If there is one time of year that is truly about coming together to enjoy and appreciate life and each other, it’s the holiday season. One of the major holidays that wraps up the end of the year is Christmas, often topping the holiday rankings for NFL fans and players.
The Christmas spirit is a contagious one. With many players throwing holiday parties, raising money and awareness for causes, and generally sharing out their Christmas Spirit, it’s not surprising that many of them chose to sport Christmas-themed cleats during Week 16 of the NFL season.
And they were awesome.
In the spirit of festivities, we’ve decided to share along our favourite kicks by compiling the eight cleats of Christmas. Feel free to sing it out in a 12 days of Christmas style carol, although maybe just to yourself and under your breath.
First, we take a look back at some of the best cleats from 2016 to warm things up.
And because the absolute king of cleats isn’t lacing them up this holiday season due to injury, we take a look at some of Odell Beckham’s illustrious Christmas collection.
Now that we’re all in the Christmas cleat spirit, let’s get to this year’s edition of the eight cleats of Christmas:
8. Eric Ebron’s Ugly Sweater Theme
It’s hard to pick a pair of cleats to bottom out the rankings, but we’ve chosen Eric Ebron’s.
Positives:
- Ugly Christmas sweaters are very trendy these days
- Candy Cane swoosh
Negatives:
- Cluttered
- Not clear enough that “ugly sweater” was the theme
- A step down from his previous Christmas cleats
7. Leonard Fournette’s “Momma’s Gumbo” cleats
Positives:
- Personal touch of “Momma’s Gumbo”
- Cleaver call-back to when he had to give up gumbo as a result of the Jags’ “$630 per pound” rule at the beginning of the year
Negatives:
- Lack of colour
- Need to be really close to see details
6. Cam Newton’s colourful confetti cleats
Positives:
- Worn for his son, Chosen, who turned two on Christmas Eve
- Simple, straight forward design
Negatives:
- We thought we should include them in this Week 16 list because of the adorable nod to his son, but they aren’t Christmas themed
- Colours basically clash with just about everything under the sun
5. JuJu Smith-Schuster’s Minions Christmas
Positives:
- Slick, simple
- Minions are fun
- Includes football theme to compliment Christmas theme
Negatives:
- Yellow, green, turquoise colour of the heel is just plain ugly
- Minions, but they are also old news
- We liked a different pair of cleats he had on this list better (Still to come)
4. Von Miller’s emoji cleats
Positives:
- BELLS ON BELLS ON BELLS
- Trendy, personalized Christmas emoji
Negatives:
- Too much about Miller, not enough about Christmas
- Repetition
3. George Johnson’s Grinch vs. Rudolph the Reindeer cleats
Positives:
- Multiple recognizable Christmas characters and features
- Colourful, fun
- Each shoe appears to feature different design
Negatives:
- Trying to do a lot at once
- Grinch and Rudolph represent two totally different stories and Christmas ideals
2. Julio Jones “From Jet” cleats
Positives:
- Clean, simple
- Personal touch of adding his own nickname: “Form Jet”
- Shading/colouring scheme works well with Falcon’s colours
Negatives:
- Inner foot left totally blank
1. Alvin Kamara’s Christmas stocking
Positives:
- Willing to risk a fine from the league to sport them
- BELLS
- Personalized “Alvin”
- Unique
Negatives:
- As unique as the design of this shoe is, the design wasn’t made just for Alvin Kamara (although he’s the only one willing to get fined for wearing them on game day)
That wraps up the 2017 edition of our Eight Cleats of Christmas, happy holidays!
