It’s exciting to be in the playoffs, but I feel like it’s important to treat playoff games just like a regular-season game. At the same time I know how important every single thing is during the playoffs, so you want to make sure you’re on point with everything. You can’t afford to slip up because if you lose now, you go home.

On my first touchdown against the Cowboys, I think the DB never knew I had the ball until I was in the end zone. When it hit my hands he was turning his head to look back and see where the ball was. That’s something I always try to do, keep my hands in until the last possible second so the DB doesn’t sense that the ball is coming. They know that when you put your hands out, the ball is coming, so if I can I wait until the last second to grab it.

On the second touchdown my job on that play was to come in motion and cut the defensive end. Then, if I have a chance, get up and be an outlet in case Brett needs me. That’s exactly how it happened. After I cut DeMarcus Ware, I was able to get up and ease back into an area where nobody was and Brett did a great job of scrambling. After I caught the ball I actually thought I was about to be hit pretty hard, but afterward I realized there was nobody around me.

My third touchdown I came off the ball and at about five yards the DB got his hands on me. I was just blasting away down the sideline trying to get around him. I was able to get his hands off me and get a step or two on him and by then Brett had the ball in the air and it fell right into my hands.

I definitely have a chemistry with Brett but so do all the other receivers on the team, Shiancoe, Percy, Bernard. The ball is still spread around and that’s what I love about this offense. Plus the defense is always going to have to key on Adrian, because if you don’t bad things are going to happen to you. I feel like it’s just a matter of time before he breaks out and has an Adrian game. He’s not pushing it, he knows what we’re doing right now and has no problem with it. If it weren’t for him the passing game would not be doing as well as it is right now.

The Saints are going to be a real challenge for us. It’s a great defense we’re going to be facing. Guys move around out there and are very active and they have Darren Sharper back there. We have to be alert and on point at all times, executing our plays. This will definitely be a tough one for us.

It’s real exciting to be in the playoffs. This is the time of year you have to take care of business. Point blank, period. Nobody wants to go home on this team, not right now. We set a goal early in the season and we’re still trying to reach that goal.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

Being chosen for the Pro Bowl is an awesome feeling. It’s definitely an honor to be named along with all the other guys who were picked. It feels great especially because the Vikings had eight players that made it, and three are first-timers – me, Bryant McKinnie and Heath Farwell. I definitely credit my teammates because without them this would not be possible.

I’m a true believer that hard work pays off, and I don’t plan on stopping here. I want to make this a repeat thing, make it a goal to go back to the Pro Bowl every year. It’s something to shoot for now, and I talked to Larry Fitzgerald about how hard we worked out together in the off-season and how we want to make it our goal every year. I don’t usually set goals heading into the season, but this year my goal was just to be out on the field and help the Vikings get to the Super Bowl and win it. We still have a chance to get to that goal.

It’s been tough lately and I think part of the reason is that we haven’t been coming out to start the game with the right tempo. We have to take it upon ourselves to come out with the same focus and intensity that we had in the second half of the Bears game. I feel like that’s how we’re capable of playing, scoring 30 points in a half. We’re cheating ourselves if we’re not performing to the best of our ability.

Hopefully we’ll get that focus back. I still have confidence in my teammates and I know everyone in this locker room still has confidence in each other to do our jobs and get us right back on track.

We’re not going to take the Giants for granted just because they’re not going to the playoffs. That doesn’t mean they won’t come out with pride and give 110 percent. We have to come out focused and give our 110 percent because we know how much this game means to us. I feel like the Giants still have a really good defense with a solid line and physical linebackers and secondary. It’s not going to be a cakewalk and everyone on this team realizes that.

I just want to finish by saying thanks to all the fans that voted for me to go to the Pro Bowl. It means more to me than I can put into words. I appreciate the love and support.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

I’ve been doing a lot of community work and it’s something I really believe in. Yesterday I went with Visanthe Shiancoe to a Sports Authority, where they gave 15 underprivileged kids $300 each to shop in the store. I like taking time out of my schedule to hang out with the kids and take them around the store shopping.

