The seeds of this trend were sewn in 2016 during Mark Helfrich's last season, where each week was heralded by a new—often wacky—combo. This included uniforms that sported lots of black (not a school color) orange (Beaver gasp!) and blue/gold (Cal?) against the Huskies (double gasp/choke!). While they used the same road jerseys five times they mixed up helmet stickers and pants. 2016 was the pinnacle of this mix/match trend that Oregon started in 1998. Only one week was an exact repeat.
2016 regular season:
The results of that campaign brought down Helfrich and created a backlash against the flash that people saw instead of results.
This ushered in Willie Taggart at Oregon. His only season in 2017 actually had a few weeks where a combination was repeated (games 1&11; 4&10), and some leftovers from 2016 showed up! Most notably, the individual elements mostly stayed the same if you remove the week 2 specialty uniform:
- "Only" four helmets (five if you count black O sticker)
- Four green jerseys were the same
- Five road white jerseys were the same
- Two yellow jerseys were the same from 2016
2017 regular season:
Come summer 2018 and we are introduced to four "mono" uniform sets with one matching winged-helmet design (white/silver, black, yellow and green). I think most people assumed this set was ripe for the mixing and matching! But through seven games this fall, the Ducks have not mixed them up yet! Each game has been one of the four "mono" combos. (2 whites, 2 yellows, 2 greens and 1 black) Here is my best guess as to their uniforms if they stick with the trend. The upcoming three road games use the template from last two roads. Chip Kelly gets a blackout in Eugene and green against the Sun Devils.
The only thing I see wrong with mixing up these combos, is that the neon green on the black set does not match the apple green set. And the white jerseys have no yellow/green, so the only nice looking set would be white and yellow? (But that is a blog post for later in the week)
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