The Detroit Lions will not be getting new uniforms next season, but they will have new helmets to go with their alternate uniforms.
Lions president Rod Wood told the Free Press on Monday that the team plans to unveil its alternate helmet later this spring and is in discussions with Nike about new uniforms for 2024.
“There will not be new uniforms in 2023,” Wood said. “I know people get over their skis on that. It takes really two years to really get it going, so (Lions chief communications and brand officer) Brian (Facchini) and a team have been kind of working with Nike, looking at uniforms that will probably be for 2024. It could be an interesting overhaul of the uniforms. We will have a new alternative helmet though this year. We didn’t do that (last season).”
Thirteen NFL teams wore alternate helmets last season, taking advantage of changes to the NFL’s one-shell helmet policy approved in the spring of 2021.
For now, alternate helmets can be worn only with alternate uniforms, which for the Lions are their gray jerseys and pants.
Wood indicated the Lions likely will have a new alternate uniform in 2024. He declined to share the new helmet design publicly, but the alternate is expected to look significantly different than the silver helmet the Lions currently wear with the Lions logo on the side and blue striping down the middle.
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Alternate helmets must include a logo from some point in the team’s history, according to NFL.com, and teams cannot create a new logo specifically for the helmet.
“We take the logos off, so I guess you maybe have three helmets because you have the traditional, then you take the logos off for the throwback, then we’ll have that for the grays,” Wood said. “And then in 2024, we might have some additional uniforms, alternate, that we can wear it with.”
The NFL allows teams to change uniforms every five years.
The Lions last unveiled new home, away, Color Rush and throwback uniforms in 2017, and mix and match their home and away jerseys and pants for different looks.
While multiple Lions players have hinted at new uniform designs on social media or during public appearances this offseason, Wood said the process of changing uniforms is an extensive one that starts with the organization giving Nike a vision of how it sees itself and designers exchanging myriad ideas with the Lions team of Facchini, chief operating officer Mike Disner and others.
That process is ongoing, and Wood said the Lions will not stray too far from their brand.
“We’re not going to the Portsmouth colors,” he said. “No, it’ll still be within the blues and the grays. I think it’s too early to say exactly, but I would describe it at least initially as probably being more change than the last time we did it, cause I think those were more subtle changes.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.