NFL: Ranking every team logo from worst to best

The Bears’ logo is the same “wishbone ‘C’” that they’ve had for decades, which would be fine, but their alternate logo is just a bear’s face that looks like it’s yawning. The orange and navy color scheme is a little weird but it usually works. However, while the “C” is okay because it’s kind of classic, the other logo just drags down the team’s overall look.

A charger is a war horse, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at the Chargers’ logo. Instead of a freaking charging war horse, Los Angeles’ second football team is more closely connected to the device you use to keep your iPhone going.

The lightning bolt is okay for a helmet design, but it mostly falls short as a primary logo because it is not what it could be. Yes, the Broncos are in the same division, but in a league with five different birds and four different cats represented, there’s room for a powder blue stallion.

But hey, at least it’s not a refurbished Dodgers logo.

Originally, the name “Colts” referred to the horse breeding and racing culture of Baltimore, which is pretty cool, albeit lost in the move to Indianapolis. The blue horseshoe is serviceable, but pretty generic and not terribly interesting on any level, especially when horses make cool logos and only one other team in the league is using its horse imagery. See: Chargers, Los Angeles.

The name “Ravens” comes from the Edgar Allen Poe poem, as Poe lived in Baltimore when he wrote it. The colors are cool and the raven is distinct from other bird logos because of the unique shape of the beak and head, but Art Modell’s insistence that there be a letter “B”—perhaps a gesture towards the Cleveland fans from whom he stole the team—brings this logo down a bit.

However, the alternate logo is outstanding. The shield takes its design from the Maryland state flag, which is an oasis of originality among a desert of awful American state flags. The use of the flag by the Ravens makes their alternate logo distinctive and culturally significant and it immediately binds the Ravens to their community in a way that few other team logos do.