The NFL’s most recent uniform changes, from best to worst

The Detroit Lions unveiled their new uniforms for the 2017 season on Thursday, and they’re great. Black has been removed completely, and the overall look of the uniforms is much cleaner and simpler. They’re the latest team to revamp their design, and the adjustments are some of the best in recent years.

Since 2011, eight teams have changed up their looks. Some redesigns were great, while others make you scratch your head, wondering how they ever got approved.

We took a look back at the most recent adjustments teams have made to their uniforms and ranked them from best to worst.

The Bills went back to their roots in 2011, doing away with those ugly navy jerseys in favor of royal blue ones. They also switched to a cleaner white helmet rather than the clashing red ones. It was more along the lines of their throwback uniforms, which is certainly a good thing.

As for the road uniforms, the all-white look is great. They do mix in blue pants as well, but it’s the all-white style that takes the cake when the Bills are on the road. 

The Seahawks were one of the first teams to overhaul their uniforms when the NFL switched to Nike as its outfitter. The change came in 2012, and because it was such a drastic redesign, reactions were mixed. Some loved them, others hated the changes. Overall, though, they’ve grown on most people. They’re obviously intricate with silver stripes and lime green accents, but they’re sharp. The old pale blue and navy jerseys were just … blah. 

This was a necessary change for a franchise on the rise.

The Lions unveiled their latest uniform changes Thursday night, just eight years after their last tweak. This edition removes black completely from the jerseys, pants, helmet and logo – and everything else you can think of – which was a key change.

Now, they look clean. The changes highlight the silver and blue in the uniforms, while also adding a white road jersey that goes nicely with the team’s colors. The throwback alternates are arguably the best set Detroit has, but they’re not far off from their usual home threads.

The Lions no longer have some of the ugliest uniforms in the league.

The Vikings changed up their look in 2013, doing away with many hideous aspects of their past uniforms. The yellow collar was changed to purple, they removed the white stripes around the shoulders, as well as the piping that ran down the sides of the jersey.

Now, the look is much simpler: Clean yellow and white stripes on the shoulders, no piping down the sides of the uniform, and the matte purple helmets look great. 

It’s not that the Dolphins’ changes were bad, they just weren’t great. They minimized the amount of orange on the uniforms, opting for a lighter teal color with white as the secondary color. Orange stripes were removed from the shoulders and down the pants, but those aspects weren’t necessarily bad or outdated.

The worst change Miami made was to the logo. It’s now more cartoonish, doing away with the classic helmet-wearing Dolphin. It was a terrific logo and it’s an absolute travesty the Dolphins got rid of it.

If they change their uniforms again in the future, they should just go back to the throwbacks they’ve worn the past two years.

Let’s get one thing straight: The Browns’ uniforms have never been good. It’s hard to put together a solid look with brown, white and orange. But the changes they made in 2015 did little to improve an already bad uniform. The drop-shadows around the numbers are cheesy, and the stripes on the helmet aren’t great.

The white jerseys aren’t bad, but that’s because they’re just … white. The orange and brown act as complements, which is what they should be. Hopefully the Browns’ next uniform overhaul will be much, much better.

What in the world were the Buccaneers thinking in 2014? Alarm clock numbers? Brown shoulders? It’s bad. It’s all so, so bad. There’s just too much going on with the jerseys and the pants in an era that’s shifting toward simplicity and more monochromatic looks.

Maybe they wouldn’t be so bad without the hideous numbers and massive shoulder striping. But then again, without those changes, they’d essentially be their old uniforms – which were honestly much better.

The only decent adjustment Tampa Bay made was enlarging the helmet logo, but that’s not saying much.

Drum roll please. The worst uniforms in the NFL, and maybe in all of sports.

Where to begin? The two-tone black and gold helmet: hideous. The accents on the shoulders? WHY? The black and teal don’t go together at all, and the hints of gold just make everything worse.

The Jaguars can’t change their uniforms again for another few years since they just “revamped” them, but the NFL needs to make an exception in order to get these atrocities off the field.

Even their alternate Color Rush uniforms -- called "ugly as hell" by Blake Bortles -- are terrible.