Since when were NFL rookies so good at painting?
Say what you will about our workforce's newest employees, but for the NFL's incoming class of 2025, rookies today are arriving to the league with a strong recall of the intricacies of their team logos and are surprisingly adept at painting.
The NFL released the latest edition of 'Rookies Paint,' the league's annual video showing rookies painting team logos from memory. Most of the attempts over the years are painfully and humorously amateurish, and the funny tradition has evolved into merch.
This year, though, a number of rookies showed remarkable skill under pressure. Given the short five-minute time frame they have to complete it, it's impressive how many managed to get close to their new team's logo.
Los Angeles Rams tight end Terrance Ferguson nailed his team's logo. Indianapolis Colts tight end Tyler Warren and New York Giants running back Cam Skattlebo were on the right track. Kaleb Johnson, a Pittsburgh Steelers running back, got the gist of his team's Steelmark, despite an issue with sizing and placing the right colors in the wrong order of the three hypocycloids, the red, yellow, and blue shapes that represent the elements that make steel.
'I see it every year and I'm always like, 'oh, I would nail that,' and now that I'm here I can already tell not not nailing it,' said Issac Teslaa, a Detroit Lions wide receiver who actually did a decent job with the basics of his team's lion mark. 'I think I did better than I was expecting to do,' he said at the end.
Since the series has run for multiple years, today's rookies might come to the task better prepared, but that still doesn't mean everyone nailed it. Even though he was wearing pants with the Jacksonville Jaguars logo stamped on them, rookie Travis Hunter could not recreate the logo himself. Others were challenged with translating the picture in their head onto the paper in one quick attempt. Two Cleveland Browns rookies took different perspectives for their team's logos, with running back Quinshon Judkins painting a front-facing view while quarterback Dillion Gabriel did a side profile that captured the real logo's perspective, if not the exact right tilt.
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