For the first time in franchise history, the Houston Texans are changing their look.
In their place are looks, plural, with the goal of covering every base: tradition, innovation and making a bold statement. Houston unveiled four uniforms Tuesday, including an updated home kit, a new road set featuring fresh shoulder and helmet elements, and a radical alternate uniform focused on highlighting the expression of the city the Texans call home.
The updated home uniform carries the most similarity to the Texans' previous uniforms, which they wore from 2002-2023. Gone are the red stripes from the shoulders of the Deep Steel Blue tops, and in their place are the team's traditional bull logo at the end of each sleeve cap. Houston has swapped out white player names for red, pairing them with an updated custom number typefont that appears across all four uniforms. On the home jersey, it is white and trimmed in red, while "Texans" appears in small, red typefont across the chest. Houston updated their white pants with a new two-stripe pattern featuring a wide navy stripe and one thin red accentuating stripe, and painted their Deep Steel Blue helmet in a metallic flake finish.
Things get ambitious when the Texans hit the road, where they'll wear their Deep Steel Blue helmet with new Liberty White tops, featuring an all-new bullhorn mark that begins at the back of the shoulder cap and wraps around upward toward the front, evoking the horns in the team's primary logo. On the white tops, the horns appear in Deep Steel Blue, with an inner Battle red accent line, giving Houston refreshed ornamentation to their shoulders to go along with "Houston" written across the chest in Battle Red.
The new numbers appear in Deep Steel Blue and Battle Red trim on the road tops, while the same striping pattern appears on the Deep Steel Blue pants, featuring a wide Battle Red stripe and thin Liberty White stripe.
Houston dialed up the adventurism with their Battle Red alternates, carrying over the candy Battle Red finish from their previous alternate helmet, but replacing it with the new bullhorn logo, which appears as Deep Steel Blue on both sides of the helmet. These shells pair with a matching Battle Red jersey, including the new bullhorns on the sleeve caps. After more than a decade of wearing Battle Red jerseys with white numbers trimmed in blue, Houston has flipped the colors, filling the numbers in Deep Steel Blue and trimming them in Liberty White. Matching red pants can be worn with these new tops, with a wide Deep Steel Blue stripe and a thin Liberty White stripe.
Now, for the leap of faith: Houston rolled out an all-new alternate Color Rush look that will remind some of city-inspired sets that have appeared in MLB and the NBA in recent years. H-Town Blue appears on a radical fourth kit, which swaps out the bull logo on the helmet for an all-new H mark focused on highlighting the city of Houston. The Texans will wear this logo on the side of their helmets (and in smaller applications elsewhere in the other uniforms), while taking the rest of their new home uniform and dousing it in Battle Red (numbers, socks, wide pants striping) and H-Town Blue (number trim, cleats, gloves). The bull logo still appears on the uniform's sleeve caps, but instead of being trimmed in Liberty White, it's decorated in H-Town Blue, with the logo's lone star eye appearing in Battle Red.
This uniform is bold in both appearance and statement. After losing the Oilers to Tennessee in the mid-1990s, Houston fans have long clamored for the Texans to wear the Oilers' old colors in the city they called home. Instead, the Titans -- who own the franchise history and thus, the right to wear the throwbacks -- have donned Oilers uniforms on occasion over the last 15 years, including in 2023.
The Texans responded by creating their own look that includes the colors in a new form, which will undoubtedly pop when set against their Deep Steel Blue base color, and especially under the lights of a primetime affair.
Though the Texans lack some elemental continuity throughout the entire new system of uniforms, their approach is clearly an attempt to update their appearance while retaining the most beloved elements of the uniforms they've worn since they first took an NFL field in 2002. It's ambitious and, in some places, aggressive, but fitting for a team that spent too many years in the cellar before enjoying an incredible turnaround in 2023, which included a playoff victory.
"Today, for the first time since 2000, we are so proud to reveal our new uniforms. They are even more special because they are inspired by and for our fans," Texans chair and CEO Cal McNair said in a statement. "Our fans asked us to be more H-Town and we delivered. They were with us every step of the way and there's truly something for everyone over the four uniforms."
These Texans won't be satisfied sitting in the bullpen anymore. With these new uniforms, Houston is sending a strong message: We're ready to be unleashed on the rest of the football world.
