When the Cincinnati Bengals travel to Cleveland for this evening’s Monday Night Football matchup with the Browns (8:15 p.m. on ESPN), they’ll be wearing orange socks with their white jerseys for the first time since they unveiled their current uniform set ahead of the 2021 season.
Typically, the Bengals pair their standard orange and black helmets with white jerseys and white or black pants one the road. If they’re in white pants with black stripes down the sides, the pants are accompanied by black socks. If they’re in black pants with orange stripes down the side, the pants are accompanied by white socks.
That changes tonight, though it’s worth noting Cincinnati has worn white jerseys and pants with white socks twice in the last two seasons, as well as black pants with black socks twice in the 2020 preseason.
Both instances of white pants with white socks were at home, including last year’s Week 1 win over the Minnesota Vikings and this year’s win over the Miami Dolphins, when they wore their Color Rush set and debuted their new white helmets.
Cleveland, meanwhile, will counter with its orange helmets, standard brown jerseys and orange pants. This marks the fourth time since the Browns unveiled their current uniform set in 2020 (five games) that they’ve worn orange pants against the Bengals.
That includes once at FirstEnergy Stadium, the site of tonight’s game, as well as twice at Paycor Stadium (formerly Paul Brown Stadium). Cleveland is 3-0 in those games and 4-0 overall against Cincinnati since its current uniform set debuted.
That includes wearing white pants in last year’s 21-16 victory at home, which means the Bengals are 0-2 against the Browns in their current look. With that said, we’ll soon find out if tonight’s combination is a trick or a treat that we’ll see more often in the future.
Photo courtesy of @Browns on Twitter.