9 and won zero Super Bowls with him gracing its helmet. It went 291-125 and won six championships with smeared Sam Adams gracing its domes. Space comet colonial face is the decal of the Belichick era, and the Belichick era is all that’s good in New England football history (excluding Doug Flutie and/or UMass’s FCS run).

But. It. Suuuuuucks.

The simplest fix to remove the biggest impediment between jersey perfection and “completely fine” would be an updated Pat Patriot in the Flying Elvis’ face. This is a swap New England refuses to make.

The Patriots could have scored an easy “B+” grade by simplifying their jerseys and opting for a clean look — much like the Buccaneers did to ring in the Brady era. They could have aced their redesign by following the Browns’ lead and leaning hard on a uniform history that includes the league’s best throwbacks.

Instead, they took that latter idea and over complicated it. The end result isn’t bad. It’s just not as cool as it could have been.In the spectrum of 2020’s new uniforms, the Patriots lag way behind Cleveland (which is a weird thing to type in any NFL-related terms).

But they’re still way better than the Falcons.