It’s time for a highly informal, highly subjective, highly biased, and highly unscientific ranking of the helmets of the members of the American Football Conference. The list begins at the bottom, with the worst helmet, and ends at the top. This list is homage to the football helmet, the single coolest piece of equipment in all of sport, as well as to a player from the 1940s named Fred Gerkhe, the original painter of the original NFL helmet design- the horny hats of the Los Angeles Rams.
Here are some of the aesthetic factors that have weighed on this list:
Color. Or “colour”, if we were talking about CFL helmets. It’s almost impossible to go wrong with a dominant white look. Bright, bold colors work for me, examples being the red of the Chiefs lid and the orange of the Browns. I’m lukewarm on black- the Steelers can get away with it, since they’ve been running with black hats since the Kennedy Administration, but in other cases it smacks of a marketing device, a ploy to get hip-hoppers to “represent” that team’s gear. I can go one way or another with silver. I understand that color if it’s always been a team’s bread and butter, like in the case of the Raiders. However, if a team doesn’t need silver as a helmet color, it shouldn't adopt it, especially after having a helmet of a solid color. That means you, New England.
Stripes. Helmets without stripes, a la the Chiefs, are great. Helmets with single stripes, a la the Colts and Steelers, are very good. Helmets with dual stripes, a la the Jets and Browns, are good. Helmets with stripes that fail to maintain a consistent width, a la the Broncos, or taper off, a la the Titans and Ravens, range from simply “not good” to “downright horrible”.
Logos. Relatively unimportant. Color and stripes are far more important, at least to this critic. As far as I’m concerned, you could stick a decal of an aborted fetus on a helmet, and if the color and stripes are right on, you’ve still got a solid piece of headgear.
There are a few factors other than looks that make the helmet, however, and here they are:
Tradition… TRADITION! It matters, sir. I can acknowledge that some of the newer teams- Houston, for instance- rock some decent-looking headgear. But aesthetics aren’t 100% of the equation. There is history involved in the rankings. The Jags and Texans both have solid helmet designs, but they haven’t been around long enough for me to really give a shit about them, so they rank relatively low.
Dance with who brung ya. History can be a boomerang. Teams that once had outstanding hats but altered the look are punished for getting away from what worked. That explains the low place of the Bills’ and Patriots’ helmets in the rankings.
My whim counts. It’s my list, and I’ll be petty if I want to. I reserve the right to rank helmets based heavily on my personal regard for the franchises that wear them. Generally I don’t- Oakland and Pittsburgh rank highly, despite the fact that I have very little use for either club. In the case of the lowest-ranked helmet, though… well, I ain’t gonna lie. That’s all personal. I said this list was subjective.
There will be an NFC Helmet Rankings List in the very near future, barring the death of the writer or the disablement of his Internet connection. And on that cheery note…
16. Baltimore Ravens: The tapering purple stripes don't do the hat any favors, but the Ravens’ place at the bottom of this list, frankly, has nothing to do with aesthetics. It has everything to do with the fact that this franchise is a dwarf bastard stepchild that shouldn’t exist at all, except for the ineptidude and malfeasance of its owner. Sorry. I will grudgingly praise this team’s drafts, the 2000 defense, Edward Reed- but those aren’t matters of taste. I'm forced to give credit to the Ravens for those things. But I do have the right to "subjectively" piss on their headgear.
15. Denver Broncos: Too ‘modern’. Too ‘futuristic’. The stripe starts out chubby at the back of the hat, and shrivels to Karen Carpenter-width at the front. That’s Amateur Night. This is the NFL. Why did this franchise alter its unis in the first place? They did pretty well with the old ones. Donned the lighter blue-and-orange in four Super Bowls. Those weren’t great either- the Broncos brought an inferior helmet as well as an inferior team, to all of them Super Bowl routs- but the new look makes them look like they’re playing in Munich as an NFL Europe expansion club, and those are the Bavarian Alps in the background instead of the Colorado Rockies. I thought Pat “I stood on the sidelines in a camel’s hair coat and enjoyed 79,000 Clevelanders getting traumatized” Bowlen had a little more class than that. Speaking of the Broncos, Courtney Brown is injured again. What a shock!
14. New England Patriots: Possibly influenced by their 9-39 record the previous three years, prior to the ’93 season New England switched from the old-school uniforms (and helmets) that were the colors of the American flag, to the silver look that make the Pats look like a possible Boston entry in the same league as The Last Boy Scout’s L.A. Stallions. Gone was the little kneeling Minuteman on the helmet. Gone was the simple red-white-and-blue scheme, the scheme that made the Patriots helmet ‘patriotic’ to begin with. This was a very unfortunate change. First time I saw the new silver hat in the 1993 preseason, I thought USFL. Great team, but New England’s helmet isn’t coming up until it stops blowing.
