Inside Ed Reed’s Journey from Helmet to Headset

It’s normal when you’re young to wistfully consider the possibilities ahead and what paths your career could dart down. Ed Reed did that one day long ago.

He was still a student-athlete at the University of Miami. Of course, Reed wasn’t your standard student or your standard athlete. He was named an All-American during his final two collegiate seasons, the last of which ended with a national championship (2001).

He recorded 21 interceptions over four seasons in Miami and was cruising toward becoming a first-round pick. But as passionate as Reed was on the field, he already found himself looking ahead to a role that suited his high level of football intelligence and natural leadership abilities.

So he had a question for Randy Shannon, the Hurricanes defensive coordinator at the time. A question that doubled as a job-feeler.

“Ed and I were talking, and he said, ‘One day I want to come back and coach,’” Shannon told Bleacher Report. “‘When I’m done playing in the NFL, I want to come back and coach. Would you hire me?’”

Even then Shannon didn’t need much time to let the question roll around in his mind or talk it over.

“Yeah, I’d hire you,” was the response that came without hesitation.

Shannon didn’t get to him before Rex Ryan, the Buffalo Bills head coach who hired Reed in January to be his new assistant defensive backs coach.

Reed wasn’t just daydreaming or making idle conversation with Shannon on that day 15 years ago. Even if he didn’t know it then, the Louisiana native was always preparing for coaching after his playing days ended.

The brilliance you watched from Reed every week throughout a nine-time Pro Bowl career wasn’t purely the product of physical gifts. Far more often, it was the result of intense tape study to further expand his advanced football mind. Even early on with the Hurricanes, he was already eager to share that intelligence while becoming a teacher and that extra coach on the field.

“Sometimes I would give him the game plan of what we’re going to do on a Monday, before a Tuesday practice,” Shannon said. “He’d go over it with the rest of the defense so then when we came out in practice the Tuesday, it would run crisp.”

Reed’s inner coach was always there, and now he has a chance to bring that part of his football personality out while going from on-field legend to off-field mentor and teacher.

Ryan hired Reed less than a year after the Super Bowl XLVII champion officially ended his playing career. The connection made sense, as Ryan coached Reed twice. The first meeting came when Ryan was the Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator. Then the two hooked up again when Reed wound down his career with the New York Jets, where Ryan was the head coach.

The path Reed has chosen—or rather, the one he had in mind many years ago—is a common one for the recently retired player who isn’t done with football. Reed only needs to look at the Bills defensive backs coach he’s now assisting in Buffalo for a fine example. Tim McDonald played 13 NFL seasons and was a Pro Bowler in six of them.

What’s unique about Reed, however, is his status as a surefire Hall of Famer. It’s not a stretch to call him one of the best in NFL history to ever play his position—or even the best. And now just two seasons removed from his final snap—and three from winning the Super Bowl in Baltimore—Reed is already transitioning into a coaching role even before a replica of his face is in Canton.

That makes him a case study for how difficult that career move can be.

The NFL was only granted one Ed Reed and one safety who saw the field as he did. So how will he learn to speak with players who are over a decade younger and aren’t nearly on his level? How will he adapt to different learning styles? Can he take the deep knowledge hovering in his mind after 12 pro seasons and become an effective communicator without being in the trenches?

Answering those questions about what Reed will become requires first getting a deeper understanding of what he was. Let’s start in the film room, where player and coach will be intertwined.

       

Ed Reed the film mastermind

Reed sat down with Bills safety Aaron Williams for the first time earlier this offseason. Their meeting took place before OTAs and before Reed had set foot on a field for the first time as a coach.

He may have been speaking to Williams in his new coaching role for the first time, but the two had met in another setting where Reed does his finest work: the film room.

“He told me he watched some film on me, and there are definitely a lot of things I need to work on,” said Williams, who missed 13 games in 2015 due to a neck injury. “He said there were a lot of plays I made that could have been a pick-six, and there are certain techniques or certain reads that I’m not doing or seeing. He’s really helped me out so far in just the hour we’ve spent together.”

Reed needed only one hour to start making a difference with Williams, but the hours he invested into developing his football mind can’t possibly be counted.

As a coach now, his value goes beyond experience and the sheer talent from when he played, though both carry weight. His value lies in the amount of football he’s digested through rigorous study and his ability to apply that knowledge on Sundays.

“I can’t tell you how pumped I am about this year to even just be in the film room with him,” Williams said. “Forget practice. Just to be in the film room and pick at his intelligence is going to be phenomenal.”

You, the viewer at home, may have watched Reed make plays he had no business being in position for and assumed he was mostly relying on instinct or even freelancing at times. But it was learned instinct that Reed sharpened through relentless preparation.

On game day, you saw his physical talent. His teammates saw a week of work come to life.

“Man, all of them,” was cornerback Lardarius Webb’s answer when asked how many of Reed’s plays were the direct result of his film study.

Reed wasn’t just improvising. He relied on tape study and his football intellect to make informed, calculated risks that usually paid off.

But can he take how he sees the game and use that vision to teach his new football students? Or will he struggle to bridge the gap between what he sees and what others can’t see because they’re not Ed Reed?

“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,” Webb added, reminding us again that everyone else finds themselves playing and watching a different game. “He’d do things that seemed unorthodox, but he trusted what he studied. It’s as though he saw the offense do something 100 times in that situation already, and 95 percent of the time he was …

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