After a win in a mismatched uniform, the Broncos will run it back

If at first something succeeds, run it back.

And with that in mind, the Broncos will wear their mismatched side-panel uniform combination once again when they head to Nashville this weekend to face the Tennessee Titans.

They're backkkkkkk!

We're 1-0 in the new uniform combo, so we thought we'd run it back for #DENvsTEN. pic.twitter.com/9VhO4hpTww

— Denver Broncos (@Broncos) November 9, 2022

The Broncos wore white jerseys with blue pants for the first time in team history when they played in London on Oct. 30. A few days before the game, Broncos team president Damani Leech said the change was initiated by the team’s captains.

“We had flexibility in our tops and our bottoms and that was one thing that they pointed out that they had not been able to do and wanted the opportunity to do it,” Leech said on Oct. 26. “We said, ‘Look, we are going to London; they drive on the opposite side of the road. We can flip our pants and see how it goes.”

Denver won, 21-17, snapping a four-game losing streak. And with superstition in sports being what it is, it came as no surprise that the Broncos opted to wear the combination again at the next opportunity.

That said, it remains a mismatch. Paul Lukas, a longtime sports-uniform analyst who runs the site uni-watch.com, dubbed it the “worst look ever” upon its unveiling. After seeing it in action, the site proclaimed the look to be “idiotic.”

Nevertheless, this question must be asked: How did the Broncos look when they dropped four games in succession? Or in their five consecutive losing seasons leading into 2022?

Further still, the Broncos are 2-0 in blue pants this season — and 1-5 in white pants. They defeated the San Francisco 49ers in an all-blue look to advance to 2-1 in Week 3.

Does white-over-blue with mismatched side panels look dreadful? Perhaps.

There is little getting past the fact that the Broncos’ 25-year-old uniform template does not allow for the kind of flexibility that other team uniform schemes offer. It is a weakness of the look, and further underscores the calls for change from many circles of Broncos Country.

But clothes don’t make the man. The Broncos had matching side-panel swooshes for all but a handful of throwback and Color Rush games over the past quarter century. They won three Super Bowls that way. They also had two stretches in which they missed the playoffs for five consecutive years, including their ongoing skein.

So, if the jersey side panels don’t match the pants side panels and the Broncos win, that will be a beautiful look indeed, style be ignored.

***