When I say a bit, I mean a lot. I only completed 3 trades in September, one of the slowest months I can remember. A lot of it was a bit of card malaise as sitting in an office chair for a couple of weeks last month was torture as I struggled with a bad back.
Things have picked up a bit lately on the trade front and I recently finished a quick trade with Eric (TCDB ID: Hebron Reds Fan) to nab a few cards.
I sent off a few Reds cards from various Heritage sets and in return I received a 5 count of 1979 Topps football, a set which is coming along quite nicely. Along with those I bumped up the John Olerud PC by 1 with a 2005 Fleer base card.
Mustache here, no mustache there: The two cards that grabbed me right away were the Ken Anderson card that features him with no stache, which is the only way that I remember him during his playing days with the Bengals.
The other card is the Vikings Team Leaders card, featuring the normally clean shaven Ahmad Rashad with a mustache, a pretty good looking one to boot. Another thing I noticed about that card are the offensive leaders with kind of small season totals of rushing and receiving yards. Off to the football reference website!
Teams were playing 16 games in a season in 1978, the first season after the bump from 14 games. The Vikings finished first in the NFC Central division with a 8-7-1 (they were tied with the Packers, but had the tiebreaker with a win and a tie vs. the Packers). Fran Tarkenton was the QB for all 16 games and threw for over 3400 yards, which was spread around 5 different receivers who caught 45+ passes each. Their passing offense was ranked 2nd in the league, only behind Air Coryell and the Chargers.
The rushing offense was a different story, ranking dead last in the league at just over 1500 yards, less than half of what the New England Patriots had.
We are certainly spoiled in modern times with the amount of offense that teams put up compared to 40 years ago!!
By the way, despite the Vikings name on the card of Paul Krause, that shirt certainly doesn't look purple, does it? Looks more of a Giants blue compared to Stu Voigt right above him.
Great lot of cards, thank you for the trade Eric!
Enjoy the hobby,
Robert
As a Bengals fan, I don't thinK I have a Ken Anderson card. That should change. I like that Olerud a lot too. He was a key cog to the Yankees collapse in 2004. Once he got hurt, felt like tides turned.
ReplyDeleteOlerud was quite underrated through his playing days. He was stuck in a position that demands 30+ HRs yearly and he was a 15-20 HR guy his whole career.
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