Is it Football Season Yet?

Seattle weather has been hit and miss this summer.  As I write this Thursday night, we had a full day of gray gloom with some solid rain in the evening.  Where's the sun? Where's the warm weather?? Where's the Mariners???

Ahh yes, the "will they, won't they" story of the summer.  I'm talking about whether the Mariners will make the playoffs.  Right now it's about 50/50 split.  As of late the Mariners swept the Orioles, got swept by the Astros, and lost the first game of the Royals series in a walkoff fashion.  This All-Star break cannot come soon enough.

I'm not giving up on the Mariners but with new football cards rolling out into stores, I can't help but pay attention.  The latest release in stores appears to be Panini Prestige.  I'm not familiar with the Prestige brand but based on these cards I'm guessing they are aiming for mid-tier range with class to boot.  10 cards per pack, which is a good amount.

Nice full frame images.  The name plate has crisp, sharp lines but that's about the most positive thing I can say.  The semi-transparent name background doesn't work for me with the more muted colors like gray and black.  I think the fact that the text of the name fades into the background, rather than popping out, is what sets me back.

I've been watching the All or Nothing documentary on Amazon that follows the Arizona Cardinals during the 2015 season.  It has been pretty fascinating so far and I highly recommend it to any football fan, even if not a Cardinals fan.  Johnson came in as a rookie for Arizona and had to fill into the second string due to injuries and seemed to fill the role well. 8 rushing TDs along with 4 receiving TDs.  Pretty good for a rookie.

Again, the dark background does not look good.

Here the red pops a little bit and I think this suits the card better.

Ok the light gray looks alright here but I think the blue is what helps accent the gray.  Gore has always been a rumbling runner so I wonder how long he's going to go.

Don't sleep on Robinson, otherwise you might end up in the lake.  Literally.

The orange looks good here.  I actually like the Dolphins' colors.  Otherwise, I don't pay any attention to Miami.

Solid Pats receiver.

This is something we don't see all the time, an offensive player without the football.  I wonder what he was doing here.

 And we get 1 rookie in the pack.  I like the fact that it's a college uniform because a lot of times we don't get that.  There will be other sets with rookies in their current teams' uniform.

I'd be remiss if I didn't include a shot of the back.  Same image as the front but at least Panini made an attempt to make the image look different with the color grading.  I make the same complaint here as I would other Panini cards and that's there aren't enough stats.  One year just isn't enough.  

I'm glad I picked up a pack but I won't pursue any more packs.  I might try to get the Seahawks base cards on Sportslots later (since commons usually run $0.18 there) but that's about it for this set.