Card: Action Packed Rookies 1991
Acquired: 2014, Albany Acquisition
Reggie Johnson appeared on the NFL scene quietly in 1991. He finished his college career at Florida State with 52 receptions for 544 yards and a 10.5 yard average. Johnson was the first tight end taken off the board at number 32 overall. He caught his first touchdown (since High School) in his first professional game against the Bengals in 1991. It took another 30 games for him to catch another- in the season finale against the Chiefs in 1992. Reggie recorded a career high 20 receptions for 243 yards and a TD in 1993. He was cut by the Broncos due to the salary cap in 1994, and briefly was picked up by the Bengals. Over those next four seasons, Johnson played for the Packers (1994), Eagles (1995), Chiefs (1996), and Packers (1997) again before retiring. Over his career, Reggie was known as a good special teams player and goal line blocker. He returned briefly to play football for the XFL Birmingham Thunderbolts in 2001.
Rec 66 Yds 791 Avg 12.0 Td 6 LG 48
When Lance’s ‘trainee’ asked for his autograph, Dishman asked the kid how old he was. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was too young to remember the Oilers or because he looked too young to be in the bar. Anyway it was a good laugh. When I approached Cris, he threw me off. He told me that he’d sign anything as long as it didn’t end up on EBay. I had already paired down my selection of cards, because I did not want to go into a bar with a long box- so I left probably 5 or 6 additional Dishman cards in the car. I am not sure how he felt. He signed what I had and reaffirmed he’d sign anything else as long as it didn’t end up on EBay. Maybe he was actually hoping I had more. I then told him that I felt like after that humbling preseason game against Minnesota (in which he intercepted a pass and got busted showboating at the 2 yard line) he really turned a corner and became one of the best DBs in the league for a few years there. He stopped for a second, looked at me and told me that, “It meant a lot that I said that.” I told Cris that I wasn’t going to sell them, that I was a true blue fan thru and thru, and he and I had even talked on SotL for a bit. After telling him that I was ‘the guy with the mask on’, he smiled briefly at me and finished signing.
Cris had some pretty good cards, and despite signing a few for me over the years, he still has a pretty deep selection of decent action shots, even on bad looking cards. I rarely, if ever got Pro Set Platinum cards signed. They provided me nothing different than the base Pro Set. While they were daring with the blank canvas and full color photo, the logo is gigantic and garish. Still the card itself is a great photo of Cris. Unfortunately by this time I had already begun to scale back my card consumption, or else the Skybox ‘Colors’ set would’ve been a must have. It may have been a combination of things: Discovering girls, a market being flooded by too many products, drop in quality, etc- but whatever it was my interest in the product had dropped off the map by 1993.
