Adidas and Kanye West have done it yet again.
On the eve of the 2016-17 NFL season, some of Adidas’s top football players were blessed with Yeezy cleats that sent the Internet and the sneaker world into a frenzy. Von Miller was the first to break the news, as he was blessed with a 750 cleat. DeAndre Hopkins and Adrian Peterson were also gifted with cleats, however theirs were of the low-top 350 variety.
This is a big deal. A very big deal. It’s much more than just some cool Yeezy cleats. This is Adidas’s first step towards integrating Kanye’s designs into their performance products … and they look absolutely great. The 750 is perfect for a strong defensive player like Miller, and the 350 looks ideal for the speed of Hopkins and the quickness of Adrian Peterson.
Naysayers might scoff. They might point out that Jordan was taking basketball shoes and making them into cleat and turf shoes long before Kanye West footwear even existed. This is true. Jordan was first, and Jordan Brand has created many a legendary cleat. However, it’s not really a valid comparison.
Kanye West is an artist who makes lifestyle shoes. Michael Jordan was an athlete who made performance shoes. There’s a world of difference between a turf-ready version of a performance basketball shoe and a turf-ready version of a lifestyle shoe made by a famous musician. There’s obvious overlap in the first … not so much in the second.
Never before has an artist had this much control over a performance product from any major sportswear company. It’s an incredible fusion of worlds, the likes of which we haven’t seen before. These are cleats, strictly made for athletic performance with the design of a lifestyle shoe. Kanye has proven that he can conquer the fashion word with his footwear, but the athletic world is a whole different story. Something like this could only happen in these crazy times we live in. Even a decade ago, this would be unthinkable.
So we, for one, are extremely excited to see what happens next. Yeezy basketball shoes? Yeezy performance athletic garments? Only time will tell, but we’ve got a hunch that this just might be the beginning of an athletic footwear design revolution. One thing’s for sure: it’ll be a wild ride.
What do you think of the Yeezy football cleats? Do you prefer the 750’s or the 350’s? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter, check our Facebook page for daily updates, and, as always, be sure to follow us on Instagram for all the fire sneaker pictures you can handle.
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