13. Jacksonville Jaguars: Solid black, sans stripe; I can get down with it, I guess. It's an expansion helmet (shrug). Why did the NFL put a team in Jacksonville again?
12. Houston Texans: Another lukewarm expansion helmet but like Jacksonville, not bad. Lukewarm doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an ugly hat. It’s solid primary color, no vanishing stripes, and little in the way of gimmickry. Houston’s hat edges Jacksonville’s simply because the Texans are winless against the Browns (0-2). Really, Houston should have looked into an all-white helmet with a Texas state map logo, sort of a reversed version of the old AFL Dallas Texans lids (the Texans left Dallas in 1963 and became the Chiefs). Nobody asked my opinion- nor should they have.
11. Buffalo Bills: It’s been 21 years since the Bills went to the red helmets. I’m still not used to the change. The old white helmet is a fantastic look, whether the buffalo is moving or just chillin', like on the old nickel. The red is wrong for Buffalo. It’s too much of a “hot” color for a team representing a region that is pretty much buried under snow for three solid months out of the year. Happily, on at least two occasions this season the Bills will be rolling out replicas of the uniforms they wore when they won the 1965 AFL Championship. Nice one, there. They should rock the white helmet more often, like sixteen weeks of the season.
10. Tennessee Titans: White (good). Double-stripes which, like Denver’s, peter out like a dry crick on the crown (horrible). The logo doesn’t do much for me either way. Clearly the franchise had to ditch the old Oilers uniform and start over. There may have never been a pro helmet more soiled by heartlessness, deceit and general bad business- from the firing of Bum Phillips, to the meltdown in Buffalo, to the move and the Bedouin early existence in Tennessee. A change obviously had to be made. This is a fairly honest effort, and in its inaugural year the Titans got to the Super Bowl. Really, they should lose the double vanishing stripes, but whatever. It's the Titans.
9. Miami Dolphins: It’s hard to go wrong with a white helmet, and to Miami’s credit, they’ve never gone and gotten creative with this look. With a few cosmetic changes, this is the same helmet worn by the undefeated team, the “Magic Markers” team, and so on. I’m not much for the Dolphins- the ’85 Divisional Playoff still leaves a bad taste, with Marino gobbling up a 21-3 Browns lead and Don Johnson in the stands, loving every minute of it- but the helmet is alright.
8. Cincinnati Bengals: The tiger stripes, considered quite radical when adopted just prior to the 1981 season represented a proactive effort by Paul Brown to make his team look different from the Browns on television. At least, that’s what I think. It could be difficult with the crappy color TVs they had back in the day, to differentiate two teams that wore basically plain orange helmets to go with the same uniform combination. Prior to ’81, Cincinnati’s hats were solid orange, no stripe at all, embossed simply with the word BENGALS on each side, in lettering the size of the second-lowest line on an eye chart. I don't hate it- I always alter the Bengals uni to the '70s look in Madden- but it wasn’t a scintillating look. The merits or demerits of the franchise aside, the tiger stripes are unique. And now the Bagels no longer resemble the Browns, except in the infinitesimal number of playoff appearances between them the last decade (one).
7. San Diego Chargers: The Chargers are smart enough to change the colors of their helmets without tampering with the basic design. At the end of the day, the twin thunderbolts are always there. This is a solid look. The white Charger helmet is nice- part of the powder-blue set Chris Berman hawks endlessly- but me, I’m a partisan of the not-too-dark blue/w gold facemask look, the one sported by Fouts, Winslow, Charlie Joiner and the rest of Air Coryell.
6. New York Jets: Simple green-and-white works as a uniform color scheme. It’s the reason why Ohio U. comes strong with their togs, though not their teams. It’s also the reason the J-E-T-S haven’t stepped wrong yet in their helmet designs since they changed their name from the original TITANS in 1963. The best helmet is the present look, worn also by the franchise’s only Super Bowl representative back in ’69. The solid green helmet of the days of Richard Todd, Mickey Shuler, and the dancing asshole wearing #99 (what was his name again?) isn't bad- after all, the Jets were wearing that uni when they gagged up a playoff game in Cleveland back in '87.
