Nike’s Colts Air Max 90 Kept the Anvil Steel and Dropped the Horseshoe

Before every home game in Indianapolis somebody swings a hammer at an anvil. Adam Vinatieri has done it. So have Edgerrin James, Pat McAfee, Obi Toppin and the swimmer Lilly King. The Colts have been running that ritual since 2017, and this year Nike built an entire uniform out of it. The Air Max 90 that came with the uniform kept one part of the idea and left the best part behind.

The uniform is called Anvil Strike. Its jersey colour is officially Anvil Steel, a dark anthracite the team describes as inspired by the steel of the anvil itself, with high-shine reflective accents meant to read as the sparks a strike throws. The detail everyone involved talks about is a silver horseshoe on each sleeve, which the Colts say is the first time a horseshoe has ever appeared on one of their jerseys. There are horseshoe-shaped grommets on the shoulder stripes, an INDY wordmark on the helmet front, and For The Shoe printed inside the collar.

Kalen Jackson, the team’s owner and chief brand officer, was unusually direct about why they did it. “I think we really are a traditional team,” she said. “I think maybe we stayed a little bit too safe sometimes.” Ryan Airhart, Nike’s design director for NFL uniforms, was equally candid from the other side: “We definitely don’t claim to be Colts franchise experts, so we really rely on that partnership with the Colts to get the ball off for the entire process.” That conversation produced something specific, sourced in a real thing that happens in that stadium nine or ten times a year.

The shoe got half of it. Nike’s colorway is Anthracite, Gym Blue and Gym Blue, and the anthracite is a genuine match for the Anvil Steel jersey rather than a generic dark base. Then it stops. Nike names no silver in the colorway at all, which means the horseshoe, the first one in franchise history and the thing both parties pointed at as the whole reason the uniform exists, is not in the shoe’s stated palette. The Air Max 90 took the background and left the idea on the jersey.

The canvas deserved better, because it is well suited to this. Tinker Hatfield designed the Air Max 90 and it launched in 1990 as the Air Max III, renamed in 2000 when it was reissued and given its launch year, per Nike’s own history page. The visible window traces to the Air Max 1, where Hatfield cut away midsole because, as he put it, it was difficult for anyone to grasp Air and what that means. The 90 enlarged that window and framed it in contrasting TPU, which is precisely the kind of hard graphic edge a metallic accent would sit well against.

The market has already registered the difference. Eighteen days after release the Colts pair was still live at Nike in every size from a 3.5 to a 15, and trading around $148 against $140 retail, which is flat once fees are counted. The Chicago pair from the same eight-shoe drop, same silhouette, same price, same day, was clearing closer to $221. Green Bay, whose shoe carried a colour drawn from the team’s stock certificates, sat like Indianapolis did. One of these colorways tells you something about its team and the other two borrow a palette, and the resale spread is roughly $70 a pair.

Retail is $140. That is the same figure across all eight NFL Rivalries pairs this year, and last year’s eight ran $145, so Nike took five dollars out of the programme year over year on the same silhouette. It puts the shoe in line with a standard Air Max 90 rather than at a licensed-product premium, which is reasonable pricing for what is, in this case, a standard Air Max 90 in team colours.

Style code is IW1137-001, officially Anthracite, Gym Blue and Gym Blue. It released September 1 at Nike, the Colts Pro Shop and shop.colts.com, alongside the rest of the Anvil Strike collection. The uniform makes its debut in Week 3 against Houston at Lucas Oil Stadium on September 27. Worth noting how little institutional support the footwear has: Nike’s newsroom carries no release for the 2026 Rivalries programme at all, and the Colts’ own Rivalries page does not mention the shoe.

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The Sneakers Team

The Sneakers Team is the editorial desk behind becausesneakers, founded and edited by Nick Engvall. Nick has spent more than two decades in the sneaker industry. He built the original Eastbay Blog, led the first dedicated sneaker team at Complex, ran the first UGC and seeding programs at Finish Line, was employee number nine at StockX, and served as Senior Director at Stadium Goods. He hosts the Sneaker History podcast, and his first book, Small Luxuries: Sneakers, arrives in October 2026 from Motorbooks. Release details on this site are checked against the brand's own product information before publication, and anything we cannot confirm is labelled rather than stated.

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