Jeffrey Lurie: Eagles to push for alternate Kelly Green helmets next offseason

By Tim Kelly, Sports Talk Philly editor  

Very briefly, it appeared that the Philadelphia Eagles were going to push for a rule change this past offseason that would have allowed them to bring back their extremely popular Kelly Green jerseys as an alternate. Jeffrey Lurie says the Eagles may get serious in that fight next offseason. 

The 65-year-old Eagles owner spoke to the collective media Thursday, which included Matt Lombardo of NJ Advance Media, and suggested that the team will mount a serious battle next offseason to allow teams to wear a second helmet: 

The Eagles last wore their Kelly Green jerseys during Week 1 of the 2010 NFL season, when they – for some reason – were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the last time they won a championship. 

During that game, Eagles linebacker Stewart Bradley clearly suffered a concussion while attempting to make a tackle. After he eventually stood up and attempted to walk to the sideline by himself, he stumbled over, in what was a scary moment. Rather than keeping him out of the game, Bradley returned to the game shortly after, before being shut down for the second half. 

That was perhaps indicative of the league not taking the issue of head injuries seriously enough, something they've become much more strict on in recent years. Part of the attempt to limit head injuries was instituting a rule that each player had to wear the same helmet for the entire season. That's why the Eagles haven't worn their Kelly Green jerseys recently, because the jerseys also come with an alternate Kelly Green helmet, which would go against the league's rule that players have to wear the same helmet every game they play. 

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One way that the Eagles could get around this would be to paint their helmets Kelly Green for one week, but that would be quite a process. On top of that, they would have to then repaint the helmets Midnight Green after that game. The team may want to please their fanbase, but it's fair to suggest they wouldn't go through that process for one game. 

Other teams have continued to wear throwback jerseys with their current helmets, even if they don't match as well. In this case, that seems unlikely because the Kelly Green jerseys really wouldn't match with the Midnight Green helmets. 

As alluded to at the beginning of the article, the Eagles did initially propose a rule at this past offseason's owners meetings that would have allowed them to wear an alternate helmet. Dave Zangaro of Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia reported at that time that the Eagles, who rescinded the proposal on the same day, didn't get great feedback from the league's competition committee in regards to their proposal. 

Other than simply not withdrawing their proposal and allowing a vote to take place this offseason, it's unclear what the Eagles could do differently next offseason to get this rule passed. If they thought it could pass last year, they probably would have allowed a vote on it. Even if other owners are at least sympathetic to the idea, it's unlikely that enough owners would feel passionately enough about the alternate helmet proposal to get it to pass.  

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