5. Kansas City Chiefs: Very fresh, even at 42 years young this season. Kansas City sports the only red helmet in professional football, and it’s a nice, bright, bold red to boot. Other than the venerable arrowhead, ‘KC’ logo on each side, the hat is pretty clean. Thumbs up! I gather that every team in the AFC West touts Oakland as its archrival. Strictly as an outside observer, I have to say the Chiefs have the strongest claim to this; not only has Kansas City had the teams to match up with the Raiders more than San Diego or Denver, but their helmets provide the most striking and visually pleasing contrast to Oakland’s monochromatic look.
4. Oakland Raiders: Okay, they’re pretty sweet. They got in early on the silver look, so more power to them. Like the Browns, they’re pretty much married to this look. I’d rather leave saying anything complimentary of the Raiders to someone else. It’s a nice hat, there, I said it, let’s leave it at that.
3. Pittsburgh Steelers: Pittsburgh wore a solid gold helmet, sans logo, with a black stripe back in the late ‘50s, when Bobby Layne was the quarterback. Those helmets were simply outstanding, but the present hat does make for a strong showing on Sundays. Straight black, with the one gold stripe and the “Steel” logo on just one side- I can dig it. I don’t like the team, but I do respect them enough to give their helmet the praise it’s due. Moreover, I respect a municipality having a single color scheme for all of its professional teams. More cities ought to run that game, though not Cleveland.
2. Cleveland Browns: You may say this is an ugly color for a helmet, and while I won’t come out and agree, I won’t come out and disagree either. But it’s ours. People went to court to save it. Anyway, you can’t have the Browns without the plain orange helmet. It’s one of the classic looks, and of course, it owns the singular distinction of having no logo of any kind whatsoever. No need for one, either. What logo works for a team called the Browns?
1. Indianapolis Colts: Tiger Bob Irsay may have packed his franchise onto Mayflower trucks and skulked out of Baltimore in the dead of night like a cur, but he did one smart thing- he didn’t fuck with the hat, the solitary blue stripe and the horseshoe logo on each side. Peyton Manning plays in a domed stadium about six hundred miles west of Baltimore, but on his head he wears what Johnny U. wore. The fewer colors in a helmet, the more chance there is that the helmet will be visually pleasing. The Colts have two colors in their entire uniform, and one of them is white. They’re a long way toward having the best unis in the sport. They do have the best helmets in the AFC.
Justin Posted: 9/8/2005by: Jesse L. I assure you I have not forgotten about the be-goggled Mr. Jefferson. Or Wes Chandler. Or Chuck Muncie. Or Woodrow Lowe. Or Louie Kelcher. Or Linden King. Or- Chargers Posted: 9/6/2005by: Justin Good call on the royal blue hats of the Air Coryell days. Another staple of that era was that cap designed to look like a replica of the team's helmet. A classic to be sure. And don't forget about John Jefferson. He never gets any love but he was the deep threat on those teams. Colts changes Posted: 9/5/2005by: Jimmy For a few years, the Colts had blue facemasks. They looked great, but they have since gone back to white. Browns Uniform Changes Posted: 9/3/2005by: brownsbacker Keep an eye out for a color change for the Browns in 2007 or 2008....the orange is going to be changing to a copper color and the brown to a deeper brown, almost black.
Hip Hop Posted: 9/2/2005by: Poundwater I'm still waiting for the Hip Hop mob to embrace the football helmet. They've done pretty much everything you can possibly do to the baseball cap - 'bout time they latched on to the trusty football helmet. WHATEVER Posted: 8/26/2005by: Mr. Vex Overall not bad. I would have to disagree with the Broncos being ranked so low and please the Raider Bronco rivalry is alive and well. The Browns hat is as miserable as the city and team is. Completely agree with Griz an Mr. Spock. Oh, and Mr. Spock- Posted: 8/26/2005by: Jesse L. It's all about whose ox gets gored. And Bob Irsay didn't gore mine. Brett Posted: 8/25/2005by: Jesse L. You're right about me fucking up the red helmet bit. A correction is in the NFC helmet rankings.
No disrespect to the Broncos in terms of the Raider rivalry. It's not that Denver hasn't had good teams- believe me, I know they have- but with the exception of the 1977 team, Denver's strongest periods have generally come when the Raiders are a down team. KC has competed directly with Oakland for championships more than Denver has, and they were legit archrivals to the Raiders as far back as the late '60s, when the Broncos still hadn't done squat. Fuck. I knew I should have stayed out of Raider rivalry discussions. illogical Posted: 8/25/2005by: Mr. Spock Ravens at the bottom because their previous owner moved the team. Colts at the top despite their previous owner moving the team. Highly illogical, Jim. Be consistent with your opinions lest I give you the Vulcan neck pinch. am i missing something? Posted: 8/25/2005by: Brett First of all, shame on you for saying, "not only has Kansas City had the teams to match up with the Raiders more than San Diego or Denver"..
