The Ducks donned green/white/white in their bowl. This combo was last worn in a victory in 2020, but previous to that it had been relatively unlucky in the several times they have worn it in the last decade. While they did not wear their apple green helmets until the last few games of the season, they ended up wearing it three times, matching the three times for black, white, and yellow helmets.
Nightmare Green helmet and pants paired with the Eggshell jersey from the UCLA game. The Ducks have not worn this generalized combo since a loss to Auburn in game 1 of 2019. But Nightmare Green has been relatively good to Oregon the other 2019 games they wore the color.
The Oregon vs. Oregon State game brings all-green for the first time since the last "Civil War" in Eugene in 2019. The Ducks have also gone mono-green in 2017, 2011, and 2001.
The green helmets make their first appearance this season! The Ducks wore a tried-and-true road combo for their tough game at Utah. But many people will say the green pants are unlucky now since both of Oregon's losses came in the two games they wore green britches.
The last time they wore this combo was in last season's Pac-12 Championship.
The white helmet makes its third game appearance this season, joining the black and yellow helmets at 3 games each so far. This white/green/green combo was last worn in two games in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, including the 2104 Pac-12 Championship Game victory. The only other time previous was the 2010 Rose Bowl loss.
Another week, another lost opportunity to wear green. Nine games in with 27 items worn, and only 3 have been green so far. This week would have been great time to wear this combo with green pants—or wear green helmet and yellow pants—both those looks are classic road sets from the past. But if you look at my post from Thursday, you can see they Ducks have been very heavy on mono-white paired with gray/silver at UW, so at least we get some yellow. This combo is the first instance of Oregon yellow helmets in Seattle since 1997!
And oddly enough this yellow/white/white has never been worn in the last 20+ years of my records. The only instance of a similar combo of white/white/yellow was used at ASU in 2008.
Last year, in the covid-canceled absence of an actual UO-UW game I posted a few of my favorite uniform matchups in the rivalry, but most were HOME games, so here is my roundup of the looks when the Ducks were IN Seattle during the "modern era" of Oregon football. It's very interesting that there has been so much mono white and black/gray/silver in the recent history of this rivalry.
This was just before the Bellotti/Nike rebrand so a good example of a "classic" road uniform for the Ducks in the 1990s.
The first of the Nike looks. (It would be 4 years before Oregon played in Seattle)
More mono-white for Oregon. (Another 4 year gap before Oregon played in Seattle)
One of the best wins in the middle of a 12-year stretch of Duck victories in the series. This was also the debut of the "Stormtrooper" look.
The middle of a stretch of very white/black/gray sets in Seattle.
Very similar to the 2010 Civil War uniform that was mostly gray and white. Paired with UW black, this game was kinda dull.
Mariota in another white/silver combo, and UW in full blackout! At least the silver/yellow brightened things up.
Finally some green! This is how this rivalry should look!
A bad loss and another white/silver combo.
Still more mono white/silver!
So...2021... If they were going to be true to form they would wear mono white and silver. But in my view this rivalry is begging for a renewal of the yellow helmet and green pants look!
Edit: They will be mono white with yellow helmets in 2021
Being that it is Halloween weekend, I guess this is as close Oregon gets to orange and black, without looking like you-know-who. Plus they have done all-black already this season and the fall colors in Eugene are looking bright and yellow, so this is a great choice. Especially since their opponent was Colorado who wears a fair amount of black. Yellow and black were common combos during the Taggart/Helfrich/Kelly years, and the last time this combo was worn week 10, 2017. This is the first time a Cristobal-coached Duck team has worn this combo.
As the season reaches the last third, I hope that they wear more green. They have only worn three items of green this season, so hear's hoping for a traditional home game green/yellow for the Civil War!
RoboDuck from 2003!
I'll be honest that I'm not loving this combo. Using the eggshell on both jersey and pants feels like pajamas to me.
Let the puns and jokes rain down, especially since they are on College Gameday and at the Rose Bowl on ABC. Big game alert while playing a dangerous UCLA coached by Chip Kelly on the road...not loving their timing for this mostly non-green/yellow set in an important visible game.
This takes me back (not in a good way) me to 2015-17 when each week had a "story" that resulted in such classics as the Blue/Black "Oregon Flag" uniform, "Melted crayon", "Duck Mascot" and other things like glittery white helmets etc. Unfortunately, most of these games they lost that year! This most reminds me of the "Lewis and Clark" set that used mostly white textured jersy/pants and silver helmet.
The dark green/white/white combo has not been used since the 2014 Alamo Bowl victory and the 2010 win at Tennessee, so there are definite good vibes with the Nightmare Green helmet and all white, but for my money I'd have kept the eggshell jersey but went with Nightmare Green pants.
A friday night game in October brings out the Darth Vader mono-black ensemble. The helmet and pants were used earlier in the season, but the black jersey is new and breaks from the mold of the current set. It does not have wing texture on the shoulders and instead has a thick yellow pinstripe on the shoulder. This is about as minimal as Oregon gets these days. The last time Oregon went mono-black was the Ohana game last season, but in Mario Cristobal's first season they wore mono-black three times!
