Thursday, March 22, 2018

Houston Oilers 1972-74 Helmet Anomaly

LOOKING BACK
By John Turney
Zeke Moore
In 1972 the Oilers changed from silver lids to Columbia blue ones and wore them until 1975 when they switched to white. The issue is some of them had slightly different hues of Columbia blue.

Below Ronnie Coleman (#47) has a darker blue helmet than #2 Skip Butler:

Here, George Adamson (#12) in front has a darker helmet than the player behind him.

In this shot it appears the player in back has a lighter version than the others, though we admit this is not the best shot:

Here defensive lineman John Matuszak appears to have a lighter lid than the player behind him:

On Twitter follower of ours suggested it may be that the difference was that some of the helmets may have been clear shells. So we took a look and that does not appear to be the case. Here you can see the left guard's helmet is lighter than the quarterback and the right guard and right tackle:

Here are some more examples:



Both of these helmets are purported to be game used from the 1972-74 era, which we cannot verify but they do appear (even with very different lighting) to be different shades of blue or even different values of the same hue, we are not sure




If anyone knows the answer, if it was just different brands of helmets, or there were some helmets painted slightly different, we are all ears. Are we can tell is some of the helmets look different.

5 comments:

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  2. I actually have one of these helmets from 72-74 seasons.As they were such terrible teams-the 72 and 73 teams only winning 1 game those 2 seasons and 1974 the last year of these blue helmets just a handful of wins,there is not many pics of helmets that survived or pics in general.The center and player #12 look like they have an almost navy blue helmet.Mine is a medium hue like Dan Pastorini's helmet.John Matuszak's looks super light powder compared

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    1. I wouldn't call the darkest Oilers helmet anywhere near navy blue. The CHICAGO BEARS wear navy blue.
      That's closer to the Dodgers in MLB.
      from Carl Bascovik

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    2. Looks close to Ole Miss

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  3. hi, are these helmets still available?

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