Second, you also mention that "Kansas City sports the only red helmet in professional football" but right above that is the quote, "Its been 21 years since the Bills went to the red helmets"..
Come on man, don't you guys have an editor or atleast some college kid that will work for free beer to proof read?
Sorry, I just get a little jazzed up when people rank the Chefs higher than the Broncos...
16. Baltimore Ravens: The tapering purple stripes don't do the hat any favors, but the Ravens’ place at the bottom of this list, frankly, has nothing to do with aesthetics. It has everything to do with the fact that this franchise is a dwarf bastard stepchild that shouldn’t exist at all, except for the ineptidude and malfeasance of its owner. Sorry. I will grudgingly praise this team’s drafts, the 2000 defense, Edward Reed- but those aren’t matters of taste. I'm forced to give credit to the Ravens for those things. But I do have the right to "subjectively" piss on their headgear.
15. Denver Broncos: Too ‘modern’. Too ‘futuristic’. The stripe starts out chubby at the back of the hat, and shrivels to Karen Carpenter-width at the front. That’s Amateur Night. This is the NFL. Why did this franchise alter its unis in the first place? They did pretty well with the old ones. Donned the lighter blue-and-orange in four Super Bowls. Those weren’t great either- the Broncos brought an inferior helmet as well as an inferior team, to all of them Super Bowl routs- but the new look makes them look like they’re playing in Munich as an NFL Europe expansion club, and those are the Bavarian Alps in the background instead of the Colorado Rockies. I thought Pat “I stood on the sidelines in a camel’s hair coat and enjoyed 79,000 Clevelanders getting traumatized” Bowlen had a little more class than that. Speaking of the Broncos, Courtney Brown is injured again. What a shock! 
14. New England Patriots: Possibly influenced by their 9-39 record the previous three years, prior to the ’93 season New England switched from the old-school uniforms (and helmets) that were the colors of the American flag, to the silver look that make the Pats look like a possible Boston entry in the same league as The Last Boy Scout’s L.A. Stallions. Gone was the little kneeling Minuteman on the helmet. Gone was the simple red-white-and-blue scheme, the scheme that made the Patriots helmet ‘patriotic’ to begin with. This was a very unfortunate change. First time I saw the new silver hat in the 1993 preseason, I thought USFL. Great team, but New England’s helmet isn’t coming up until it stops blowing.
13. Jacksonville Jaguars: Solid black, sans stripe; I can get down with it, I guess. It's an expansion helmet (shrug). Why did the NFL put a team in Jacksonville again?
12. Houston Texans: Another lukewarm expansion helmet but like Jacksonville, not bad. Lukewarm doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an ugly hat. It’s solid primary color, no vanishing stripes, and little in the way of gimmickry. Houston’s hat edges Jacksonville’s simply because the Texans are winless against the Browns (0-2). Really, Houston should have looked into an all-white helmet with a Texas state map logo, sort of a reversed version of the old AFL Dallas Texans lids (the Texans left Dallas in 1963 and became the Chiefs). Nobody asked my opinion- nor should they have. 
11. Buffalo Bills: It’s been 21 years since the Bills went to the red helmets. I’m still not used to the change. The old white helmet is a fantastic look, whether the buffalo is moving or just chillin', like on the old nickel. The red is wrong for Buffalo. It’s too much of a “hot” color for a team representing a region that is pretty much buried under snow for three solid months out of the year. Happily, on at least two occasions this season the Bills will be rolling out replicas of the uniforms they wore when they won the 1965 AFL Championship. Nice one, there. They should rock the white helmet more often, like sixteen weeks of the season.
10. Tennessee Titans: White (good). Double-stripes which, like Denver’s, peter out like a dry crick on the crown (horrible). The logo doesn’t do much for me either way. Clearly the franchise had to ditch the old Oilers uniform and start over. There may have never been a pro helmet more soiled by heartlessness, deceit and general bad business- from the firing of Bum Phillips, to the meltdown in Buffalo, to the move and the Bedouin early existence in Tennessee. A change obviously had to be made. This is a fairly honest effort, and in its inaugural year the Titans got to the Super Bowl. Really, they should lose the double vanishing stripes, but whatever. It's the Titans. 
