Cowboys look to break curse, record first playoff win in navy jerseys

Dallas is 0-3 in postseason games wearing navy-colored jerseys; they’ll pair them with white pants Monday, a combo that went 2-0 this year. | From @ToddBrock24f7

The Cowboys will look to break a few streaks on Monday night if they can topple the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the first round of the playoffs. A win would mark the club’s first postseason victory since 2018 and their first tournament road win since the 1992 postseason.

But if the Cowboys can escape Tampa with a victory, it will be their first playoff win wearing navy-colored jerseys… ever.

The team has announced that they will wear their navy jerseys and white pants to face the Bucs. It’s the same combo they wore in Week 5’s 22-10 win over the Rams and Week 8’s 49-29 victory against Chicago. (On Thanksgiving Day, the Cowboys did wear their throwback jerseys with white pants. While navy is the primary color, the “double-star” scheme on the shoulders makes those jerseys different than the regular navy set.)

The Cowboys first unveiled true navy-colored jerseys for the 1981 season. Prior to that, the team’s “road” jerseys were royal blue, and they were worn with the team’s regular light blue pants, and gray pants years before that.

The last on-the-field appearance for those uniforms (which many fans believed were cursed) was the 20-7 NFC Championship loss to Philadelphia in January 1981. The last postseason win in royal blue? The 1978 conference championship that put Roger Staubach & Co. in Super Bowl XXIII.

The Cowboys have played plenty of other road playoff games along the way: 11, to be exact. But thanks to the tendency of most teams to sport their colored jerseys in front of their home fans, the Cowboys were left to wear their traditional white-top set for those matchups.

Since switching to navy, Dallas has worn colored jerseys in three prior postseason games: 1982’s NFC title game loss to Washington, the 1996 divisional loss to Carolina, and 2003’s wild-card loss to, again, Carolina. All of those postseason losses came in grey pants.

As the home team, Tampa Bay got to select their jersey color for the upcoming Monday night contest. The Cowboys, forced into wearing colored jerseys, have opted to go with white pants rather than the silver pants they wore under navy in Weeks 3 and 18.

Using data compiled from The Gridiron Uniform Database, the Cowboys first used the navy-on-white pairing in 2017 and have worn it a total of eight times since then- including the two games earlier this season- but they’ve never before worn navy-on-white in a postseason game.

Their overall record in that uniform combo: 6-2.

[listicle id=708480]

[listicle id=708507]

[listicle id=708472]

[lawrence-newsletter]