Philadelphia Eagles make proposal to bring alternate helmets back to NFL

Earlier today, we shared the news that Washington made a rule change proposal that would allow NFL teams to opt out of wearing “garish” Color Rush uniforms.

However, there was another uniform-related rule change proposal that came from another NFC East team. The crew at SB Nation’s Bleeding Green Nation noticed that the Eagles made a proposal to bring back alternate helmets as part of the third uniform. Here’s the entire proposal:

C. Miscellaneous Uniform Areas
(2) Third Uniforms — Each club is permitted to wear a League-approved
third uniform and helmet for up to two (2) regular season games (home or
away), and must submit its selection(s) to the NFL Football Operations
department by July 1, along with all other jersey color designations for the
upcoming season.
Alternate helmets are permitted to be worn only with
the League-approved third uniform or its Thursday Night Football uniform, and
must conform to all safety standards applicable to the club’s primary helmets.
Additionally, Cclubs are permitted to change the color of facemasks for either
its alternate/throwback uniform or its Thursday Night Football uniform. Please
refer to the Uniform Policy on page A39 for more information.
A visiting team may only wear a third uniform if the jersey color is of sufficient
contrast to the home team’s jersey color, as determined by the NFL Football
Operations department.
Third uniforms can only be worn for regular season games scheduled on Sunday
afternoons and which are played in stadiums in the United States in any week
prior to the start of “flexible scheduling.” Third uniforms cannot be worn in the
preseason or postseason.
Any requests for an exception to the Third Uniform policy must be submitted in
writing to the NFL Football Operations department by July 1 of that year.
Submitted by Philadelphia Eagles
Effect: Permits clubs to have an alternate helmet in a color to match their
third uniform.
Reason: Current rule is unnecessarily restrictive; by our equipment manager’s
estimate, players at certain positions can go through 15-20 helmets per
season and players regularly switch helmets during the game (e.g.,
helmet breaks, player with C2P components needs to switch to helmet
without C2P components).

As Bleeding Green Nation noted, the Eagles’ motivation for bringing this up could be because they want to bring back their kelly green uniforms as an alternate. There have been rumors in the past that they’ve wanted to go back to that uniform, and this would at least allow them to wear those unis as an alternate.

With that in mind, I am 100% in favor of this change. I’ve said on many occasions that the NFL’s one-helmet rule is a dumb rule — not only because it fails to stand on a solid foundation when it comes to player safety, but also because it hamstrings teams when it comes to stuff like this. It’s a bad rule all-around, and the NFL would benefit from passing this rule change.

We’ll see what happens, but what do you all think? Should the NFL bring back alternate helmets, or should they stick to one helmet (for the most part) per team?