NFL changes helmet rule, could allow Eagles to bring back kelly green jerseys
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Anew rule for the 2022 season would allow the Eagles to bring back their fan-favorite kelly green jerseys as an alternate.
The NFL sent a memo to teams Thursday afternoon announcing a new policy that will allow teams to use two different helmets during the 2022 season. Teams must inform the NFL if they want to use a second helmet by July 31.
This has been the blocker in the way of the Eagles bringing back their popular kelly green jerseys as an alternate.
Eagles owner Jeff Lurie has repeatedly said he wants to bring back the jerseys as an alternate (not full-time) but didn’t want to do so without a matching helmet. And he wasn’t interested in using a full helmet decal. The Eagles’ current helmets are midnight green.
Lurie has been trying to do this for a while.
“What we’re hoping to have happen… the whole key is we want a kelly green helmet to go with the kelly green jersey,” Lurie said in March of 2018. “We’re trying to get the league to allow a second helmet. That’s where it’s at. They very much know we want this and we want it badly. We’re waiting.”
The reason the rule had been in place was for safety, not cost. The rule was in place so that each player would have to be fitted correctly for just a single helmet per season. But it always seemed funny that the NFL — with seemingly infinite resources — couldn’t make it happen. The Eagles previously proposed this rule change but removed it at the suggestion of the competition committee. But there was always a hope it would change.
Even in 2018, competition committee chairman Rich McKay told NBC Sports Philadelphia that he was optimistic the rule would be changed.
“They have to decide, do they want to go to a plan that would be a two-helmet plan for the NFL?” Lurie said in 2018. “That’s not what we do now, it’s a one-helmet league. There’s ramifications in that, I suppose. They know that with the Eagles, it’s important to us. We really want to be able to have kelly green jerseys at time and to make it look really right, you have to have matching helmets.”
It took a few years, but the rule has been changed, finally. The Eagles will have to wait one more season but if Lurie is true to his word, kelly green will finally be back in 2022.
