New NFL rule opens door for Eagles to bring back black helmets

New NFL rule opens door for Eagles to bring back black helmets originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

A new NFL rule has opened the door for the Eagles to bring back their black helmets as a second alternate for the 2025 season.

The league sent out a memo to teams on Wednesday announcing that all teams will be able to have a third helmet design in 2025. Teams going through a redesign will be allowed to have a third in 2024.

The NFL finally allowed a second helmet for the 2022 season, replacing a one-helmet rule that was initially in place for safety but that had been outgrown by the success of the league.

If you remember, the NFL allowed just one helmet per player for years, which slowed down the Eagles’ process of bringing back their fan-favorite kelly green jerseys. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie always said that he wanted to bring back kelly green jerseys as an alternate but only with a matching kelly green helmet.

When the rule was changed before the 2022 season, Lurie said kelly green would be returning for the 2023 season but they needed some time to work with Nike on nailing the classic shade because it wasn’t in the company’s current color palette. For 2022, the Eagles still wanted to take advantage of the two-helmet change so they added a black helmet in addition to their regular midnight green helmet.

But then last season, the Eagles finally unveiled their kelly green helmets, which meant they couldn’t have a black one too.

Lurie has for a couple years hoped the league would expand the rule to allow three helmets. Here’s what he said at the 2022 owners meetings in Palm Beach, while announcing black as a stop-gap option:

“We’re also allowed in the meantime to have that second helmet. So what we’re going to do for this season is to have a black helmet because we have a black jersey. And our players love wearing black and they love all black. And so we’re going to match the black jersey with the black helmet and that will be this coming season.

“And, yeah, it’s true we may not be able to continue with that in ’23 once we introduce the classic Eagles green, kelly green, but we’re going to try to convince the league that a third helmet and a third matching jersey to helmet is to the benefit of us, our fans and everybody else. Because I think we love that too.”

The Eagles in 2023 kept true to their word and brought back their kelly green jerseys with kelly green helmets and wore them in two games. The Eagles also broke out their black jerseys last season but had to wear a midnight green helmet with them.

Under the new rule, starting in 2025, the Eagles will be allowed to have three helmets, presumably: midnight green, kelly green and black.

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