WASHINGTON — They say you can’t tell the players without a score card, but for some fans watching the Thursday-night NFL game, that wouldn’t have helped either.
When the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets met in the weekly Thursday-night matchup, both teams sported a different look. The so-called “Color Rush” uniforms had the Jets and Bills head-to-toe in one of their team colors — green for the Jets, red for the Bills. (Generally, the visiting team wears mostly white uniforms, and both teams use other colors as accents.)
The red and green monochrome look was a real problem for some fans — people with red-green color blindness.
Gregg Rosenthal, of NFL.com, was one of them.
“When Ryan Fitzpatrick threw his first pass of the night, it looked to me like two different Jets teammates went for the ball. Then I realized all 22 players just looked like they played for the same team,” he wrote Thursday night.
Jeff Darlington, of the NFL Network, via Twitter, called the game “a cruel, cruel joke” and “total chaos on my eyes.”
On behalf of all who deal with a mild color blindness that makes reds and greens tough to differentiate … I say this is a cruel, cruel joke.
— Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) November 13, 2015
Total chaos on my eyes. I’m not even kidding. https://t.co/ycE7sekXIc — Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) November 13, 2015
WTOP’s Neal Augenstein, who is color blind, watched video of Thursday night’s action and says that it wasn’t completely impossible for him to tell the teams apart, but that “it takes extra concentration.”
The Color Rush uniforms are intended to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first NFL game to be televised in color, and according to The Associated Press they’re here to stay: Three more Thursday-night games this season will feature the uniforms.
Next Thursday, Nov. 19, it’ll be the Tennessee Titans and Jacksonvile Jaguars; Nov. 26, it’s Carolina at Dallas (although the Cowboys are listed as wearing white, the purpose of which seems unclear) and Tampa Bay and St. Louis will square off Dec. 17. None of those games will be a red-vs.-green matchup, though.
The National Eye Institute says that 8 percent of men and one-half percent of women are color blind. There’s no word on whether any of the players involved Thursday night was color blind.
Deadspin created a video of some of the game action with a filter that showed what the game looked like to the color-blind:
Here’s what last night’s NFL game looked like to millions with red-green colorblindness: https://t.co/CpJFVbxSPw pic.twitter.com/6z8n212Qj6
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) November 13, 2015
It should probably also be noted that many fans on Twitter who could differentiate between the uniforms didn’t have a much higher opinion of them.
