Back in black -- Panthers to wear all black at Philadelphia

The Carolina Panthers will go with their "all-black" look for only the second time in team history this Thursday night in their preseason game at Philadelphia.

Although this has yet to be announced and Panther officials would not confirm it, word around the locker room is that the Panthers will wear black jerseys, black pants and blue socks -- the combination that won NFL.com's "Greatest Uniform in NFL History” contest in a major upset last month.

Home teams get to choose the jersey color for NFL games, and the Eagles chose white. The Panthers normally wear white in the early season to keep cooler, but will go all black -- a look that has long been asked for by many of their fans -- for the 7:30 p.m. game to be televised on WCCB-Channel 18.

The team isn't scheduled to wear all-black at home until late in the season, when they will wear black jerseys for their final four home games starting in mid-November against New England, Tampa Bay, the New York Jets and New Orleans. They could wear black pants as well for any or all of those games and likely will for at least a couple. Unlike jersey color, the pants color can be decided at the last minute. Here's a list of the Panthers' jersey colors home and away throughout the season -- they also will wear black for their Week 2 regular-season game at Buffalo and at Miami later in the season.

The black-on-black look you will see Thursday on TV does contain one bolt of color – the electric blue socks. Wide receiver Steve Smith is responsible for that -- team officials allowed him to choose the sock color for the all-black look last year.

The Panthers debuted the look last November. It has only been worn once, in a 36-14 home loss to Denver, which makes the “Greatest Uniform in NFL History” title seem rather ironic. The Panthers defeated the San Francisco 49ers' current uniform in the finals, getting about 90 percent of the vote in a contest where fans could vote an unlimited number of times.