Silver pants

I first want to say that this website is great--glad to see there are others out there that have the uniform interest and pay attention to the details. My questions pertain to the different shades of silver pants. To put it simply, in the current NFL you have the Raiders and Lions both wearing shades of silver that are distinct from any other team as well as from each other(do either of these silvers have a specific name?). Both appear to be darker than any other silver with the Lions being the darkest(not counting the Cowboys' odd silver-green). New England, Dallas(with the Navy jerseys), and Carolina(dark jerseys) all appear to be the same shade--this shade also appears to be what Philadelphia, Seattle, and Atlanta had before changing to their current uniforms. I would not consider the Giants because they appear to be gray instead of silver, which leads into a list of questions that I have: Were Atlanta and Philadelphia both originally gray and changed to silver? Were the Raiders and Lions always distinct from other gray/silvers? Didn't the silvers of both the Raiders and Lions get darker at some point? Am I correct to observe that at one point Atlanta/Dallas/New England/Philadelphia/Seattle/Indianapolis(blue jerseys) all had the same shade of silver?(I have noticed in some photos of Dallas/Philadelphia games form the early 90s that there does appear to be some shade difference between them) Where do the Giants gray/silver past and present fit in? and Do the templates(great work) for the uniforms on this website reflect these differences in silver? Anybody's help on these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

When at all possible, we've tried to match as best we can. I know that if you check the 1989-1990 images for the Seahawks you will see when they went to a more metallic silver than their older matte greys. For some teams, the transition was not a smoothe one. Take the Raiders for instance. They also used the matte silver(grey) for most of the 70's. Then, in the early 80's, some players began wearing more metallic pants while most veterans clung to the older models. It basucally became a gradual transition over the course of a decade.

The biggest problem is the inability to demonstrate the metallic sheen. Will it ever be possible to show the current Packers' or Vikings' helmets in metallic yellow or metallic purple as an HD close-up would confirm? Likely not. The colors will never be 100% perfect. In another thread ("Viking Throwback") I described the color matching process and one of my biggest pet peeves. The Giants blue jerseys. When I try to capture the exact blue from a well-lit photo and try to transfer it to one of our images it always comes across a somewhat purple when compared to the pure blue of their helmet. In instances like this, we go with the intent. We are not going to post a Giants image with a purple jersey. So, even though the jersey doesn't match the helmet exactly, we go with the intent.

And unlike with the debate we've had here many times before, where as it is easy to tell the difference between a yellow vs a gold, where do we draw the line the seperates silver from any shade of grey? Is it light grey or silver? That's a much more difficult call.

As for the questions concerning originally grey teams or originally silver teams? I'll leave that to the capable hands of our historian, Tim, to answer.

I hope this helps some from the artistry aspect, Sam.
Bill