I know what it’s like to not have the opportunity to get big presents for Christmas, so it felt good for me to be able to be there and support them.

This Sunday night at Carolina will be my first time playing back home since I’ve been in the NFL. Well it’s not exactly home but it’s about 25 minutes from Gaffney, South Carolina, where I grew up. I have to get about 70 tickets for this game. And you have to pay for all of them. At home you get two free tickets to every game, but if you want tickets on the road you have to pay for them yourself.

I’ll have a lot of friends and family at the game and it’s going to be great to get back home. A lot of people have been sending me texts trying to get tickets and a lot of people have been texting just to let me know how proud they are of me.

We know it’s going to be a tough game against Carolina. The Panthers have a real good secondary and linebacking corps and it’s not going to be easy for us. We have to go in with the right mindset, the right attitude and be ready to play Vikings football.

The Vikings haven’t won back-to-back division titles since 1978, so that would be great for us if we could wrap it up with a win this weekend. Back then they had the Purple People Eaters. I wasn’t born at the time but I know the history of the team and it feels great just to be mentioned in the same sentence with the great teams of the past. Those were the boys back in the day.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

Today I went on the Vikings Community Tour with Visanthe Shiancoe. We went to a YMCA in Austin, Minnesota, for the Play 60 for the NFL program. We’re trying to encourage kids to get a least 60 minutes of exercise every day. There were about 250 kids there. We set up some drills, went through some exercises, and at the end did pushups and ran 100s with the kids. It was pretty cool.

Another cool part was that we got to fly there on Zygi Wilf’s private jet. Zygi was there and we got to talk a bit. There were about five people on the plane. Zygi is a cool guy, very laid back. He loves what he does and he gets excited when we’re doing well, he gets all worked up. He’s been happy a lot this season.

Before the Seattle game, Brett was joking with me about not scoring enough touchdowns. He was talking about the Detroit game, when I had seven catches for 201 yards but no touchdowns. So I think he was happy to see me get into the end zone twice against Seattle.

Nothing really has changed for me since I started getting more catches. I’m just doing a lot more interviews. It’s pretty cool, but nothing different in my personal life. I’m still just the same old Sid.

This weekend we have the Bears at home. It’s going to be a tough game. We have to go in focused. I say the same thing every week, but it’s the truth. Their cornerback Charles Tillman forced three fumbles last game so we have to be ready and be at the top of our game.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

A win like the one we had against the Packers is huge. Everybody wants to go into the bye week with a win. We’re going to need that momentum when we get back to practice. Also you don’t want to see all your family and friends coming off a big loss, it’s not as fun.

No one looked past this game to getting time off for the bye. I feel everyone was focused on the task at hand, we went out and handled our business like professionals.

We all knew how much the game meant to Brett. We knew it would be an emotional game for him and we just wanted to let him know that we had his back and were ready to go to war with him. After the game he didn’t talk too much about it, that was just Brett being Brett, a true professional. But we knew he was excited to get the win.

Coach gave us off from Tuesday through Sunday, then back to practice on Monday. I’m going down to Miami for a couple days, then I’ll probably go back to South Carolina. It’s my first bye week off since my rookie year because last year I was injured and had to stay up here in the cold. So I’m looking to get in some warm weather. I know when I get back here it’s going to be real cold.

In South Carolina I’ll see my family and friends, but I’ll try not to do too much sitting around. I don’t want to come back and be winded when we start practice.

We’ll play the Lions in two weeks and they will be in the back of my mind the whole time. I’ll be thinking about things we did the last time we played them, but we won’t install the game plan until next week when we get back.

