Will the Panthers wear black pants more next year? – Avery in Rochester, N.H.
This has been a popular question since the Panthers debuted black pants in a Week 10 home game against the Denver Broncos, pairing them with black jerseys and blue socks.
Longtime equipment manager Jackie Miles will be among the first to know if the Panthers will break out the black pants again in 2013, but it's still to be determined. Jersey colors won't be known until close to the start of the preseason, and pant colors typically aren't announced. In fact, Panthers players didn't even know they were going to wear black pants against the Broncos until they arrived at the stadium on game day.
"The players loved them; it was a nice surprise. I've heard only positive feedback from them. I personally liked them," Miles said. "I'm sure that sometime during the offseason, (team president) Danny Morrison and I will sit down and will map out a plan for when to use them. I don't know how often we're going to use them, but we'll come up with a plan and run it by Mr. (Jerry) Richardson and all the powers that be and then see what we come up with."
We have seen the Panthers wear white, silver and black game pants and blue, white and black jerseys. Do they have the capacity to wear any of those pant colors regardless of the color of the jersey, or do league rules prevent this flexibility? – Craig in Omaha, Neb.
"By NFL rules, you only have to designate your jersey colors," Miles said. "The home team gets to pick the jersey color, and then the visiting team wears the opposite color. One of the teams has to be white, but when it comes to the pants, there are no league rules. You can wear whatever you like."
Now that the Panthers have added black pants to their wardrobe, the number of possible combinations has increased significantly. Over the history of the team, the Panthers almost exclusively have worn either white jerseys/white pants, black jerseys/silver pants or blue jerseys/silver pants. The exceptions have been the black-on-black look last year as well as the final game of the 1998 season when they sported silver pants with white jerseys at Indianapolis.
But now there are new possibilities, and it's possible that you'll see a couple of them in the near future.
"I have looked at all the color combinations," Miles said. "I do like the black on black. I wouldn't mind seeing the black pants with the blue jerseys. I'd personally like to stay with the white on white, but I would like to wear our colored jerseys a little bit more often than we have in the past.
"I wouldn't even mind seeing the white jerseys with the black pants, and we have two different colors of socks that we can choose from, too, so the possibilities have greatly increased. I've seen just about every possible scenario, and they all work."
I'd like to take a moment to thank fans for the slew of questions you've sent since "Ask Bryan" debuted less than six months ago. Over that time, I've received more than 1,000 questions, with your 1,000th question recently hitting my inbox – from Japan!
This Panthers.com feature wouldn't be possible without your questions, and I encourage you to continue sending them throughout the offseason. I can't answer all of your questions, but I definitely can't answer your question if you don't ask.
