With Carolina as the Bills next opponent, I happened to look a the logo of the Panther.
For whatever reason it looked strange to me.
Just the angle of the cat's head looked funny. Doesn't it?
In fact what's up with that thing?
Why isn't it smooth and even like many other logos?
And why is one ear smaller than the other?
What is up with Mr. Panther's neck?
If you have ever wondered the same thing, read on!

Our first stop on our quest to find out the secret of the Carolina Panther takes us to:

St. Louis

The St. Louis Ram's Helmet is no doubt a very striking one.

Which just goes to show you can't beat an original.
In 1948, Rams HB Fred Gehrke, who was also an art major, painted the pedestrian leather helmet blue with yellow horns. The significance was that it was the first emblem/logo added to a helmet in the NFL.

The fact that the helmet has since changed only slightly over many many years shows that some ideas can withstand the test of time. Now I found a slight homage to this in one of the St. Louis Ram's Alternate Logos.

I'm very fond of it and wonder why they don't use it often.
It looks simple, but has quite a bit of meaning at least to me. As you can see the "R" is wearing horns on its head too. In fact you can almost make out an "eye" in the space between the horn and the straight part of the R.
But what else does it remind you of? It's not obvious, and perhaps not intentional, but the horn forms an arch shape, which show what city they belong to.

Arizona
The Cardinal name is a bit of a misnomer. The name dates all the way back to Chicago 1901, when owner Chris O' Brian called used, faded maroon jerseys he acquired from the University of Chicago "cardinal red." An interesting logo that they had from 1920-1934 was:

That's quite the logo. And it has very noticeable and familiar symbols. It reminded me of the Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Bears, and Chicago Cubs in that order.

Since then, the Cardinals have gone with a rather ill looking bird although, when the team moved to Arizona, a prototype logo was developed:

And rejected.

Baltimore

The contrast of  the Edgar Allen Poe inspired Raven, who in the poem signifies death, and the horrible jumbled mess of the Maryland flag are a truly woeful combination.
Purple and Gold are fine, because they go well together as they are complimentary colors. Black works with the mix alright I suppose.
Here, though you have two shades of gold put side by side, and then bright red and white, clashed against a "feathery" black background inside of a purple one.
It's one thing to be proud of your state and city, but to proudly put your state flag in the same place as a carrion eating bird really doesn't go along way to illustrate that Baltimore is the "Charm City". (And I'm a big Orioles fan so I can call the Ravens ugly all I want!)

Jacksonville

You can thank Ford Motors for not having this cool cat to stare at on Sundays. They felt the image too closely resembled their own symbol for the Jaguar.
As a result we are stuck with:

The tongue right?!
It drives me crazy too, I actually believed that real Jaguars had teal tongues. When I told my friends they laughed at me.
As it turns out, Jaguars DO NOT have teal tongues.
Which brings up the question: Then what exactly am I looking out here?

Well the answer is that the Jaguar here just got done chowing down on some blue Panthers.

No, Seriously that's the actual reason his tongue is teal.

When Carolina and Jacksonville both came into the league together, Jags owner Wayne Weaver took a little shot at their feline expansion siblings. So indeed the Jaguar's tongue is stained with aquamarine cat guts. And to further drive home the point, teal colored tongue dyeing candies were passed out at Jags games to get the fans in on the action.

Denver and San Diego

Both horses. Both in the original AFL (SD was in LA for a year). But above all, both of these teams were destined to despise each other.  All you have to do is look at their logos from the 70s:

Now this is seriously cool stuff.
Both set of eyes about level with each other.
Both have menacing expressions.
They are logos that face each other.
The Bronco is a Wild and Untamed horse, and the Charger is a Warrior's Horse.
The Orange and the flare(laser) shooting out of the bronco's nose signifies heat and fire, the Charger and yellow obviously signifies electricity. 

Seattle

I've really disliked Seattle ever since they got rid of this logo:

Why? Because it was very unique for starters.

Long before they went sparkling neon green and monochromatic metal blue-grey, the Seahawks used to have a less extravagant but I thought a very classic and pleasant uniform. The colors were a subdued grey, a hearty green and deep blue. It actually reminded you alot of the ocean and the Pacific North West on a sunny day. Their present uniform is like being lost at sea and throwing up over the side of the boat quite frankly.

Now back to the original logo. These are some examples of Northwestern Indian art.

Look at how the eyes are drawn, and how straight everything is. Look at the mouth and curved beak. The original seahawk logo was definitely inspired by and a nod to northwest Indian art.

Now compare those images to this. Notice all of the hooks the lack of straight lines and completely different neon green eye? Yes it's still in theory the same bird (that doesn't exist), but they just taken the originality and the decent color scheme away from it. The Seahawks took something that was unique to them and pretty much threw it away because it didn't look modern enough. They wanted "darker" colors like some hardened bird that has suffered from alcoholism and addiction to putrid colored soft drinks.
Maybe Seattle fans like the more flamboyant, the more angry and edgier seahawk. The kind of seahawk who will get right in your face and throw neon green glitter at you to prove how tough he is.

Houston

That Bull could use a bit more structural integrity but you can see what they were trying to do here, and it's very clever.

New York


Have you ever noticed that in between the E and the X is an arrow? Your mind has either just been blown or your rolling your eyes because you already know. A few people actually have had wild reactions the first time they see it, because basically  they couldn't believe that this image they had stared at for their whole life had a hidden image in it.

Not to be outdone by the dreaded FedEx arrow, a few NFL teams enjoy a little visual hi jinx every once in awhile too.

Take our friends from New Jersey for example:

I'm not giving it away, but there are 3(4 kinda) tucked away in here. (Give ya a hint: Rex Ryan is one of them!)

Buffalo

Here we have an image that people wish was hidden:

I still don't know/ want to know what that is. Some people say it's the tail going through his legs, others say it's like a cancerous cyst or something . It's funny that people call this the "standing Buffalo" because it clearly looks like he's(and it's a he for sure :D ) about to keel over. It's legs are all cramped up and I can't tell whether the farthest leg back is even on the ground or whether it's the right leg and the buffalo is just taking a wide stance or....anyway. I love the eye though. I still sort of like this symbol but the closer up you see it the stranger it is. I call it Buffalo's Bill.

Atlanta


This old Falcons logo is one of my favorites in the NFL. I will say though that it looks absolutely nothing like a falcon. It has a sort of eerie quality to it and is actually somewhat intimidating. The face is vaguely human. It has dead set emotionless eyes and a gaping mouth.

Again it looks more like a plague doctor

Than a Falcon

It also has a look of being much larger than life because of its enormous wings. This makes it look like a giant bomber jet. This logo is great because it really expresses the "death from above" idea really well and let's face it if the Ravens had this logo back in 2000 it would have just added to the intimidation factor. Interestingly, although very different the Falcon's newer logo ain't bad either: 

I didn't like it at first but there is something very cool that is more pronounced in this logo (hint it's another hidden image!)

Carolina

The moment weve have all been waiting for:

In addition to wincing in pain from Jaguar bites, this fellow is in the shape of North and South Carolina. You'd look funny if you were in the shape of two states too, so cut this cat some slack!

Thanks for reading. This is a terribly long fanpost but mostly pictures and I hope you enjoyed it and it was as much of an enlightening experience for you as it was for me!