Halfway through the season I’m not thinking too much about how far we’ve come and what we’ve done. The main thing is to come back strong after the bye week. I’m hoping everyone comes back focused and with the same attitude we’re leaving with. There’s a real positive vibe, everybody is just feeling good not only about themselves but also about each other, knowing they can count on and depend on the other players on the team.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

Today we had meetings and the receivers and quarterbacks stayed for extra film, so everybody else got out before us. After I walked to the locker room and my phone rang.

It was Adrian calling.

I answered and he was like, “Hey, I left my other phone by the cold tub, could you grab it for me?” I said yeah. Then he asked if I could bring it over to his house and I said yeah, and he was like, “I know you will.”

We always talk junk to each other so I thought he was just playing. I think he said that because he thought I had already been outside to look for my car, but I hadn’t yet.

When I went into my locker I couldn’t find my key in the usual spot. I thought maybe I left it in the car this morning so I went out to the lot to find it. I parked right around the corner from the door, but when I walked out there, it was gone.

I wasn’t really worried because I knew it had to be someone from the team, because no one else can get into our parking lot. So I had someone drive me up to the staff lot to see if someone had moved it and left it there to play a joke. But it wasn’t up there, and I’m getting really mad at this point.

It’s cool to move my car, but to take my car and leave … my brand new Maserati? Not cool.

Then I remembered that when AP called he said I would be coming over to his house…

I called him and asked if he took my car. He was like, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I knew right then that he had it.

Part of the joke was that he hid his car key in my locker so I’d be able to drive over to his house and get my car back. I just got that car a couple of months ago, I guess he wanted to drive it.

It was pretty funny, but I’m definitely going to get him back. Adrian better be on his toes in the locker room.

I just got a Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com. Find him on Twitter @sidneyrice.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

Winning our first game feels great. We started out slow as an offense, but the coaches had a game plan and stuck with it. It’s our job as players to execute the game plan, and we were slacking off a little in the first half but things picked up in the second half.

Brett Favre has been in this game a long time, it’s his 19th season, so you have no choice but to trust a guy like that. He knows what’s going on on the field at all times. Even though he’s only been here 3 or 4 weeks we have total confidence in him.

During one drive, I can’t remember which one, but it was one of our long ones in the second half, Brett stepped up and showed his character as a true veteran quarterback. He was in the huddle motivating us. A lot of people in there were tired, but he was getting us up to the ball real quick and things like that. It was a side of him I hadn’t seen before. Our first game together, he really showed me what he had.

Then there was Adrian. That touchdown run was tremendous, it was a great run. But I can never truly be amazed with Adrian though, because with him – and with Brett as well – I expect the unexpected. When Adrian has a run like that, you’re like, wow, but at the same time you knew it was coming at some point.

I thought I did a pretty good job, it was unfortunate that they called me out of bounds on that one catch in the end zone, but it’s part of the game. I will continue to fight. I was out there blocking. The receivers got some praise in the team meeting for our blocking efforts out there.

I think as a first game, that will set the tone for the rest of the 2009 season.

Next up we have the Lions. I feel you can never underestimate anyone in this league, those guys work just as hard as we do to earn their paychecks every week. They’re not a team you can come in, not give 100 percent and expect to win. They’re not laying down for us. The game plan goes in tomorrow, and whatever it is, we have to get focused right away, get on the same page, understand what the plan is and come out victorious.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

I turned over a new leaf today. What a great day.

First of all, I worked out full speed without my knee brace for the first time in 10 months and felt no pain.

Second it was one of the toughest workouts I ever had.

As soon as I got there I had to listen to Cris Carter. He was giving me hell today. He tells you how he feels and what’s on his mind and he tries to motivate you as well. Today was his last day working out with us.

I partnered with Larry Fitzgerald through the whole workout and he stayed on me all day making sure I was doing everything right. Near the end we did acceleration drills and then we did four 300-yard shuttles. It was by far my hardest complete workout of the off-season.

I didn’t think I would make it through the whole thing. But I was running alongside Larry and he just kept talking to me, motivating me the whole way. After the second 300 I was hurting real bad, and when it came time for the third he said we had to make a better time than the last one. After that one I couldn’t feel my legs. I went down to the ground, gassed, and he was like, get up. He made me walk with him for active recovery, they call it.

