The Power Sweep

View Original

The Technicolored Gloves of Jarrett Boykin

Two consecutive blowouts, an offense that's riding high, and an ascending defense leaves very little dissect from week to week.

Sure, there are still warts there. The defense did give up a bunch of yards, the special teams had a couple gaffes, and the NFC North isn't locked up yet, but come on people! This is a time to talk about little things that don't matter...like gloves.

Specifically Jarrett Boykin's gloves.

Boykin has been underwhelming on the field, but his glove game is always on point, and it's always been on point.

What's unique about Boykin is he prefers a glove style that almost nobody else uses: solid colors. We've seen Jarrett in white gloves...

...in green gloves...

...and even in black gloves.

But last Sunday night, Boykin broke new ground with some fantastic YELLOW gloves, which featured prominently on his blocked punt that wasn't a blocked punt.

I really don't have a good explanation as to why Jarrett Boykin's gloves fascinate me, but they do. Every game I have to check and see what he's wearing because...I don't know why, but I do.

He doesn't always stick to his solid glove plan, though, although there is evidence of his preference for solid gloves dating all the way back to his college years. Occasionally Boykin will throw in a black outside/white palm pair, and he did the camouflage nonsense for the "Salute to Service" promotion last year. He's also thrown in several different iterations of black, green, and even yellow over the past couple season.

Does this matter? Not in the slightest, but I think it's fun to see the little quirks that differentiate the players. The little modifications or choices guys make to stand out from the crowd have always fascinated me, whether it was Gilbert Brown's black visor, Ahman Green's forearm pads (and flirtation with rubber elbow pads), or the weird shoes Julius Peppers wore in early in the season or the black socks he wore later on, it's the little things that make individual players stick out just as much as what they do on the field.