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50 free NFL Logo trivia questions with answers. Every NFL helmet tells a story. The Steelers wear their logo on one side only because a 1962 test was never undone. The Browns wear no logo at all. The Rams' horns were hand-painted by a halfback, the Chiefs' arrowhead was sketched on a napkin, and the Buccaneers spent two decades apologising for a winking pirate. This quiz covers the logos, helmets, colors and rebrands of all 32 teams, plus the NFL shield and the Super Bowl logo. The 50 questions start easy (whose logo is a fleur-de-lis?) and get progressively harder, ending with the kind of detail only uniform obsessives know: which newspaper coined 'Bucco Bruce', which industry the Bills' logo designer came from, and what the Oilers' derrick was originally called. It works solo or as a themed round for a sports quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia team pages and primary sources before publication, and the source is shown under each question, so you can settle any argument the moment it starts.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which NFL team's logo is a fleur-de-lis?
New Orleans Saints
The symbol belongs to the city of New Orleans and to French royalty; the team has worn it on gold helmets since its 1967 debut.
Q 02A blue horseshoe on each side of a white helmet identifies which team?
Indianapolis Colts
The horseshoes first appeared as a pair on the back of the helmet in 1954 and only moved to the sides in 1957.
Q 03A single white horn, outlined in gold, on each side of a purple helmet belongs to which team?
Minnesota Vikings
The horn was slightly redrawn in 2006, the team's first significant uniform change in 46 years.
Q 04Which team has used an arc-shaped lightning bolt as its logo since 1960?
Los Angeles Chargers
During the AFL years the club also used a shield logo showing a horse's head, which fuels the debate over whether a 'Charger' is a bolt or a war horse.
Q 05Which is the only NFL team that puts its logo on just one side of the helmet?
Pittsburgh Steelers
Equipment manager Jack Hart applied it to the right side only in 1962 as a test of how it looked on the gold helmets, and fans liked it so much it stayed.
Q 06What steelmaking ingredient does the yellow shape in the Steelers' logo represent?
Coal
The original slogan behind the shapes was 'Steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure, and widens your world'; the ingredient meanings came later.
Q 07The Steelers' logo is based on the 'Steelmark', an industry emblem originally designed by which company?
U.S. Steel
Oddly, it was Cleveland-based Republic Steel that suggested the Pittsburgh team adopt the industry's mark, which is now owned by the American Iron and Steel Institute.
Q 08The Steelmark reads only 'Steel'. In what year was the team given permission to add 'ers' to it?
1963
The same year the team switched from gold to black helmets to make the logo stand out more.
Q 09Which is the only NFL team with no logo on its helmet?
Cleveland Browns
The plain orange helmet is itself the team's official logo; player numbers were painted on it from 1957 to 1960.
Q 10The Browns' darker official color is formally known by what name?
Seal brown
The helmet is burnt orange with a top stripe of that shade divided by white.
Q 11The Packers' oval 'G' was drawn in 1961 by an art student from which school?
St. Norbert College
Vince Lombardi asked equipment manager Gerald 'Dad' Braisher for a logo, and Braisher handed the job to his assistant John Gordon; the 'G' is the only logo ever to appear on a Packers helmet.
Q 12In what year did the Cowboys' originally solid blue star gain its white line and blue border?
1964
The star represents Texas as the Lone Star State, and the design has been essentially unchanged since a slightly bolder outline arrived in 1967.
Q 13What is embossed on the blue strip of Dymo tape on the back of every Cowboys helmet?
The player's name
Q 21The nickname 'Bucco Bruce' was coined in a February 1976 column by a sportswriter for which newspaper?
St. Petersburg Times
The name was meant as a put-down of the pirate's unintimidating, 'cavalier' look, and it stuck for two decades.
Q 22The Buccaneers' original orange uniforms earned what dessert-inspired nickname?
Creamsicle
The team wore white for all 14 regular-season games in 1976, so the orange jerseys only appeared in preseason that first year.
Q 23Since 1997 the Buccaneers' primary colors have been red and which metallic shade?
Pewter
Chris Berman promptly dubbed them 'the pirates in pewter pants', a nod to Gilbert and Sullivan.
It sits on the white portion of the blue-white-blue centre stripe, on a helmet shell officially colored 'Metallic Silver Blue'.
Q 14When the Bengals unveiled their tiger-striped orange helmets, Sports Illustrated likened them to what?
Varicose pumpkins
Paul Brown had rejected a similar striped design when the team was founded; the stripes finally arrived in 1981.
Q 15From 1968 to 1980, what appeared on the sides of Cincinnati's orange helmets?
The word 'Bengals'
Paul Brown had taken his equipment with him from his previous team, so the early Bengals uniforms were near copies of that club's with black swapped for brown.
Q 16The Patriots' 'Flying Elvis' logo replaced Pat Patriot in what year?
1993
It got its nickname because many thought the minuteman's grey profile resembled a young Elvis Presley.
Q 17In 1979 the Patriots let fans at a game vote on a new logo. How was the crowd's verdict measured?
A sound level meter
The fans roared for Pat, and the new design was shelved for another 14 years.
Q 18What was the Patriots' very first helmet logo, used only in the 1960 season?
A tricorne hat
Boston Globe artist Phil Bissell drew the ball-snapping minuteman that replaced it the following year.
Q 19The Buccaneers' original pirate logo winked instead of wearing an eyepatch, to avoid copying which team?
Oakland Raiders
The winking swashbuckler was quickly nicknamed 'Bucco Bruce' and became a symbol of the club's early futility.
Q 20Who designed the Buccaneers' original winking pirate logo?
Lamar Sparkman
A Tampa Tribune cartoonist and member of Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, he wanted a gallant, rakish pirate rather than a 'hairy-legged slob'.
Q 24Which team was the first in the NFL to put a logo on its helmets, back in 1948?
Los Angeles Rams
No other team put a logo on its helmet until 1954.
Q 25Which Rams halfback, a commercial artist in the off-season, hand-painted the team's first helmet horns?
Fred Gehrke
He painted them yellow-gold on navy leather helmets; from 1949 the Riddell company baked the design into plastic shells at its factory.
Q 26In the Rams' 2020 rebrand, the team's yellow shade was officially named what?
Sol
The blue became 'Rams Royal', and the new 'LA' logo with a horn spiralling out of the A was very poorly received by fans.
Q 27The horse-head profile the Broncos adopted in 1997 was inspired by which of the team's live mascots?
Thunder
Nike's art director described the result as 'a powerful horse with a fiery eye and mane'.
Q 28From 1968 to 1996 the Broncos' logo showed a bucking horse bursting out of which letter?
D
That 'Orange Crush' era also brought the royal blue helmets the team wore until the 1997 redesign.
Q 29The Jaguars' first proposed logo, a gold leaping cat, was scrapped after objections from which automaker?
Ford
As Jaguar's parent at the time, Ford settled amicably: Jaguar became the official car of the team, and the team redesigned its look.
Q 30Wayne Weaver joked that the teal tongue in the Jaguars' logo came from 'feeding' which fellow expansion team to them?
Carolina Panthers
Weaver credited the tongue itself to his wife; teal candies were handed out at the first preseason game so fans' tongues would match.