I was going just on spirit after that. For the fourth one Cris jumped in next to me. I thought my legs were about to fall off but he pushed me through it and I was able to finish.

Larry is just a tremendous person. His family raised him well. It’s not just me he’s gone out of his way for, he does it for lots of players. I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to work with someone like that.

And for Cris Carter to take time out of his schedule to come out here and get on our tails every day giving us hell is a great thing, too. You’d have to be crazy not to listen to a guy who went to eight Pro Bowls in a row. After the workout he critiqued us on our routes. He pulled a couple of us off to the side and gave us a little motivational talk and showed us a lot of great techniques and told us what to expect while running a route.

It was tremendous. From now on I know how to work out. When I step out for a workout I give 110 percent. Even if I’m on all fours throwing up I’m gonna go hard and push through my workout.

I hope Larry and Cris know how much I appreciate it.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

I turned over a new leaf today. What a great day.

First of all, I worked out full speed without my knee brace for the first time in 10 months and felt no pain.

Second it was one of the toughest workouts I ever had.

As soon as I got there I had to listen to Cris Carter. He was giving me hell today. He tells you how he feels and what’s on his mind and he tries to motivate you as well. Today was his last day working out with us.

I partnered with Larry Fitzgerald through the whole workout and he stayed on me all day making sure I was doing everything right. Near the end we did acceleration drills and then we did four 300-yard shuttles. It was by far my hardest complete workout of the off-season.

I didn’t think I would make it through the whole thing. But I was running alongside Larry and he just kept talking to me, motivating me the whole way. After the second 300 I was hurting real bad, and when it came time for the third he said we had to make a better time than the last one. After that one I couldn’t feel my legs. I went down to the ground, gassed, and he was like, get up. He made me walk with him for active recovery, they call it.

I was going just on spirit after that. For the fourth one Cris jumped in next to me. I thought my legs were about to fall off but he pushed me through it and I was able to finish.

Larry is just a tremendous person. His family raised him well. It’s not just me he’s gone out of his way for, he does it for lots of players. I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to work with someone like that.

And for Cris Carter to take time out of his schedule to come out here and get on our tails every day giving us hell is a great thing, too. You’d have to be crazy not to listen to a guy who went to eight Pro Bowls in a row. After the workout he critiqued us on our routes. He pulled a couple of us off to the side and gave us a little motivational talk and showed us a lot of great techniques and told us what to expect while running a route.

It was tremendous. From now on I know how to work out. When I step out for a workout I give 110 percent. Even if I’m on all fours throwing up I’m gonna go hard and push through my workout.

I hope Larry and Cris know how much I appreciate it.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.

OTAs are over and we don’t report for training camp until July 29. That gives me a chance to get into great shape before we start two-a-days.

I’ll probably really start working out in the next week or so and I’m going to hit it hard. I know what the team expects from me and what I expect from myself. That is to produce. They brought me in to make big plays and I feel like I’m capable of doing that. I feel a lot more comfortable with myself when I’m out on the field.

I just need to stay healthy and stay on the field.

I’ll be doing a lot of cardio and a little lifting to keep my body toned. I’ll be doing some rehab stuff and strengthening the areas that I think need it so I’m fine tuned.

For training camp I want my weight to be around 207-209 pounds and I need to be able to run all day like a wideout is supposed to.

For me it’s not all about speed. We have a lot of fast guys on the team and I’m definitely not the fastest. It’s all about coming out of my cuts sharp, making plays on the ball and using my body and my height.

I’m not quite sure where I’ll be working out this week, I’m going to figure it out in the next couple of days. Just know I’ll be working.

Sidney Rice is a wide receiver with the Minnesota Vikings. His blog for www.playerpress.com runs at www.sidneyrice18.com
Find him on Twitter as sidneyrice.