There was literally no worse product to break than Absolute in 2014. It was an overpriced complete disaster of a product that offered ABSOLUTEL-y no reason to buy it. In fact, collectors responded in kind, and to this day, you can still find it at drastically reduced prices. Even the singles took a complete dive. Although the design is better this year, im not sure if it wont suffer the same fate as another sticker product in Panini’s bloated product portfolio.

I like the look of 2016 Absolute, actually. Yes, you can chalk that one up to a fluke, as Panini has done nothing but showcase this year how poorly they can make a football product look. The issue is that the memorabilia aspect that this product is built around is a dead issue, as it is becoming abundantly clear that no one fucking cares about relic cards like they used to. If you aren’t going to give us on card autos, it doesn’t really matter that the cards look good or that there is a 5th spot for a new relic piece in the design. Its like adding a faster rewind button on a VHS player. VHS is dead.

We know for a fact that Panini is literally going to scrape the shit off the bottom of the barrel to find products they can use to fulfill their quota with the league, and this is a beacon of that necessity above anything else. If they actually wanted to build good products, Absolute wouldn’t even be on the radar, much like last year’s absence from the calendar.

Again, these cards don’t look terrible, but honestly its not going to move the needle when there are going to be 30 other products released this year. They need to find us unique content and this just isn’t going to do it. I don’t have much else to say at this point, other than just wait for the nicer stuff that may or may not be coming.