9. Miami Dolphins: It’s hard to go wrong with a white helmet, and to Miami’s credit, they’ve never gone and gotten creative with this look. With a few cosmetic changes, this is the same helmet worn by the undefeated team, the “Magic Markers” team, and so on. I’m not much for the Dolphins- the ’85 Divisional Playoff still leaves a bad taste, with Marino gobbling up a 21-3 Browns lead and Don Johnson in the stands, loving every minute of it- but the helmet is alright.
8. Cincinnati Bengals: The tiger stripes, considered quite radical when adopted just prior to the 1981 season represented a proactive effort by Paul Brown to make his team look different from the Browns on television. At least, that’s what I think. It could be difficult with the crappy color TVs they had back in the day, to differentiate two teams that wore basically plain orange helmets to go with the same uniform combination. Prior to ’81, Cincinnati’s hats were solid orange, no stripe at all, embossed simply with the word BENGALS on each side, in lettering the size of the second-lowest line on an eye chart. I don't hate it- I always alter the Bengals uni to the '70s look in Madden- but it wasn’t a scintillating look. The merits or demerits of the franchise aside, the tiger stripes are unique. And now the Bagels no longer resemble the Browns, except in the infinitesimal number of playoff appearances between them the last decade (one). 
7. San Diego Chargers: The Chargers are smart enough to change the colors of their helmets without tampering with the basic design. At the end of the day, the twin thunderbolts are always there. This is a solid look. The white Charger helmet is nice- part of the powder-blue set Chris Berman hawks endlessly- but me, I’m a partisan of the not-too-dark blue/w gold facemask look, the one sported by Fouts, Winslow, Charlie Joiner and the rest of Air Coryell.
6. New York Jets: Simple green-and-white works as a uniform color scheme. It’s the reason why Ohio U. comes strong with their togs, though not their teams. It’s also the reason the J-E-T-S haven’t stepped wrong yet in their helmet designs since they changed their name from the original TITANS in 1963. The best helmet is the present look, worn also by the franchise’s only Super Bowl representative back in ’69. The solid green helmet of the days of Richard Todd, Mickey Shuler, and the dancing asshole wearing #99 (what was his name again?) isn't bad- after all, the Jets were wearing that uni when they gagged up a playoff game in Cleveland back in '87. 
5. Kansas City Chiefs: Very fresh, even at 42 years young this season. Kansas City sports the only red helmet in professional football, and it’s a nice, bright, bold red to boot. Other than the venerable arrowhead, ‘KC’ logo on each side, the hat is pretty clean. Thumbs up! I gather that every team in the AFC West touts Oakland as its archrival. Strictly as an outside observer, I have to say the Chiefs have the strongest claim to this; not only has Kansas City had the teams to match up with the Raiders more than San Diego or Denver, but their helmets provide the most striking and visually pleasing contrast to Oakland’s monochromatic look. 
4. Oakland Raiders: Okay, they’re pretty sweet. They got in early on the silver look, so more power to them. Like the Browns, they’re pretty much married to this look. I’d rather leave saying anything complimentary of the Raiders to someone else. It’s a nice hat, there, I said it, let’s leave it at that. 
3. Pittsburgh Steelers: Pittsburgh wore a solid gold helmet, sans logo, with a black stripe back in the late ‘50s, when Bobby Layne was the quarterback. Those helmets were simply outstanding, but the present hat does make for a strong showing on Sundays. Straight black, with the one gold stripe and the “Steel” logo on just one side- I can dig it. I don’t like the team, but I do respect them enough to give their helmet the praise it’s due. Moreover, I respect a municipality having a single color scheme for all of its professional teams. More cities ought to run that game, though not Cleveland. 
2. Cleveland Browns: You may say this is an ugly color for a helmet, and while I won’t come out and agree, I won’t come out and disagree either. But it’s ours. People went to court to save it. Anyway, you can’t have the Browns without the plain orange helmet. It’s one of the classic looks, and of course, it owns the singular distinction of having no logo of any kind whatsoever. No need for one, either. What logo works for a team called the Browns?
1. Indianapolis Colts: Tiger Bob Irsay may have packed his franchise onto Mayflower trucks and skulked out of Baltimore in the dead of night like a cur, but he did one smart thing- he didn’t fuck with the hat, the solitary blue stripe and the horseshoe logo on each side. Peyton Manning plays in a domed stadium about six hundred miles west of Baltimore, but on his head he wears what Johnny U. wore. The fewer colors in a helmet, the more chance there is that the helmet will be visually pleasing. The Colts have two colors in their entire uniform, and one of them is white. They’re a long way toward having the best unis in the sport. They do have the best helmets in the AFC.
