Julio Jones had an important meeting to get to. But instead of dressing up for it, he stripped down.
With his Falcons teammates still in uniform, Jones wore a sleeveless black workout shirt as he prowled the sideline late in the fourth quarter of Atlanta’s rout of the Houston Texans on Oct. 4. When the game ended, Jones snaked through the throng on the field until he spotted Texans running back Arian Foster, who jogged over to share a quick embrace — and to conduct their business.
As they had discussed before the game, Jones handed Foster his jersey, and Foster gave Jones his. Clutching their new souvenirs, they posed for a photo.
A custom associated more with fútbol than football, jersey swapping has become as much a part of the NFL postgame ritual as handshakes and prayer circles. Players consider the transaction, freighted with personal meaning, the ultimate show of respect.
“You watch any of the gladiator or Spartan movies, on the field of battle is their helmet or whatever they were wearing — they won or lost in it,” New York Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. said. “The jerseys are kind of like our armor. It’s something to be remembered forever.”
Some players, eager to add to their collections, plot out exchanges weeks in advance, staking their claim through text messages. Others let the spirit of the day guide them. After the New York Jets lost to New England at home last season, right tackle Breno Giacomini greeted his adversary that day, Patriots defensive lineman Alan Branch, who told him: “You held me long enough. You might as well take it.”
Giacomini laughed and helped Branch remove his jersey and shoulder pads. Branch then did the same for him.
“I wish I started doing this when I was a rookie,” Giacomini said.
In soccer, the practice dates back more than 80 years, to 1931, when France beat England for the first time. Overjoyed, the French players asked the English if they minded giving them their jerseys as mementos.
It is unclear when the phenomenon crossed over to the NFL.
Jets receiver Brandon Marshall said he had been exchanging jerseys since 2007, his second year in the league. “If coaches had jerseys,” Marshall said, “I’d ask for theirs, too.”
But Gus Granneman, the Jets’ equipment manager, said the postgame ritual spiked in popularity last season, when after every game, it seemed, he noticed players entering the locker room carrying opponents’ jerseys.
“Some guys, unfortunately, don’t tell me,” Granneman said, “and I find out when I’m doing the laundry.”
For the serial traders on the team, Granneman said, he keeps backups in stock in their sizes. That task grows a bit more complicated when the Jets wear the same color jerseys for several games in a row; Sunday’s game against Washington will be their fifth straight wearing white.
“When you go white then green, if they trade a white jersey, I have two weeks to get the jersey here,” Granneman said. “Now that we’re going straight through white, it’s tough. You’re always under the gun to get the jersey here in time.”
It can be an expensive hobby. Players receive their game jersey at the end of the season — and are permitted to purchase their backup at a lower price — but must incur the cost of other jerseys, which, they said, is docked from their paycheck. When asked, several players said they did not know how much they owed, but they estimated that each trade cost them a few hundred dollars.
“As long as we ain’t swapping every week, you know what I’m saying?” said Jets cornerback Dexter McDougle, who added that he intended to trade with his friend Kevin Johnson, a Texans cornerback, in Week 11. “But I’ll pay it. It’s not about the money for me.”
There is an implicit code, then, that players seem to abide by: no selling. The jerseys often go straight home, where they are air-dried before being stored or framed and placed on a wall to remind them of what Buffalo Bills safety Aaron Williams called “the journey to get in the NFL and the journey to stay as long as possible.”
Otherwise, they hang in players’ lockers, where they can linger for weeks. That is where McDougle keeps the green Eagles top he received three weeks ago from a player he considers a mentor, his former Maryland teammate Nolan Carroll.
Like Carroll, McDougle suffered a season-ending injury early in his senior year. Carroll served as a valuable resource, McDougle said, and encouraged him throughout his recovery.
“To me, it’s not about collecting them,” McDougle said. “It’s if the person means something to me, if he played some type of role in my life.”
To Atlanta Falcons receiver Nick Williams, who traded with Giants receiver Geremy Davis in Week 2, the jersey symbolized the time they had spent training together at Connecticut, rooming on trips and stretching the night before games. At Davis’ draft party in May, he wanted Williams, who was two years ahead of him, in attendance.
“Nick being like a big brother to me, it’s a privilege to have his jersey,” Davis said, adding: “We’re not an SEC school or a Power 5 school. We went to UConn. We made it.”
Swapping represents a different sort of pride for Giacomini, whose parents are from Brazil. Last season, he traded with Kansas City Chiefs kicker Cairo Santos, who was born in Brazil. The same motivation exists for Jets defensive lineman Leger Douzable, who intends to swap with Washington receiver Pierre Garcon on Sunday. Both players are of Haitian descent.
For Douzable, the ritual does not stop with the trade. He asks the other player to sign the back, although locating a pen in the chaotic aftermath of a game, he said, is never easy.
“You try to scramble and find one while you’re on the field,” Douzable said. “Last year, Derrick Morgan on the Titans is a real good friend of mine, and I couldn’t find one. When they come back, I’ll go to the team hotel and get him to sign it then.”
Douzable, in his eighth season, said he had about eight jerseys, and he is discerning about whom he trades with. Barely two seasons into Beckham’s NFL career, his inventory numbers about 20, he said, and it does not discriminate. It includes jerseys that belonged to offensive linemen and running backs, receivers and cornerbacks. He wants to add one quarterback in particular.
“Tom Brady is one of my least-favorite favorite quarterbacks of all time,” Beckham said in an interview last week. “He beat every single team I ever liked.”
He added: “The Patriots have always been a team I didn’t really like because they were always winning. But Brady’s a legend, and if he would be willing to trade with me, I can’t even give you words for that.”
The wish list for other players is less ambitious and dependent on the whims of the schedule, focused on former teammates or offseason workout partners or, in the case of Philadelphia’s Jordan Matthews, members of his rookie receiving class. An exception is the Bills’ Aaron Williams, who said he would not rest until he added the jersey of Oakland Raiders safety Charles Woodson, a likely Hall of Famer, after missing out four years ago with his boyhood idol, Champ Bailey.
As in soccer, where the competition to secure a prize jersey rages before games in tunnels and warm-ups, Williams discovered that even the most intense planning could sometimes lead to disappointment. As a rookie in 2011, he thought he had arranged to acquire Bailey’s jersey when the Bills played Denver, but a teammate, Leodis McKelvin, beat him to Bailey afterward and snatched it.
“Leo was a vet at the time,” Williams said in an interview at training camp in August. “I had to earn my stripes.”
One way to avoid this problem is to ban the practice, which Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin did last season. Steelers receiver Antonio Brown told ESPN.com that he understood Tomlin’s decision because “we’re not here to trade apparel.” (A Steelers spokesman said he was not certain whether the policy was still in place but he had not seen many players trade this season.)
Acknowledging that he had more important things to concern himself with, Jets coach Todd Bowles said he was not bothered by it.
“It’s not like they wear them to practice,” Bowles said.
If they did, Bowles would see jerseys in all shapes, colors and sizes, as if on display at a sporting goods store — or at Jones’ house.
“I think I have a full team now,” he said.
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