I am working with fields in Salesforce CPQ, though I figure all of the custom objects contained in it should respond to Apex as any others would. For some reason though, every time I try to reference a field on a product referenced by one of the custom objects, all fields related to that product show as null. I'm probably making some really obvious mistake. Please take a look:

public without sharing class QuoteLineHandler {
	public static void HandleBeforeDelete(){
		// Removes the Product type of all "Mosca Model" quote line items from the "Product Names" field on quote level

List<SBQQ__QuoteLine__c> quoteLineList = new List<SBQQ__QuoteLine__c>();
		List<Id> productIds = new List<Id>();
		// Add all relevant lines to list for further processing
		for(SBQQ__QuoteLine__c delQuoteLine : (List<SBQQ__QuoteLine__c>)Trigger.old){
			quoteLineList.add(delQuoteLine);
			productIds.add(delQuoteLine.SBQQ__Product__c);
		}

		List<Product2> productList = [Select Id,Name,Product_Type__c
										From Product2
									   Where Id In :productIds];		
		System.debug('productList query size is ' +productList.size()+ ' and product list = ' +productList);				   			   

		for(SBQQ__QuoteLine__c ql : quoteLineList){
			System.debug('checking if quoteline product name is null. Cover thy bases lest ye should receive a null-pointer exception.');
			System.debug('ql.SBQQ__Product__c = '+ql.SBQQ__Product__c+ ' AKA ' + ql.SBQQ__Product__r.Name);
			System.debug('ql.Id = ' +ql.Id);
			if(ql.SBQQ__Product__r.Name != null){
                System.debug('This code is never reached. Product name is always null.");
            }
        }
    }
}