Monday morning brought us the return of the Shamrock Series uniform drop, an annual event that dazzles many but had been skipped for 2019-20 as the series gets ready to re-boot itself at Soldier Field against Wisconsin later this season.

Enough with the small talk, let’s rate the new uniforms.

HELMET

Most were expecting something much more bold or at least different than the standard helmet. That is not what was unveiled. The Irish will wear their normal helmets against Wisconsin with one small change at the back of the helmet.

On the back neck bumper there is a nod to the city of Chicago flag. Chicago really loves their flag, it’s probably the most famous city flag in the country by a wide margin, so this move felt inevitable of course. I will say, this is a cool placement. You’ll see it a lot on TV but it’s not that obtrusive.

JERSEY

The leaked jersey that surfaced over the last couple weeks turned out to be right on the money. Most prominently, the sleeves feature 2 metallic gold strips surrounding a thinner white stripe with the Notre Dame monogram placed in between. From the school release this is supposed to honor the rivers and waterways of Chicago, which okay!??

I have to say…this looks quite nice!

I really wouldn’t be opposed to this sleeve making its way on to the standard home jersey. Remarkably, we are heading into the 12th(!!) straight season with basically no updates to the entire uniform and this could be a medium-sized change that would break the monotony.

The jersey numbers are block slab-serif type (meant to symbolize Chicago’s City of Broad Shoulders guys come onnn) in white with no outline, which I love. At first, I was hesitant to put so much metallic gold on the sleeves but without gold on the numbers I like the balance. I’ve been recommending the Irish remove the gold trim from the numbers for years.

On the back collar there is the inscription, “Graduating Champions.” The blue jersey seems lighter than normal but that could be just the presence of the large white numerals making it seem that way.

PANTS

The pants are similar to the standard set worn by Notre Dame, although in the promo shots they don’t appear to be quite like the mustard variety nor the Vegas gold of yesteryear. These pants seem to be a little more deeper metallic gold to me?

There’s a wide blue-white-blue stripe down each side of the pants which works well with the jersey sleeve striping. Notre Dame infamously wore stripes down one side of the gold pants during the 2012 Shamrock Series game (also in Chicago) but this will be the first time in school history that striping is used for both legs with the gold pants.

The press release says this is in homage to the 1924 National Championship team that played at Soldier Field (against Northwestern on 11/22) but I guess it’s more to copy the Chicago Bears pants?

SOCKS/CLEATS

Nothing too exotic here as the cleats are primarily blue with gold trim. In all of the renderings and mock ups the uniform is paired with plain blue socks.

In the past, the players have all worn the game-specific cleats (whereas in other games they wear a mish-mash of differing colors) for the Shamrock Series. The team has been good in the past about keeping this aspect of the uniform, well, uniform.

Final Grade: B+

It’s not wild, and that’s okay! I would prefer something to be a little more creative for these occasions (a big swing and miss is acceptable for a one-off) but this more muted design works pretty well.

It’s also obviously supposed to be a Green Bay Packers uniform–and since Under Armour isn’t exactly swimming in cash lately–got repurposed for this Soldier Field game. This is a Notre Dame road game and it makes no sense for the Irish to be wearing blue.

This would also explain the nonsensical Chicago touches on the jersey and pants. I would bet money there was a different helmet to mimic the Packers in the works (perhaps with a stripe down the middle) that never made it to production and instead they threw the Chicago flag bumper on the back of the regular helmet and called it a day.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose. Maybe this opens the door to wearing 1918 Notre Dame throwbacks when Curly Lambeau played for the team when the return game against Wisconsin gets played in Green Bay in 2026? Both the Packers and Notre Dame wore identical uniforms in the late decade of the 1910’s.