Titans players hyped to wear Oilers throwbacks after NFL changes helmet rule

The door is now open for the Titans to wear Oilers throwbacks down the road.

The NFL sent a memo to all 32 teams on Thursday revealing that the helmet rule that has deterred the Tennessee Titans from wearing their Houston Oilers throwbacks would be changed.

According to the memo, starting in 2022 teams can use a secondary helmet, which wasn’t allowed previously for safety reasons. However, clubs must notify the league by July 31, 2021 of their intent to use an alternate helmet next season.

This opens the door for the Titans to wear their full Oilers throwbacks, which controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk didn’t want to do in the past because, as she rightly pointed out back in 2019, Titans helmets with Oilers jerseys “just wouldn’t make sense.”

“I would personally like to, but I don’t want to go there until we can have another helmet to go with it… that uniform without that helmet just wouldn’t make sense,” Adams Strunk explained.

Shortly after the news of the rule change broke, Titans running back Derrick Henry and left tackle Taylor Lewan, both of whom have lobbied to wear Oilers jerseys in the past, were understandably hyped.

Lewan is getting a bit ahead of himself, as the Titans are unlikely to wear the Oilers throwbacks in 2021 because the rule change doesn’t take effect until 2022.

And to complicate things further, teams like the Titans might have limited options at best until 2023, as Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio explained.

According to the memo disseminated on Thursday by the NFL, all teams must decide and declare by July 31 whether they’ll be using a second helmet in 2022. Complicating matters for the various teams is that “the notice date for 2022 uniform changes has passed and no new uniforms can be developed for the 2022 season, other than those previously approved by the League Office for the 2022 season.”

This means that, for example, the Patriots won’t be able to adopt for 2022 an alternate uniform based on their Pat Patriot throwbacks, making the return of a white helmet impractical before 2023. Ditto for the Tampa Bay creamsicle uniforms, the light blue Oilers helmet as an alternative to the Titans’ uniform, and any other alternate helmets that make no sense without an alternate set of jerseys and pants.

Whenever the Titans are able to swing it, they absolutely should bring back the Oilers jerseys. After all, there is no sweeter throwback in the NFL.

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