Tag Archives: Minnesota Vikings

NFL

Rice, Sidney

Card: Score 2009 Autograph
Acquired: 2020, COMC

Sidney Rice made the best of it while he was playing for the Gamecocks of South Carolina. He rolled up 142 catches for 2233 yards and 23 touchdowns over the course of 2005 and 2006. Rice snapped school records in only two short years at Columbia, and declared for the 2007 NFL draft. He’d be selected in the second round by the Minnesota Vikings. Rice caught 31 passes for 396 yards and 4 TDs his rookie year over 13 games and 4 starts. After a poor showing in 2008 due to a lingering knee injury from 2007, Sidney made up for it in 2009, cashing in with a Pro Bowl season. He’d make the best of it catching passes from Brett Favre in his twilight, with 83 catches for 1312 yards, 8 TDs and a career long 63 yard catch.

After a hip injury wrecked his 2010 season, Sidney joined the Seattle Seahawks in 2011. His best season came with the franchise in 2012 when Rice posted 50 catches for 748 yards and 7 TDs. Notably it’d be the only time during his career that he’d start a full 16 game schedule. in 2013, Sidney blew out his ACL and was shelved the rest of the season, but not before he contributed to the Seahawks Super Bowl run. He’d return for 2014, but retired before the season began, citing concussion concerns.

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81/57243359214.83063
NFL, NFLE

Daniel, Daryl

Card: Playoff Contenders 2000 European Ticket
Acquired: 2021, Future Considerations

Darryl Daniel entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent, and was invited to training camp with the Detroit Lions in ’99, joining the Minnesota Vikings’ practice squad late in the season. The Vikings allocated him to the NFLE in 2000.

He caught 16 passes for 258 yards with the Amsterdam Admirals and displayed enough potential to make it to the final roster cut with the Vikings. Daniel enjoyed an NFLE best 5 catches for 136 yards in a 41-7 drubbing of the Galaxy. After being released by Minnesota, he hooked up with the Carolina Panthers. He’d be on and off the team’s roster through 2001, eventually landing on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

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1624815.5530
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1728516.8033
CFL, College Football HoF, NFL, NFLE

Ware, Andre (3)

Card: Fleer 1990, Action Packed 1991, GameDay 1992
Acquired: TTM 2020, C/o Home
Sent: 3/17 Received: 4/5 (18 days)
See Also: Andre Ware, Air Ware

Andre sure got in a lot of great cards in his short amount of time on the starting stage in the NFL. Even after this third stab at a few more autographs, there are a few more cards I could probably nab him on.

I loved Action Packed and GameDay’s sets. Action Packed 1991 was a pretty well designed set, with that simple swoosh that goes through the left side of the image- it maximized the canvas area to focus on the player image. I also really liked the flat helmet image at the end. It’s a really underrated set, and despite the slight smudging is great to get autographed. Most of the images are indeed- action packed. This Gameday image is really nice, however one of the set’s design flaws comes forward a bit when the silver blends against the gray, the image looks a bit more flat. The Fleer 90 card was one of 4 (technically) that had a college photo of Andre in it. (The others being Topps, ProSet, and Score.) We always laughed at the fact that Fleer didn’t find a shot of Andre actually throwing the ball- but instead chose to get a shot of him pitching the ball out. All of these cards were distant set needs for me in my never ending autograph quest.

About the time that Coronavirus broke loose and some stay at home notices were put into place, Andre started signing his TTM mail after a 5-6 year absence from the game. He was initially playing catchup and then started signing some newer requests. I always liked Andre, and I hadn’t TTMed him since 2012, I decided he was ripe for the picking.

As of 2020, Ware remains the steady voice as the color commentator for the Houston Texans game day radio show.