I even think the Steelers’ cut numbers look better than the Giants’ intact numbers, which I wouldn’t have guessed would be the case until I actually saw them side by side. Personally, I think the cut stripes look much better. That leaves us with two teams that let their helmet ornamentation extend across the gap without cutting it - the Cowboys and Rams: The Broncos did cut their striping, however, on their recent Thursday-night helmet design:Ħ. It looks like their equipment staff may actually have shortened the stripe just a bit on the SpeedFlex shells, to keep the stripe from reaching the gap (click to enlarge): Their center stripe doesn’t extend all the way down to the nose bumper - it stops a few inches short, right around the spot where the SpeedFlex gap would be. Both teams cut their stripes, but they take different approaches to their helmet numbers: The Steelers cut theirs, while the Giants leave theirs intact across the gap (click to enlarge).ĥ. There are two teams - the Giants and Steelers - that, in addition to center striping, have uniform numbers on the front of their helmets, and these numbers also extend into the SpeedFlex gap. Three additional teams - the Browns, Panthers, and Saints - have been inconsistent, sometimes cutting their striping tape and sometimes not (click to enlarge):Ĥ. Of those 21 teams, 13 of them cut their striping tape as it crosses the gap - the Bengals, Bills, Colts, Dolphins, 49ers, Jets, Lions, Packers, Raiders, Ravens, Seahawks, Titans, and Washington (if you can’t see the slideshow below, click here):ģ. (The 11 remaining teams with no helmet striping or other graphics extending into the SpeedFlex gap are the Bears, Buccaneers, Cardinals, Chargers, Chiefs, Eagles, Falcons, Jaguars, Patriots, Texans, and Vikings.)Ģ. So that gives us a total of 21 teams to assess. In addition, the Bengals’ tiger stripes and the Rams’ horns extend over the SpeedFlex gap. Of the 32 NFL teams, 19 of them have center striping on their helmets. Let’s see how the numbers stack up, shall we? One thing at a time:ġ. Reader Omar Jalife has done some heroic photo research to determine how each stripe-helmeted NFL team handles this (a trickier task than you might think, because some teams only have one or two SpeedFlex-clad players).
Several readers have commented in recent weeks that the Cowboys run their striping tape across that cutout, while most other teams take the trouble to cut their stripes as they cross the gap (see examples of both styles at right).
The Riddell SpeedFlex helmet presents a challenge for NFL equipment managers, because its shell includes a cutout on the crown, right where striping tape would normally be passing through.
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