The Rams reach into their history for two new alternate uniforms

The Los Angeles Rams have pulled two looks out of the franchise's past for the coming season, ESPN reports: a pair of alternate uniforms, each tied to a specific chapter of the team's long, geographically scattered history.

The two looks

The first is called "Classic Sol," a yellow-on-white jersey and pants set off with three sleeve stripes and a Sol monogram on the neck tag. It marks the 75th anniversary of the Rams' 1951 NFL Championship, won back when the team played in Los Angeles the first time around.

The second is "Fearsome White," an icy-white scheme with a ram-horn shoulder stripe and a new white helmet carrying a white ram horn over a blue background. It is a tribute to the Fearsome Foursome, the punishing defensive line of the 1960s and early 1970s that remains one of the most celebrated units in team lore.

When you will see them

The team has spread the debuts across the schedule and, notably, across prime time. Classic Sol comes out first, Week 2 on Monday Night Football against the New York Giants, and returns Week 13 against the Kansas City Chiefs on a Thursday night. Fearsome White debuts Week 12 against the Green Bay Packers, in what the league is billing as its first Thanksgiving-eve game.

What it is, and isn't

An alternate-uniform reveal is not hard news, and this piece does not pretend otherwise. But it is a real and recurring part of how a modern NFL franchise engages its fans and, not incidentally, sells merchandise, and the choices a team makes here are a small window into how it wants to tell its own story.

The Rams' particular version is worth a note. This is a team that has been the Cleveland Rams, the Los Angeles Rams, the St. Louis Rams and then the Los Angeles Rams again, a franchise with a genuinely rich history and a complicated relationship to any one city. Reaching back to the 1951 title and the Fearsome Foursome, both from the team's original Los Angeles era, is a way of planting the current LA Rams firmly in that older LA lineage, using the uniforms to claim a heritage the franchise's many moves might otherwise blur. The Herald will leave the aesthetic verdict to fans, who will render it loudly enough on their own.