Do Uniforms Matter in the Super Bowl? Jersey Comparisons for the Big Game and How they Stack Up

With the Super Bowl taking place on Sunday in SoFi Stadium – the home of the Rams – some may be confused as to why they will not be wearing their traditional home uniforms – royal blue shirts with yellow pants.

But that’s because the Bengals are considered the “home team” in the big game. That means that they will use the Rams’ locker room facilities, that the Rams will call the coin toss, and that the Bengals got first dibs on what their jerseys will be. And they chose their usual home kits: black shirts and white pants.

The Bengals also could’ve gone with their alternate orange tops or their road all-white’s (which I personally think are both better than what they chose), but they did not.

So, that means the Rams couldn’t really go with their royal blue color scheme. It would clash too much and would make for maybe the ugliest-looking Super Bowl ever.

But they didn’t go with their traditional road uni’s either, which are grayish-white shirts with grayish-white pants which they call their “bone” jerseys. It’s just a monotone and uninteresting combination that wouldn’t make sense for the biggest game of the year.

So, instead LA went with its second best (or maybe even best overall) option: their modern throwback alternates.

These uniforms feature a traditional white top with yellow shoulders and yellow pants. And they are meant to replicate the jerseys worn by the Rams when they last played in Los Angeles before moving to St. Louis. (By the way, the Rams’ St. Louis jerseys? Ew. Worst in the league at the time.)

So, we have the uniform matchup for the Super Bowl. You may not believe that the jerseys would change any outcome of the game. And in fact, you may be right.

But, it’s still fun to look back and see how both teams did during the season with their respective uniforms. Let’s take a look.

The Rams wore their alternates in just three games this season: Week 1 against the Bears, Week 9 versus the Titans and Week 10 at the 49ers.

Opening the season with the throwbacks was a success when they took down Chicago 34-14. But the other two matchups? They were two of the Rams’ worst losses of the season. The Titans beat the Rams 28-16, and the 49ers beat the Rams 31-10 in the team’s worst loss all year. And LA did not wear the uniforms in any of their three playoff games.

So, the Rams went 1-2 this season with their Super Bowl jerseys.

Let’s move over to the Bengals. They wore their black tops with white pants in five regular season games, Week 5 versus the Packers, Week 9 against the Browns, Week 13 against the Chargers, Week 14 versus the 49ers and Week 16 against the Ravens. Then, in the Wild Card round, Cincinnati rocked the jerseys against the Raiders.

Week 5, Green Bay took Cincinnati down 25-22 in overtime on a game-winning Mason Crosby field goal. The Cleveland game was the Bengals’ worst loss of the season when the Browns pounded them 41-16. Then, the Chargers won 41-22. The 49ers won 26-23, also in OT, and then finally, the Bengals beat Baltimore 41-21. And of course, the Bengals beat the Raiders 26-19.

So, the Bengals went 2-4 this season with their Super Bowl jerseys.

That means the Bengals and Rams went a combined 3-6 with their kits for the Super Bowl. But their wins and losses were even ratios. So who gets the advantage?

Well, through the first 55 Super Bowls, the team wearing white has won 35 of those. And when the Patriots beat the Eagles in 2005, that started a six-game streak of the team wearing white winning. The Packers ended the streak when they beat the Steelers in their home green’s, but then another six-game streak started after that with the teams in white.

The Eagles then broke that when they got their revenge against the Patriots in their home green uniforms. Since then, the teams wearing white have alternated winning and losing the game.

The Rams have one Vince Lombardi trophy, and that came in 2000 against the Titans in one of the most memorable Super Bowls ever. And what jerseys were the Rams wearing? White tops with yellow shoulders and yellow pants. Very similar to what they’ll be wearing this year.

The Bengals, of course, have never won a Super Bowl, but the current alternating trend, next up is the other-color uniform after the Buccaneers won in their white’s last season. We’ll just have to wait and see if the pattern continues.