2026 Donruss Football: Elway and Manning Share Downtown

John Elway and Peyton Manning have plenty of room to work on this card. Panini puts the two Denver quarterbacks on opposite sides of a wide Downtown Duos design, with an orange-and-purple mountain skyline between them. Elway wears the older orange uniform and light-blue helmet; Manning brings the later orange-and-navy look. The pairing tells its story before you read either name.

That is the most immediately appealing preview in 2026 Donruss Football, a release that brings college players and established football greats into the same checklist. Denver nostalgia supplies one kind of chase. Bryce Underwood in Michigan colors supplies another. Here is where the designs and the full checklist make this particular Donruss worth a look.

Denver gets two eras on one Downtown

The Elway–Manning card is Downtown Duos 7, with Gold numbered to 10 and Black numbered to one. The horizontal layout gives each quarterback his own space while the mountain illustration and Denver label tie them together. Matching orange jerseys connect two visibly different uniforms. It feels like a city card as much as a two-player card.

Denver's championship history gives that pairing weight. The Broncos won consecutive titles in Super Bowls XXXII and XXXIII, then returned to the top with Manning in Super Bowl 50. The Pro Football Hall of Fame's team history records that Manning's four Denver seasons included two Super Bowl appearances. Donruss compresses those different chapters into a design a Broncos collector can read at a glance.

There are 14 pairings in the current Downtown Duos checklist. Joe Montana and Steve Young share card 12, Drew Brees and Jimmy Graham share 13, and Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson share 10. The most unusual entry is 14: Deion Sanders appears twice, representing the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta Braves. That is a particularly good use of the Duos idea—one athlete's two-sport identity instead of two different athletes.

Bryce Underwood brings Michigan into the picture

Underwood's Downtown 28 takes a different approach. The quarterback runs across the foreground in white and maize, with campus buildings rising behind him and a large wolverine filling the upper corner. A stadium anchors the bottom of the scene. The design packs Michigan references around the player without shrinking him into a tiny figure in a postcard.

The official checklist has 34 individual Downtown subjects, including CJ Carr for Notre Dame, Julian Sayin for Ohio State, Dante Moore for Oregon and Keelon Russell for Alabama. John Elway also has an individual Denver Downtown, card 34, giving an Elway collection a choice between the solo composition and the Manning pairing.

Underwood's Gold is numbered to 10 and Black to one. Panini calls Downtown and Downtown Duos ultra-rare on the Hobby box, but does not provide numerical pack odds there. The 34 individual subjects and 14 pairings describe the checklist's size, not the number of copies printed.

Brees and Johnson show the base-and-Optic relationship

Brees's base card uses a broad action photograph with angular white panels, gold accents and a black lower frame. The city label sits above his name, and the photograph carries most of the card. It is a straightforward composition with enough space for the black-and-gold uniform to supply its own personality.

The Calvin Johnson Optic preview keeps that angular structure but shifts the framing to blue and white, matching Detroit's uniform. The Optic mark provides the immediate identifier. Brees is card 170 and Johnson is 71 in both the Base and Base Optic checklists, which makes those two versions easy to track by number.

Panini advertises a 200-card base set; the current downloadable checklist contains 199 entries, with number 117 absent. That is a useful detail for anyone building a complete checklist now. The roster itself includes college players alongside the older professional names: Underwood appears at 191 and Russell at 51.

Keelon Russell gets a sharper Elite treatment

Russell's Donruss Elite 35 is a good counterpoint to the open base design. Angular silver facets crowd around the photograph, with burgundy panels and thin gold accents picking up the Alabama colors. The player's crimson jersey remains the dominant color, while the Elite wordmark gives the lower portion a strong finish.

For an Alabama collection, this and Russell's Downtown 31 offer substantially different pictures of the same subject: the Elite preview emphasizes the throwing pose and geometric frame, while Downtown belongs to the illustrated-location series. Those distinct treatments make the player checklist more interesting than a sequence of border-color changes alone.

Sproles, Branch and Lewis take different autograph routes

Darren Sproles is Signature Marks 13, represented with San Diego. His preview places a compact action photograph over a broad signature panel, with the flowing Signature Marks lettering below. The navy uniform and pale background leave the autograph area easy to see; the rainbow-colored border supplies the louder element.

Zion Branch is Signature Series 20 on the checklist. The preview's large Elite Signature Series title and white lower panel give his Georgia card a different visual balance. His red jersey, mirrored visor and green mouthguard make the photograph particularly vivid against that quieter autograph space.

Ray Lewis gets the loudest of the three designs, with repeated diagonal Dominators lettering behind his purple Baltimore uniform. His checklist entries include Dominators Gold Autographs 2, numbered to 10, and Black Autographs 2, numbered to one. Lewis is absent from the standard Dominators Autographs list, so the named parallel matters when tracking this particular autograph chase.

Hobby contents and the expected release

Southern Hobby's schedule gives October 28, 2026 as the expected release date. Panini's Hobby page currently says Coming Soon, with no direct price announced there.

Hobby contains 12 packs of 10 cards, or 120 cards, with one autograph, one memorabilia card and 36 inserts per box on average. Panini also lists 12 parallels and six Optic base/parallels; the box front describes the six Optic cards as included in the 12-parallel callout. Those figures should not be added together as a promise of 18 separate parallel and Optic cards.

The Denver Duos remains our standout preview: two quarterbacks, distinct uniforms and one shared landscape, with enough room for the illustration to breathe. Underwood supplies the college counterpart with a distinctly Michigan scene. Together they show why this Donruss checklist can appeal to collectors following very different parts of football.