No new Detroit Lions uniforms for 2022, but planning for potential 2023 release underway

Every five years, NFL teams are permitted to make changes to their uniform or change them completely. For the Detroit Lions, 2022 marks the first year they are eligible to make changes from their 2017 modifications, but the team will be keeping their current set of uniforms for at least one more season.

Down at the owners meeting in Florida, Lions team president Rod Wood spoke to a small group of reporters about where the organization stands in their progress towards new uniforms.

“We’re actually starting a process to look at a possible change for next year,” Wood said. “It’s really like a year-plus lead time. So we just convened a committee. I know we get a lot of things tweeted at us and suggestions about what fans want, so we catalogue all those and we’ll take them under advisement.”

While feedback from the latest uniforms were mostly positive, many complained about the outline of the numbers, as they are hard to read from long distances. Additionally, many have wondered if the “WCF” patch honoring former Lions owner William Clay Ford, who passed away in 2014, will stay on the uniform. That decision has not yet been made.

“We haven’t talked about (keeping) it yet. That’s a possibility but I’m not sure,” Wood said.

Another option for the Lions would be to throw an homage to the Portsmouth Spartans, the team from the the 1920s and ‘30s that eventually became the Detroit Lions. That would require a uniform set of completely different colors—they wore purple, gold and white. But based on Wood’s comments, it doesn’t sound like that is happening.

“We don’t talk about (the Portsmouth Spartans), so I think the answer is probably we’re focused on Detroit and the Detroit Lions and not the history of the Portsmouth,” Wood said. “I think I might get killed if we went back to different colors.”

Another possibility that does sound like it has legs is the addition of a new helmet option. The league adopted a rule that, starting in 2022, teams will be allowed to sport a second, alternate helmet. And while that won’t be happening this year, it sounds like it could very much be in the works for 2023.

“We’re not doing that this year because our throwbacks really just take the current logo off, but other teams are adding it because they can go back to a throwback with a different helmet. We may look at a different helmet as part of this as well as the change to the uniforms, but just started the process,” Woods said.

As for who will be making the decision, Wood noted that the committee will likely include people from the football, marketing and communications side of the organization. The only specific name he included was senior vice president of football and business administration Mike Disner.