Look at them and you think Luv Ya Blue.
You think Oilers.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – How do you revive Oilers' aesthetics while convincing people it's a Titans' identity?
That’s the balancing act the Titans are attempting with their new logo and uniform redesign.
The big elements scream Oilers.
Call it Titans blue if you want, but we know where and when that distinctive shade entered the NFL’s color palette. The red and white are Oilers, too. So are the numbers. So is the white helmet.
Tennessee? The new shield logo. A Titans breastplate on the blue jersey. A Tennessee one on the white. And a handful of smaller symbolic touches.
The Titans are 27 years old and still have a bit of an identity crisis. When the Tennessee Oilers arrived here in 1997, Bud Adams planned no name change. Fans demanded it and the league pushed him to cede to pressure.
After two attempts to be independently Titans, now the franchise is flipping almost all the way back.
The fireball logo will exist as throwback nostalgia. The original two-tone blues they wore from 1999 to 2018 were largely preferred to what replaced them, a set that switched from white to navy helmets and emphasized more navy overall for most of its eight-year run.
The popularity of the Oilers throwbacks worn for two games in both 2023 and 2024 overwhelmed the team and prompted it to “change the constitution of our team store,” said Titans president and chief executive officer Burke Nihill. It wasn’t just fans, but players loved them too.
And the Titans have always been protective of their history and legacy.
They scoff when the Texans court old Oilers and loved it when Texans J.J. Watt and DeAndre Hopkins were on social media pining for the Oilers uniforms. The University of Houston busted out the color scheme to start its 2023 season and got a cease-and-desist letter from the NFL’s licensing and merchandising division, according to ESPN.com.
In conjunction with the 2027 move into new Nissan Stadium, the team sought a refresh to a more timeless, classic look. As much of that will also be displayed in the new building, they needed to get a year ahead and carry things over.
In focus groups, fans showed affection for timeless, classic marks. Many also repeated the same things about the Oilers uniforms.
“‘Those uniforms may be the best in professional sports, and they’re ours,’” Nihill recounted. “And then they did have the qualifier of, ‘I would just want them to be distinctly Tennessee and Nashville.’ So we have delivered exactly what they were asking for.”
The small details say Tennessee and Nashville, but do they really make Oilers uniforms “distinctly Tennessee?”
- The six-string stripe in the helmet, on the jersey sleeve and on the pants is a guitar reference. The Predators have had a similar uniform design element since at least 2014.
- The Tennessee Tri-stars from the flag are on the collar tab and under the arm panel, both done in a small fashion.
- A new secondary logo replaces the sword: an interlocked T and N under a three-star arch inside a football outline. It can be read as TN for Tennessee or NT for Nashville, Tenn. But it’s not on the uniform.
- The new wordmark is bolder and thicker, with a poster print feel that’s woodblock-inspired – a Nashville thing. The T inside the logo, with its blunted points, matches up with it.
Nihill said they looked at thousands of ideas, but may have been exaggerating. But the final logo is a variation of something that the team got with the first batch of Titans logos with the name change in 1999 and had been on the lobby floor of team headquarters for 20 years.
“We went around the world to get across the street,” said Erin Swartz, Titans senior vice president of brand marketing.
The symbolism of the ancient Greek mythology is largely gone, with no flames and no sword, though Nihill said it remains in the shield logo.
“We want to be the Titans of Tennessee,” Nihill said. “…The titan’s journey, the classic one in Nashville, would be somebody showing up with a guitar and a dream, playing on a curb, and then making their way into a honky-tonk and then getting that first record deal and eventually playing a concert in Nissan Stadium.”
He pointed to titans of industry like Pat Summitt, Dolly Parton and BB King from Tennessee.
The Titans will wear a third uniform in 2026 for one home game as part of the league’s Rivalry series, as the AFC South has a turn in the rotation. That will be revealed closer to the season.
New jerseys and merchandise featuring the new logo is available online immediately. The team store at
Nissan Stadium opens at 10 am CT on Friday and pop-up stores will be around town.
Changes will begin around team headquarters on Friday as well, where a giant lighted version of the fireball logo is on the locker room ceiling, it’s embossed on frosted glass doors and it’s omnipresent in hallways and in art.
Very few argue against the color scheme or the look.
The Oilers uniforms are the best shelved set in all of sports.
They are modified, revived and in use now. The Tennessee changes are fine, but they are secondary at best.
Nashville negotiated in 1997 to get Houston’s NFL team.
Buy a jersey, watch a game and in 2026 and beyond, you’ll get a striking reminder that Music City got them