With no uniform to track this week, I thought it might be fun to remember some unis of the past, namely 10 and 20 years ago (which were both GREAT seasons!) I'd go back further, but the "modern era" of Oregon uniform insanity started in 1999 with the new Nike rebrand and Coach Mike Bellotti.
What is striking is that the first few years of the rebrand 1999-2002 resulted in the then-normal home/away sets but that soon changed:
A loss to Stanford was their sole blemish on the season, finishing 11-1, they ended the season #2 but were snubbed by the BCS! They made up for it by winning the Fiesta Bowl in what might be considered one of Oregon's very best bowl victories! During the season though, Oregon beat three ranked teams: home vs. #22 Wisconsin; and on the road against tough #14 WSU and #17 UCLA!
Uniform-wise, this was year three of the Nike look, and coach Mike Bellotti and QB Joey Harrington led a simply stylish looking bunch. The home sets were pretty much mono black/green, and the road sets were mono white with the green helmets. I miss the yellow though. A highlight of that era were the "mallard-head"shiny green helmets with yellow O. This was before they started experimenting with shoulder patterns and one-off helmets.
Here are a few select games from 2001...
This was the Duck's main home ensemble. Black/green combo with WIDE neon yellow stripes!
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| RB Onterrio Smith Otto Greule Jr/Getty |
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| QB Joey Harrington Getty |
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| QB Joey Harrington Otto Greule Jr/Getty |
Another great season (12-2, final rank #4) for the Ducks started with a letdown against #4 LSU. Coming off the bitter National Championship loss to Auburn, this season could have fallen flat but QB Darren Thomas and coach Chip Kelly led Oregon to an epic cathartic Rose Bowl victory against Wisconsin with the now-famous chrome helmets.
As for uniforms, the sky was the limit that year, and was like this throughout the Kelly and Helfrich years. This was the last season with the shoulder wings inspired by Northwest Indian art (This might be considered "Shoulder Wings 1.0", since they have maid new versions every couple years since.) Overall, 2011 used a lot of dark colors: black, gray, silver, dark green; and only two games use any yellow. This lent the season a somber tone that belies the success they had on the field. Kelly and Helfrich tended to go away from school colors.
All- black (or was it really dark gray?) with neon detailing ends up being an unlucky look.
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| 2011 Photos by the Oregonian |
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| ABC Sports photos |
The Ducks went on the road for the second time to Stanford. They trotted out a combo that has only been worn twice in the last 11 years. The last time was game 1 (a home win vs South Dakota) of the 2014 National Championship season.
The Ducks went black and green this weekend, a combo that they have not worn since a 2017 week 5 victory. It's a good look that avoids being too dark with the apple green jerseys and a nice pop of yellow on the helmet wings. This exact combo has only been worn twice in the last 15 years., which is odd since Chip Kelly liked to combine green and black, but only once black/green/black.
All Lightning Yellow, all the time! This the first time the Ducks have gone mono-yellow since Mario's first year in 2018 when they won all three games they wore them in.
People often make fun of the "highlighter yellow" that Oregon has used, but this is only the 6th time in the last 15 years they have gone mono-yellow. And even though my record keeping only goes back to the late Bellotti days, the Ducks did not utilize all-yellow much before Chip Kelly (and Chip actually used very little yellow at all!). Typically when Bellotti went with yellow he had the then-standard green helmet. And when the Ducks used old-school yellow helmets and pants in the great "Pre-Nike Rebrand of 1998" they uses green or white jerseys.
The Ducks broke many a bad streak last weekend, with their victory at Ohio State!
This game was the first time a white helmet had been used since Mark Helfrich's final year in 2016. That year the Ducks wore them four times and lost three of those games. In the Helfrich-era, which was the heyday of white helmets, they wore them 11 times and lost 5 times.
The most memorable losses while wearing white helmets were in big games:
So I hope that this represents a new era where white helmets in big games are lucky.
This was the biggest regular season game the Ducks have played in a long time! And arguably the biggest regular season WIN since they beat Michigan at home 15 years ago! You can see my post from last season about what Oregon wore in previous meetings with the Buckeyes by clicking here.
The Ducks went mono-white or "Storm Trooper" which is a clean look, with the "new" white helmet that was not teased over the summer. The last time they wore all white was a big road upset victory against #11Utah in late 2016. And they have memorably worn this combo in past victories at USC and Washington, so there is good vibes when they wear this against Pac-12 opponents.
But...in non-conference, big games, the luck was not so strong....Since the Ducks have had few occasions (if any) to be the "home team" against OSU, they have worn white a fair amount and lost them all. Regular readers of this blog will have seen various posts about unlucky combos and they usually include a lot of white/silver. The last two recent losses to OSU have seen the Ducks wear white helmet and jerseys.
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| Sept. 11, 2021. USA Today photos |
