The rumors are true. The Ravens have a new helmet to mix into their uniform rotation in 2024.

It’s bright. It’s bold. And it’s very, very purple.

The Ravens on Tuesday released images of the new helmet on X with the caption, “This fall, purple will rise. Introducing our new alternate helmet!”

The image depicts a metallic purple helmet with gold stripes (or talons) and a gold face mask. There is also a front-facing bird logo on the side (as opposed to the bird in profile that is on the other helmets). The Ravens standard helmets are black with purple stripes and a black face mask.

In a Ravens-produced show, The Lounge, senior vice president of marketing Brad Downs said they chose this bird logo because you can see both the eyes, which are prominent in Ravens marketing. The red eyes are on banners outside M&T Bank Stadium as well as signs around town.

Downs said fans are a big fan of gold numbers (”just not the gold pants”), so they leaned more into the gold. He also said he learned a lot about how many finishes there are for helmets, but they liked how the metallic matte purple popped.

Another photo depicts players wearing purple jerseys with gold numbers along with the new helmet.

According to ESPN, the Ravens will wear the helmets for one game this season. Downs said they know which game, but they’re keeping that secret for now. He added they will be worn with the color rush uniforms that came out last season. There is potential for them to wear it for more than one game in future seasons.

“I can feel good about saying that the purple matches the color rush, the gold matches spot on,” Downs said. “It will be a ‘purple rising.’”

Team president Sashi Brown had hinted at a new uniform at the NFL’s annual owners meetings in March. However, he was reluctant to give details.

“We have some stuff that’s coming, but if I said too much, my team would shoot me before I got back to the building,” Brown joked.

What he did detail at the time was that the team is very cautious to make changes because they feel they have classic jerseys. But with the rest of the league experimenting with alternate jerseys, like the color rush jerseys, they decided to try out some different options. Downs said that every time another team came out with a new jersey, fans would write to them asking when they would get a new jersey.

“They just like new stuff,” he said. But he also added that many fans added a requirement to their requests — don’t bring the gold pants back.

According to Downs, they’ve been talking about an alternate helmet since the league began allowing them in 2022. They were close ahead of the 2023 season but not quite satisfied. Downs said he looked at at least 14 different helmet options, not including ones with different decals. They’ve been locked in on this helmet since about October, November.

Reactions online were mixed. Some, including fans from different teams, referred to the new helmet as “fire.” Others were unsure about certain aspects, such as the gold face mask and the choice of bird logo. And others had no nice things to say.

All the players who were in the reveal video had positive reactions. Tight end Mark Andrews called them “badass,” and outside linebacker Odafe Oweh loved the gold face mask. Rookie cornerback Nate Wiggins simply said “this is the one.”