NFL 100: At No. 39, Ed Reed was every quarterbacks No. 1 concern

Welcome to the NFL 100, The Athletic’s endeavor to identify the 100 best players in football history. You can order the book version here. Every day until the season begins, we’ll unveil new members of the list, with the No. 1 player to be crowned on Wednesday, Sept. 8.

Ed Reed defined the free in free safety.

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During his 12-year Hall of Fame career, Reed was known as a wandering genius, a master at gridiron subterfuge, routinely freelancing before the snap to confuse the enemy and frustrate opposing quarterbacks. He was rarely where opponents expected him to be. At times, he would align in spots that even surprised his own teammates and coaches.

It was all by design, part of the chess game Reed orchestrated from the center field of the dominant Baltimore Ravens defenses in the 2000s.

“You could never be sure where he was going to be, and I say that in a good way,” said John Harbaugh, who served as Reed’s head coach for five of Reed’s 11 seasons in Baltimore. “It wasn’t like he was back there guessing and taking chances, because you’d take advantage of that and a pattern would probably occur. But Ed knew what he was doing and why he was doing it.”

Wherever Reed aligned, opposing quarterbacks were sure to note it. Locating No. 20, the most dangerous playmaker in the Ravens secondary, was a pre-snap priority. He was the rare defender capable of changing a game with an impact, momentum-turning play. And his infectious swagger and keen instincts emboldened his teammates, inspiring them to another level of execution.

“Ed Reed was one of those guys that you had to know where he was as a quarterback because he was such a ballhawk safety and had such great fielding instincts,” former New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees said. “Balls that you could throw and fit in against everybody else, that just wasn’t going to happen against Ed Reed unless he was way out of the picture.”

During a behind-the-scenes look at the Patriots years ago, NFL Films cameras captured quarterback Tom Brady and Belichick studying the Ravens defense before a matchup with Baltimore. When Reed’s image popped on the video screen, Brady told his coach, “Every time you break the huddle, that’s who you’re looking at.”

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In the 2011 AFC Championship Game, network television cameras caught an image of Brady’s left wristband with a telling reminder scribbled under the play list: “Find (No.) 20 on every play.”

“He’s pretty much ingrained permanently in my mind,” Brady said later when asked about the message.

There was good reason for Brady and Brees’ obsession.

Reed, along with Paul Krause and Ronnie Lott before him, is considered one of the greatest ballhawks in league history. His rare combination of intellect, athleticism, instincts and daring helped re-define the safety position. His 64 career interceptions rank seventh in NFL history, and he holds the league record for total interception return yards with 1,590. He also had nine postseason interceptions, tying the NFL record shared by Lott, Bill Simpson and Charlie Waters.

NFL Int. Return Yardage Leaders

Reed set an NFL record for the longest interception return for a touchdown with a 106-yard score in 2004 and eclipsed it with a return of 107 yards in 2008.

Reed also blocked four punts in his career, returning an NFL-record three for touchdowns. He was so dominant on special teams that Patriots coach Bill Belichick said he would have never taken him off the punt return/block team if he’d been his coach.

“Shoot, you can kind of go on and on: unbelievable ball skills, unbelievable range, great hands, great range,” former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning said. “You could tell what kind of athlete he was because of what he did once he’s got the ball in his hands, returning them for touchdowns. He was such a smart player, too.”

A play Reed made against Manning in 2009 was a prime example of Reed’s extraordinary moxie. On second-and-10 from the Ravens’ 40, he baited Manning into an ill-advised pass to Reggie Wayne, who ran a go route on the weak side of the formation. On the snap of the ball, Reed abandoned his pre-snap alignment on the weak side, intentionally opened his hips and turned his back to Wayne’s side of the field as he retreated in coverage toward the middle of the field. Then, as Manning began to uncork his pass to Wayne, Reed wheeled around with his back to the offense and outsprinted Wayne to the ball for the interception.

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Reed knew the entire time where the ball was going. Through his film study, he knew that Manning’s primary read on the play was the free safety, so Reed knew he needed to be one step ahead of Manning to fool him. He also knew Manning habitually followed up a pump fake with a pass in the same direction.

“Reed knew that when he went to the middle of the field, Peyton would come back to the X, so he ran to the middle of the field, and without even looking at the quarterback, turned and ran back over to the sideline and intercepted it,” Belichick said years later. “Best play I’ve ever seen a free safety make. One of the greatest plays I have seen in the NFL.”

