Gold is back in for 2024.
For the first time since 2018, the Washington Commanders will wear gold pants as part of their uniform rotation this season. The team, which made the announcement Tuesday on its 92nd anniversary, has not yet determined which games it will sport the gold pants.
The move was made collectively by the franchise’s decision-makers after receiving significant feedback from fans, who have lobbied for the team to bring back some staples of its past.
Washington’s gold pants, which in the past had a stripe down the side — these do not because the stripe doesn’t match their jerseys — were staples of the team’s uniforms during its earliest years, when it moved from Boston to the D.C. area in 1937. The franchise wore gold pants for nearly four decades before moving away from them after the 1978 season, save for a few special occasions, in 1994 and in the early 2000s.
The last time the team sported its gold pants was in the 2018 season finale, when Washington took a 24-0 drubbing by the Philadelphia Eagles at then-FedEx Field in Landover. Only four players who participated in that game are still with the team: punter Tress Way, defensive tackles Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne and receiver Jamison Crowder, who re-signed with the franchise in 2023.
It wasn’t until 2010, at the start of the Mike Shanahan era, that the franchise reintroduced the gold pants as part of its primary uniforms.
“In talking to the alumni … and to the fans, they wanted to see the gold pants,” former team president Bruce Allen said at the time.
Players seemed to agree, especially after Washington opened that season with a 13-7 win against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday Night Football.
“You look good, you play good,” Brian Orakpo told The Post afterward. “We looked clean out there, man; we looked real nice.”
The second go-round for the gold pants lasted nine seasons, six of which ended with losing records. According to the Gridiron Uniform Database, Washington is 130-114-3 in gold pants since 1969. But the Commanders’ new ownership group, led by Josh Harris, has made recognizing the history of the team a priority. Many former players, including John Riggins and Darrell Green, have returned in support of the franchise’s new era.
When Washington unveiled its new name — the Commanders — in 2022, it also introduced new uniforms, including an all-black ensemble that seemed to pull the franchise even farther from its past.
In an April Washington Post-Schar School poll, most local sports fans said they either dislike or hate the name and believe the team should change it a third time.
In a much-less-official investigation by The Post a decade earlier, fans’ love for the gold pants seemed to strike a similar majority. Still, it’s unclear if this change will lead to a broader uniform change in the near future for Washington.
NFL teams cannot change their home and away uniforms more than once every five years, except in “extenuating circumstances,” according to the NFL’s Constitution and Bylaws. Such circumstances include a club ownership change. Requests for changes have to be submitted by March 1 a year prior to the year in which the changes would take place.
Starting in 2002, the NFL allowed teams to add a third uniform design — either an alternate color scheme, using colors already in the club’s palette, or a “classic” uniform from the team’s history.
This offseason, NFL owners approved another uniform change by allowing teams to add a third helmet design for the 2025 season.
