Titans new Rivalry Uniforms embrace who they are today, unlike the Houston Texans bitterly clinging to the past
The 2026 Rivalry Uniforms are out, and the Titans and Texans are at odds once again. The Titans embraced something beautiful and new, and the Texans continue to cling to a past that isn’t theirs.
The NFL and Nike unveiled their new set of 8 rivalry uniforms on Tuesday morning, the second year in which they are taking two divisions, one NFC and one AFC, and giving them special uniforms to wear in rivalry games.
The AFC South and the NFC North are up this year, and the Tennessee Titans went with a “Broadway Nights” design that embraces who they are today, while the Houston Texans chose to burn their one rivalry uniform opportunity on cosplaying in the jerseys the Titans get to wear every week.
Certainly one of the choices of all time! It’s yet another embarrassing instance of bitterly clinging to the past. The city of Houston simply will not let go of the Oilers, which they let slip from their fingers ages ago, and they will not stop pretending that the Houston Texans have anything to do with the franchise that now resides in Nashville, that is owned by the Adams family, and that has nothing to do with Houston any longer. The Titans are the Oilers. The Houston Texans have nothing to do with the Houston Oilers, and the city of Houston for decades now has been simply incapable of accepting that.
Tennessee’s Broadway Nights uniforms embrace Music City
The Titans’ Broadway Nights uniforms are awesome. These are beautiful. They feature a dark navy blue base with a light baby blue highlight, using that contrast to emphasize the look of a neon glow, the central theme of the entire design. The concept emulates a night on Broadway downtown, where old-school neon lights glow so bright they light up the entire sky. White stripes running down the middle of the baby blue create an overexposed, saturated neon effect on the numbers and shoulders. The light blue serves as the base color of the helmet, making this a fully committed two-tone blue uniform with no red anywhere.
“Music City” is the script right across the chest plate in that neon light design. This is the darkest uniform combo the Titans have ever worn, and it embraces who they are in the city of Nashville with a fun departure from their typical jerseys.
That’s one of the things about these rivalry jerseys that has been hit or miss for me. I understand that some of the more storied franchises have a hard time getting truly creative. The Packers and the Bears this year, for example, produced rivalry uniforms that aren’t all that different from their main uniforms. That makes sense because they’ve been around for a trillion years. When you have a deep and rich history and you’re regarded as one of the elder statesmen of the NFL, there’s a different responsibility design-wise.
The Titans aren’t in that boat. They can be the young, hip, fresh face of the NFL if they choose to. Everything about their offseason branding, from the full franchise rebrand earlier in the spring to these rivalry uniforms, emphasizes the fact that Tennessee is trying to make a new place in the NFL, redefine itself, and embrace some newness around here. The Titans are one of, if not the biggest departures from their actual uniform design that we’ve seen from any of these rivalry uniforms, of which we now have 16 across these two years.
The scheduling bummer and what comes next
Tennessee will wear the Broadway Nights uniforms once this season against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and this is the biggest bummer of the whole thing. The design is fantastic. You want to look awesome in primetime, in the dark, under the lights. But the Titans have to wear them in Week 10 at home against Jacksonville at… noon, in broad daylight. Tennessee has no primetime games to wear these uniforms in.
The good news for fans who want more than one noon appearance this year is that these uniforms will be in rotation for the next three years. The Titans organization can choose when to deploy them, and I could see that coming in primetime next year.
Houston continues to beclown itself
The Texans’ initial release carried the caption “Our city, our colors, our uniforms,” which paints the picture of a petulant child bitterly clinging to something they have had no rightful claim to for my entire lifetime. It continues to be a terrible look for them.
Houston’s rivalry uniforms embrace “H-Town blue,” the color scheme that the Titans own because it’s their franchise. The Oilers are the Titans. The Titans are the Oilers. The light blue with heavy emphasis on white and red is the exact same color scheme as Tennessee’s. I’m sure they technically have different Pantone colors or whatever, but they’re using branding like “By the H, for the H,” leaning hard into the fact that Houston did this first. Which is cool and all, but Houston had these colors and then let them slip out of their hands when the city refused to build a stadium for Bud Adams. Ancient history at this point that they simply will not let go.
There are some key differences between the two uniforms. The color scheme is identical, but Houston utilizes a checkerboard pattern on the shoulder instead of the Titans’ guitar string stripe. The Texans are wearing an all-white helmet with a red and blue stripe down the middle, making the helmet look a lot like the Titans’. It’s a cool uniform, because the Titans’ uniforms are cool, and Tennessee gets to wear them every week. Houston is going to choose to wear them once this year, and every casual viewer who turns on their TV is going to see that game and think the Titans are playing, because that’s what the Titans look like.
A team in their own division simply won’t let go of the fact that they have nothing to do with who the Titans are. Their city lost something many years ago. So a round of applause for Tennessee embracing who they are today with their rivalry uniform opportunity, after a spring rebrand that embraced who the franchise has been past, present, and future. And a double thumbs down to the Houston Texans for burning their opportunity to bitterly cling to a past that is not theirs.
