The Buffalo Bills announced on Tuesday afternoon that they will celebrate their final game at Highmark Stadium by wearing red throwback helmets in their Week 18 matchup with the New York Jets.
The Bills originally wore this design, which features their “Charging Buffalo” logo on the sides, a blue, red, and white striping pattern down the center, and a white facemask, from 1987 to 2001, spanning the most successful era in franchise history.
Buffalo wore this helmet design in four consecutive Super Bowls from 1990 to 1993 (XXV, XXVI, XXVII, and XXVIII) before modernizing the stripe as part of a full-scale uniform redesign in 2002. They then scrapped the red helmets altogether in 2011 when they moved to white lids.
“There’s no better way to celebrate our fans and honour our team’s history by bringing back the red helmets,” chief operating officer Pete Guelli said. “The Bills provided this region with some of the most incredible moments in franchise history in the 1990s, wearing these helmets, and we feel this is a great way to commemorate the closing of Highmark Stadium in our regular season finale.”
The Bills’ decision to reintroduce a red helmet now leaves the Kansas City Chiefs, Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Rams, Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers as the only teams in the league without a second shell in their wardrobe.
The new helmets will be paired with their standard blue home jerseys and white pants for the game against the Jets rather than adding a matching throwback design, as teams are only permitted to have four jerseys in their rotation.
Along those lines, Bills will also wear their “Standing Buffalo” throwback uniforms twice this season, including Oct. 13 at the Atlanta Falcons, who have already announced they’ll wear their 1966 throwback uniforms that evening, and Nov. 16 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The all-white uniforms feature a red bison silhouette on the helmets and traditional red and blue striping patterns on the sleeves and pants. Buffalo originally wore this design on the road from 1964 to 1972, as well as a throwback option in 2009 and from 2012 to 2021.
Rather than introduce a third shell, the Bills will simply swap the decals and facemasks on their standard white helmets to complete the vintage look. This was also the process from 2013 to 2021, when the NFL’s one-helmet rule was in effect.
Photos courtesy of @BuffaloBills on X/Twitter.
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