Helmet on or off?
 

I much prefer cards with a good picture of the player. Sometimes (e.g. Montana rookie) you can still get a pretty good pic of the player's face even with the helmet on, but so many modern cards afford almost none. Just a couple of numerous examples below, a Rice alternate rookie where half his face is blacked out, and a typical Ray Lewis rookie (I just looked at them all) where you can't really make out his face, period.

I never really thought about it.

I suppose from seeing them only on TV, the helmet thing seems normal to me.

Overall, it's more the design of the cards. The Jerry Rice looks ok to me the Ray Lewis card just looks messed up even if it's not.