Buccaneers' Creamsicle uniforms have fans despite ties to losing era
In late September, Tom Brady took to Instagram to weigh in on a topic that has divided NFL observers for years. As captured on Twitter by ESPN’s Jenna Laine, Brady’s post demanded that his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, bring back the orange-and-white “Creamsicle” uniforms they wore as an expansion team in 1976 and continued to use through the 1996 season.
Alas, it was not to be, at least not this year. Under the NFL’s “one-shell rule” that was established in 2013, teams are allowed to use only one set of helmet shells for games and practices per season, ostensibly because of safety: The thinking goes that broken-in helmets are safer than brand-new ones. Teams can change the decals on their helmets for one-off uniform changes, but wholesale midseason repainting is not allowed because the helmets would take too long to dry and would not be available for use during midweek practices.
While teams have mixed and matched throwback uniforms with modern-era helmets in the past, this isn’t really an option for the Bucs because their red-and-pewter color scheme would clash with the orange-and-white helmets they used to wear. So when Brady and the Bucs take the field against the Chiefs on Super Bowl Sunday, they will be sporting their modern look and not the gloriously weird orange-and-white uniforms they wore for the first two decades of their existence. (Thankfully, the Bucs ditched the silly digital-clock numbers that overwhelmed their jerseys before this season.)
After scrapping the orange and white in the mid-1990s, the Bucs occasionally would break out the Creamsicle throwbacks but stopped in 2013 when the league instituted the one-shell rule.
Advertisement
They could start doing so again, however. During a March appearance on “The Dan Patrick Show,” Tampa Bay Coach Bruce Arians said that “once the helmet rule changes next year, we might have some Creamsicles and some throwbacks, which I think are the best uniforms in the league.” An NFL spokesman tamped down Arians’s enthusiasm a bit by saying the league was having “ongoing discussions for a potential change for the 2021 season, but no decisions have been made.”
Any change to the one-shell rule, which would have to be approved by the NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee, would open up the uniform playbook for a number of teams that have tinkered with their color schemes over the years, including the Patriots, Eagles, Broncos, Seahawks, Falcons and Bills. None of those teams have had such a jarring uniform change as the Bucs, who ditched the orange and white for red and pewter, at the time a shade not much seen on professional teams, ahead of the 1997 season. They also got rid of their “Bucco Bruce” logo, featuring a winking pirate with a dagger between his teeth, and replaced it with a more menacing skull-and-crossbones flag motif.
Those classic orange-and-white uniforms — original plans included some green in there, but there were worries about the uniforms being too similar to those of the Miami Dolphins, Miami Hurricanes and Florida A&M Rattlers — became a symbol of the Bucs’ comic futility over their first two decades. Tampa Bay went winless in 1976, its first season, and in 21 Creamsicle seasons, the Bucs made the playoffs only three times, all of them over a four-season stretch from 1979 to 1982.
Advertisement
The uniforms became a target along with the awful football product on the field. Before a 2012 game against the Saints in which the Bucs wore their throwbacks (a loss, naturally), Peter King wrote that they had “unearthed the worst uniforms in NFL history for the day.” Sports Illustrated called them “anything but intimidating” in a 2014 listicle that placed the Creamsicles among the worst in sports history.
But there also is a growing reappraisal movement afoot. In November 2017, Bucs linebacker Lavonte David — a Tampa Bay rookie in 2012, when the Bucs last wore the orange and white — told NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” that he loves the Creamsicle uniforms and wished they could be brought back.
“I don’t know why they got rid of them, man,” David said in an interview with host Peter Schrager, himself a big Creamsicle fan. “It was very disappointing ’cause you can swag it out a bit sometimes. The Creamsicles are really cool to wear. …
Advertisement
“It was a real cool experience” to wear the Creamsicles in 2012, David continued. “I only got to wear them one year, and I should have kept my jersey, but I didn’t. I was a rookie; I didn’t know.”
Paul Lukas of Uni Watch wrote in March that he “would have welcomed a return to the creamsicles, or at least some small way of bringing Bucco Bruce back into circulation.”
In 1997, its first season in the ostensibly more marketable red and pewter, Tampa Bay achieved its first winning record and first playoff berth in 15 years. Four more playoff berths would follow over the next five years, culminating in a Super Bowl victory after the 2002 season.
That would be their last postseason win until this season: In the 17 years that predated Brady’s arrival, the Bucs made the playoffs only twice and lost in the first round both times. But now Tampa Bay is back in the Super Bowl, and maybe — just maybe — the Bucs will be able to celebrate next season with a nod to their pastel past.
“If the Bucs didn’t realize they would have sold a billion Tom Brady creamsicle jerseys they’re doing something wrong,” ESPN’s Bill Barnwell wrote in April.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGd%2BcHyQaGlxZ5KqsKStzZ6cq6tdmL%2BmrcysoJyklWK3pr7SnrBmrZ6es7C%2BzGg%3D