It was not the way the Ravens defense drew it up, but Reed was allowed to improvise because coaches and teammates knew they could trust him to make plays and not compromise the rest of the defense. More often not, Reed delivered, because the risks he was taking were calculated and informed by hours of film study.

“Ed did some unique things that kind of changed the safety position,” former Ravens defensive backs coach Bennie Thompson told The Baltimore Sun in 2015 . “Ed would play on instinct. He knew the game so well and studied so much film, he knew what the other team was going to do.”

Reed led the NFL interceptions in 2004, 2009 and 2010. His 139 passes defensed ranks second among safeties in NFL history.

“I’ve seen him pick off a slant on the opposite side of the field when he was playing as a Cover 2 safety and take it to the house,” said former Ravens cornerback Lardarius Webb, who teamed with Reed for four seasons in Baltimore. “He’d do things that seemed unorthodox, but he trusted what he studied.”

Reed was just as unconventional off the field as he was on it. He listened to old-school R&B, was fond of wearing a fedora and occasionally dozed off during meetings. At times, he could be prickly and guarded with teammates and reporters who covered the team.

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When Jim Leonhard first arrived in Baltimore in 2008, he was taken aback at Reed’s seemingly nonchalant attitude toward position meetings. Then he learned about Reed’s intense late-night film sessions at home, saw how they translated to the playing field and never questioned his teammate again.

“He had his process,” said Leonhard, who today calls Reed “the smartest football player I’ve been around.”

Reed’s knack for playmaking also showed in his penchant for stripping ball carriers of the football. He forced 11 fumbles and recovered 13, returning two for touchdowns.

An amazing seven of Reed’s 13 touchdowns were on returns of 30 or more yards. The Ravens were 12-2 in the games in which he scored a touchdown. He remains the only player in NFL history to score return touchdowns via interception, fumble, punt and blocked punt.

“Football was in my blood,” Reed said. “I was born to play football. I studied and prepared so we could be our best. I just wanted to be a great football player for my teammates. My philosophy was simple: I was trying to score when I got the football in my hands.”

Reed developed this mindset on the playing fields of his neighborhood in St. Rose, La., about 30 minutes north of New Orleans. His father, Ed Sr., and older brother Wendell Sanchez, introduced Reed to sports at an early age and regularly took him to a nearby park to compete in whatever sport was in season. Reed said he learned his ball-tracking skills as an outfielder in Little League baseball. He adopted his scoring mentality as a youth-league quarterback and standout guard in basketball.

He was a do-it-all performer for the Destrehan High School football team, playing quarterback, running back, defensive back, kick returner and punter. Fellow St. Rose native Curtis Johnson, now an assistant with the New Orleans Saints, said he once saw Reed play fullback, quarterback and defensive back in the same game.

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Johnson recruited Reed to the University of Miami in 1997 because of his all-around athleticism. At the time Reed only ran a 4.6 40-yard dash, which scared off some of the elite programs in the SEC, but he was a standout long jumper and a state finalist in the javelin. He signed a track scholarship with Miami because the probation-idled Hurricanes were only allowed 15 scholarships.

“Ed was a tremendous athlete,” Johnson said. “We didn’t know what we had when we signed him. He turned out to be our Michael Jordan.”

Reed blossomed into an All-American at Miami and helped lead the Hurricanes to the 2001 national title. His 21 career interceptions and 389 interception return yards are still school records there.

The Ravens took him with the No. 24 pick in the 2002 draft, but only after a handful of their preferred targets were off the board. Owner Steve Bisciotti famously wanted to select Florida cornerback Lito Sheppard instead but ultimately yielded to general manager Ozzie Newsome’s wishes.

Reed proved to be the best player in the entire draft. In Baltimore, he teamed with defensive stars like Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, Jimmy Smith and Chris McAlister to form one of the most dominant units of the era. During Reed’s 11-year tenure, the Ravens won four AFC North Division titles and the franchise’s second Super Bowl, a 34-31 upset of the San Francisco 49ers in New Orleans.

During his tenure with the Ravens, Reed was selected to nine Pro Bowls and earned All-Pro honors five times. In 2004, he became the first safety in two decades to be named the NFL Defensive Player of the Year. Dick Anderson, Kenny Easley, Bob Sanders and Troy Polamalu are the only other safeties to win the award. Reed was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019.

“Ed Reed is the best safety in the history of the game,” former Ravens defensive coordinator Rex Ryan said. “And I don’t think it’s close.”

(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; photo: Rob Tringali / Sportschrome via Getty Images)

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