Blaster of 2019 Donruss football

While picking up my mail last weekend, I stopped by the nearby Walmart and, among other things, I looked through their card section. In it I found cards from a set that I hadn't seen yet, 2019 Donruss football.

Once I got home, I realized why I hadn't seen it yet. It wasn't supposed to release until today. That being said, I guess that I got an early look at a new set.

I've done well opening packs this year. With 88 cards in here, I hope to pull at least three Browns cards from the blaster.

Pack 1:

It was nice to see a Pat Tillman card as the first card in the blaster. I don't recall seeing him represented as one of the retired players in any recent sets.

In general, I like the fronts, although they seem to fall into the trend that Night Owl pointed out recently of having a lot of diagonal lines.

I am happy to see the team logo and position on the front. I don't know why they wrote the team name vertically beside the team logo. They made it so faint that it is barely readable. Why bother at that point?

A canvas parallel of a Bengals player. Is it going to be one of those blasters that aggravates me with good cards of division rivals?

Pack 2:

Well, this pack opened a lot nicer than the previous one. This is my first Schobert card in a Browns uniform. I previously owned two cards of him in a college uniform.

Once again, I will use the back of a Browns card to show what the backs look like.

Unlike some of the other Panini set backs from this year, these backs show some biographical information of the player with their height, weight and college.

Again, although they show career totals, they don't give an idea of how long the career has been. It is hard to know whether his totals are impressive or not. The card doesn't show it, but Schobert was drafted by the Browns in 2016.

The back of this card has a funny thing that I've never really noticed before. I originally looked at Joe Schobert's statistics at Pro Football Reference, and noticed that the career tackle numbers there didn't match up with the numbers on the back of the card. I then checked his profile at NFL.com, and saw that the career tackle numbers matched the back of the card.

I don't know why Pro Football Reference's numbers do not match NFL.com's numbers, but I guess this card back shows that Panini takes their numbers from the NFL.

The Garoppolo card is a Press Proof Silver Die-Cut numbered out of 75. I guess from looking at the two packs so far, that inserts or special cards are the seventh cards in the eight card packs.

Pack 3:

I guess if I'm going to get a Steelers card, it is best to get one of their retired legends. It is fun to contrast the facemask on the Bradshaw card with the ones on the Prescott and Wilson cards.

No insert or special card in this pack, but it is nice to get a Dwayne Haskins rookie card.

I said it in one of my previous posts. I like seeing kicker cards, and although Tucker plays for the Ravens, he is one of the best in league history.

Pack 4:

I guess my favorite from this scan would be the Greg Olsen card. It is too bad that he has suffered serious injuries the last two seasons.

Once again, it looks like I didn't get any special cards in this pack. I did pick up my third Bengals card though.

Pack 5:

Another kicker card with Adam Vinatieri, the oldest player in the NFL.

Back to getting a special card in the seven slot, and this time it is a Browns card. This is my first Odell Beckham Jr. card in a Browns uniform. 

This card appears to be part of the Retro 1989 insert set, but Donruss didn't put out football cards in 1989. I'm sure, though, that all of the baseball collectors that read this will recognize the card as being of the 1989 Donruss baseball card design.

Here is the back, which, as expected, is also in the 1989 Donruss baseball design.

Pack 6:

I'm happy to see another Browns card on the top of a pack.

I love getting new Ozzie Newsome cards, but he really seems to be the Browns legend in a lot of Panini sets.

This makes the third Browns card in the blaster, which if each team had even distribution, most teams should have three.

Another Bengals card in the back half of this pack.

Pack 7:

Mark Ingram is shown in his new Baltimore Ravens uniform while Robert Quinn is listed with the Cowboys while still shown in his Dolphins uniform. Ingram signed with the Ravens on March 13, 2019, while Quinn was traded to the Cowboys on March 28.  I don't know if there was a deadline to photoshop photos that Quinn missed, or if it was just because Quinn switched numbers when he joined the Cowboys, and they didn't want to change the number on the jersey.

Here is my memorabilia card from the blaster, and like the other special cards, it is in the seventh spot in the pack.

Since I pointed it out for the other players that changed teams in this pack, Case Keenum is in his new Redskins uniform. His trade to the Redskins became official on March 13.

Pack 8:

Jason Witten announced in February 2019 that he was going to come out of retirement and return to the Cowboys.

Munoz gives me a fifth Bengals card in the blaster. For the veteran, the helmet is different than for the current players.

After going back and looking at the Browns cards, it happens there too. I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention. I noticed it in a previous Donruss set, but not this time. Oops.

Pack 9:

I like the Drew Bledsoe card.

The Saquon Barkley insert is nice, and I got a sixth Bengals card.

I just noticed that this Ryan Finley Rated Rookie card has a different photo than the canvas parallel Ryan Finley Rated Rookie card that I pulled in the first pack. The set has photo variations, but the set listing on Cardboard Connection doesn't list any canvas parallels for the variations.

I've looked online and seen that the Dwayne Haskins canvas card also has a different image than the regular Rated Rookie card that was in my blaster. I guess the canvas Rated Rookies must be variants rather than parallels.


Pack 10:

I like the photo of Calvin Ridley with the Falcons logo on the wall behind him.

I guess that not only is this a Raiders hot pack, but also a Raiders hot scan. (Is that a thing?)

Pack 11:

It is too bad that Doug Baldwin had to retire due to injury

So ends my blaster. I like the cards, and there are still a bunch of Browns to find in the set so I'll probably buy some more of it. I'm not even going to complain that I seemed to pull more Bengals cards than any other team.

It's too bad that I took so long to write this up as it could have been a preview post as opposed to just a release day post.