Ravens back in black — sort of — against Browns Thursday night

As the Ravens prepare for their third prime-time home game in four weeks, I believe I’ve fielded more questions about which uniform they’ll be wearing each week than who will be lining up at rush linebacker.
Wearing purple jerseys with white pants in each of their first three games — they wore their dark jerseys in Philadelphia as the Eagles wore white — the Ravens will finally be back in black when they welcome the Cleveland Browns to M&T Bank Stadium on Thursday night. It’s just not the look most fans were hoping to see.
A team official confirmed the Ravens would once again wear their purple tops but will do so with black pants this time.
The purple-and-black combination was the team’s home uniform in their 1996 inaugural season and brought back the look in a prime-time game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Dec. 5, 2010. They wore black pants with their purple jerseys in their final two home games last season, the Christmas Eve game against the Cleveland Browns and their divisional-round contest against the Houston Texans.
The team has remained rather quiet on the status of their alternate black jerseys and there have been plenty of reports about Nike having manufacturing problems in their first season with the exclusive uniform contract of the NFL, making you wonder if the Ravens even have the alternate look in their possession at this point.
The Ravens do not have any more home games scheduled for prime time after Thursday’s affair, though that could change with the league’s flexible scheduling late in the season. It’s always possible the team could elect to wear the black tops for an afternoon game as they’ve done a few times over the years.