RIP Jacksonville Jaguars two-tone helmets (2013-18)
By John Buhler
We sadly live in a world where we only have single-colored NFL helmets. It was a good run for the Jacksonville Jaguars’ two-tones. Best five years ever.
Oh, the times they are a changing in the NFL. Since when did the AFC South decided it was just going to magically be the best division in the worst conference in football? Peyton Manning used to own it, but now all four teams can semi-seriously vie for playoff berths in 2018. Look no further than the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Tennessee Titans from a year ago.
Essentially flipping it back a decade, both division rivals decided to party like it was 1999 and reach the AFC playoffs. Jacksonville won the AFC South and Tennessee earned a wild card berth. Now that both are starting to take playing well on the gridiron seriously, they decided they needed to revamp their uniforms.
Tennessee somehow made its uniforms worse. Who knew that one could screw up the color combination of red, white and blue so badly? Luv Ya Blue, but ain’t that America. Not to be outdone, the Jaguars decided that their two-tone helmets were so Barack Obama administration. After five years, they are done, lasting about as long as did Jane’s Addiction in their prime. Stop! Now Go!
2013 was a trying year for the Jaguars. Former owner Wayne Weaver made his team so bad that apparently Blaine Gabbert was an appropriate solution at quarterback. The only reason to watch North Florida’s favorite football team was for MJD to crush it for your fantasy team. It was bad, real bad. Jacksonville was becoming so irrelevant that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell not so secretly wanted to see if London would adopt them.
Needing a new eccentric billionaire to inject some life into Duval County, truck bumper magnate Shahid Khan bought the Jaguars and gave us the greatest helmet we’ve ever seen. If the Pittsburgh Steelers own the one-sided logo demographic, the Jacksonville owns the two-color market in the NFL.
Black and gold are two amazing colors. The way that they didn’t blend together at all really didn’t bring the two-tone helmets together. It was like watching a Minor League Baseball game with Jacksonville native Tim Tebow in the outfield, except it was an NFL game. Overall, the two-tone helmets symbolized going 5-11 and picking in the top-five annually.
Almost unbelievably, #Sacksonville was born and basked most gloriously on the St. John’s River with two-tone helmets and all. That team was great at masking Bortles’ quarterbacking inefficiencies and driving Tom Savage into the turf. Owning the Steelers was something all but Western PA could get behind, so props to you, Jags!
It was nice to see something so ugly like those two-tone helmets yield something so beautiful. Part of me wants to believe that this would have been the only Jaguars helmet Calais Campbell would ever wear. He looked absolutely magnificent as the mad scientist that brought #Sacksonville to life. Campbell was basically Dr. Sacksonvillestein.
But the Jaguars are now good and it’s time for the Khan Family to reap the benefits of new merchandise in their newly renamed stadium. Eventually Peter Pan has to grow up, so the two-tone helmets had to inevitably go. Even if Khan looks like Cap’n Hook with that twisted ‘stache of his.
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To me, these helmets best symbolized the Jaguars’ college stage. Like me, they had to find themselves during Georgia/Florida when they were lost. There is a time and place for everything, but I’m going to really miss the black and gold helmets of the Jaguars. The colors went together so wonderfully, like lamb and tuna fish. Simply delicious. RIP.