Given up on by 49ers, determined, decisive D.J. Reed is earning Seahawks’ cornerback job
How good has D.J. Reed been for Seattle, pretty much out of nowhere?
Reed’s been a revelation.
Pete Carroll is even likening him to Seahawks royalty.
“He is one of the guys (who) reminds me of Doug Baldwin,” Seattle’s coach said on his weekly radio show on Seattle’s KIRO-AM Monday.
Whoa.
Baldwin, the beloved wide receiver, was notorious for playing angry his entire, self-made, Pro Bowl and Super Bowl-champion career until his retirement following the 2018 season. He was—probably still is—ticked no one in the NFL drafted him out of Stanford in 2011.
Carrying a chip? Baldwin, and now Reed, have one the size of Mount Rainier.
“Just plays with this marvelous attitude that drives just crazy stuff, just craziness,” Carroll said of Reed at left cornerback, nickel, safety and punt returner the last seven weeks.
“He’s got it,” Carroll of an edge. “I’m kind of happy to know that he knows it.”
Oh, yes, Reed knows it.
This summer the 24-year-old was a reserve safety with the San Francisco 49ers. He tore his pectoral muscle. Reed says Niners general manager John Lynch told him the team’s medical staff determined he wasn’t going to be healthy enough to play this season. In August San Francisco waived Reed with an injury designation, intending to put him on injured reserve.
Seattle general manager John Schneider blocked their division rival’s plans. The Seahawks claimed Reed. It was a layaway deal. They knew Reed wouldn’t be able to play for at least a couple months.
They were taking a flier on a young, fast safety. If nothing else, Reed could perhaps help Seattle down the road, at least on special teams.
Plus, Carroll loves to cultivate guys who have been slighted or told no elsewhere. He’s going to the playoffs for the eighth time in nine years next month with bushels of those guys.
“This is John Schneider working his magic,” Carroll said. “I can’t tell you enough. John has done this so many times.
“He realized that there was going to be a big loop in there where we wouldn’t have him available. We could take him off their roster and put him on our roster and wait it out with the thought that if we needed him down the stretch he would be available as a nickel, and potentially other places.
“Instead of, ‘I need a guy right now and I can’t bet on a guy that is going to have to sit for two months,’ he’s done it again.”
In September, nickel defensive back Marquise Blair went out for the year with a knee injury. Second nickel Ugo Amadi hurt his hamstring in October. That was about the time Reed healed enough to be ready to play.
Reed was cleared to the active roster Oct. 31. He debuted the next day for Seattle as the nickel back—against the 49ers.
Yes, Reed was smiling about his new team beating his old one. The game was 30-7 in the fourth quarter. It ended 37-27.
Since then, Reed has been a brash, aggressive star in a Seahawks pass defense that before he started playing in it had given up the most yards in NFL history through the season’s first two months.
How much does what the Niners told Reed motivate him?
Reed flexed his right arm and pantomimed putting a weight onto his back.
“Man, chip on my shoulder. Forever. For real,” he said after his latest, wowing performance last weekend in Seattle’s win at Washington. “It’s heavy.
“I came into this game pretty angry, pissed off. Just because, you know what I’m sayin’?
“I knew they were going try me; I was guarding 17 (Washington leading receiver Terry McLaurin), so a lot of people, I felt like, had nervous energy. I came in the game with that chip on my shoulder, and I just let it out. Talkin’, all that.
“I was having fun out there.”
And not just at Washington. His last seven weeks have been a blast.
“He’s a really, really explosively quick athlete,” Carroll said, “with really good instincts.
“It adds up to, he is all over everybody he’s playing now.
“He’s just an all-around football player. He just happens to be, you know, 183 pounds.”
Carroll shrugged.
Reed is breaking the coach’s Richard Sherman-Brandon Browner-Quinton Dunbar-Tre Flowers prototype for a Seahawks cornerback. He’s not tall. He’s not rugged with the seemingly required 32-inch arms (Reed’s are 31 5/8 inches, as measured at the 2018 NFL combine).
“No problem with me,” he said. “I love the way he plays.”
The former defensive back, defensive backs coach and defensive coordinator said Reed had “a beatiful game” at Washington.
He broke up three passes. And Carroll particular loved Reed’s interception in the third quarter of Dwayne Haskins— not just for Seattle snaring another turnover.
It was a play reminiscent of another Seahawks Super Bowl-winning legend: Sherman.
Reed was turning to run with the deep post route from McLaurin from outside left. But then Reed saw Washington’s Cam Sims running a crossing route, in front of him and McLaurin. Sims was in the clear because Amadi, playing inside as the nickel, had hesitated on Haskins’ play-action fake. He missed getting back deep enough in zone coverage where Sims was running.
Reed recognized Amadi was out of position and Sims was about make a catch for a 20-yard gain. So Reed passed off his man, McLaurin, for safety Quandre Diggs to take on the deeper post, and Reed jumped up onto Sims’ crosser. Haskins never expected that. Reed reached to his right and snared Haskins’ pass just before Sims ran into it.
It was the kind of all-field-awareness play Sherman did to become the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history with a new $56 million contract with Seattle in 2014 following its Super Bowl win.
He made another one in the first quarter last weekend. The Seahawks were in a two-deep, zone coverage with Diggs and fellow safety Jamal Adams responsible for deep halves of the field and Reed with fellow cornerback Shaquill Griffin on short zones outside. Reed was covering running back J.D. McKissic’s 5-yard stop route. Haskins extended the play with good protection. McKissic turned his pattern into a go down the left sideline. It’s a route that can beat two-deep zones if thrown before the safety can get over.
There was no Seahawks safety in the same area code as McKissic when Haskins threw the pass to him. Reed was fast enough to recognize that, leave his zone and make up the distance McKissic had put between them with his stop-and-go route. As Haskins’ throw arrived, Reed dived at McKissic and knocked the ball away to prevent what may have become a touchdown for Washington.
Reed then stood over the stunned, fallen McKissic and pumped his fist at him. Then he extended his hand to help the former Seahawk get up. Angry, McKissic refused the offer. So Reed comically grabbed his extended hand with his other one and pretended to help—himself. His Seahawks teammates on the sideline a few yards away cracked up at that.
“That’s a heck of a play,” Carroll said. “He saved us a little bit there.”
He’s been saving them for more than a month.
After Dunbar’s chronically pained knee gave out during the Seahawks’ loss at Buffalo last month, Reed replaced Dunbar as the starting left cornerback. That was for the following week’s game at the Rams.
Reed has wowed Carroll and the Seahawks for how decisive he is. He runs, fast, in straight lines with conviction. He’s single-handedly added life to Seattle’s punt returns while replacing hesitant David Moore in recent weeks. Reed runs straight into and sometimes through punt-coverage defenders, four and five of them, doesn’t matter, whether he gets blocking or not.
This week he’ll make his sixth NFL start the last two years, all since Nov. 8. It will be at cornerback against the Rams again. A Seahawks win Sunday means they—and the guy whom the 49ers said wouldn’t play this year—win the NFC West.
“Being 5 (feet) 9, it’s a statement for me. Because corners that are 5-9 are not corners anymore,” Reed said. “They play the slot (as a corner).
“So every time I play outside I feel like I’ve got to make a statement.”
He’s been so good there when Dunbar and Flowers come off injured reserve in the next couple weeks, Reed has earned the right to stay as the left cornerback.
“This was as good a game as a corner has played in a while for us,” Carroll said after the Washington game last weekend.
“And he deserves to keep playing.”
