The Seattle Seahawks faced not one, but two former defensive stars this season.
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The return to Seattle of longtime All-Pro linebacker Bobby Wagner, a future Hall of Famer, obviously made a lot of headlines, but the Seahawks also brought back defensive tackle Jarran Reed after he spent the last two seasons in Kansas City and Green Bay had.
Reed, a 2016 second-round pick, spent the first five years of his career in Seattle. His best season came in 2018 when he had 10.5 sacks.
Now, Reed is back as part of a major overhaul of the Seahawks’ offseason defensive line.
“Man, it’s like a breath of fresh air,” Reed told Mike Salk during Friday’s Brock and Salk on Seattle Sports. “I can go back to where it all began and hopefully hunt down one of those rings. That’s the dream, especially to win it where you started. But it is a goal I want to achieve.”
When asked how his return to the Pacific Northwest came about, Reed replied “of course” that he had mentioned to his agent earlier in the season break that he would like to return to the Seahawks and that he knew Seattle and other teams needed help defending .
“We were just weighing all our options. And of course, of all the options, Seahawks was at the top of my list,” he said. “It was how I wanted it to be and we were able to make it happen.”
So what did Reed learn while he was in Kansas City and Green Bay?
“That (chiefs head coach) Andy Reid is one of the greatest coaches to ever coach this game and he’s old fashioned, very old fashioned,” he said. “And indeed, Green Bay was similar to what was preached, the philosophies of the team, the meetings and just the competition.”
Reed said “everything” about what he learned from Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll during his years in Seattle.
“How to practice, how to practice fast, how to believe in yourself, how to compete, how to be relentless, how to never give up, how to always keep hope,” he said. “Because when you play games, sometimes when you play games you think it’s only going one way and you never know how it’s going to end. You always have to believe in it and compete. That’s so true. You know, you have to keep going because you never know what’s going to happen at any moment, with every loss, with every play, with every game.”
Salk asked Reed what was different about him now than when he left Seattle after the 2020 season.
“I was pretty young when I left. So when I went to Kansas City, I had to learn a whole new style of coaching, a style of football, from my position coaches and from the defense coordinator. Everything was different. I had to learn differently and play the way they wanted me to,” Reed said. “And when I took that and went to Green Bay, I kind of got hooked back into what I was taught before. Putting all of that together and putting it all together, I think now that I’m coming here I’m a better all-around player. The game has slowed down tremendously for me and I’m just trying to do the best I can be for the Seahawks and go out there and hopefully play my best.”
Reed’s thoughts on the Seattle Seahawks rookies
The Seahawks have ten picks in this year’s draft, and similar to last year, the team’s drafting class has been praised by various analysts. Count Reed as a fan based on what he’s seen so far.
“This group of people that I’ve seen, they’re ready to work. They listen, they don’t complain, they put on their hard hats and come here every day, ready to work,” he said. “Actually, I like his group very much, because they have fire and flames within them. And once you tell them something, they will come back and try to fix it. And you can tell that they are putting the emphasis on what we want to convey to them.”
Two of Seattle’s rookies will play alongside Reed in fourth-round nose tackle Cameron Young and fifth-round defensive end Mike Morris. Reed offered some thoughts on these two during the interview with Salk.
“I’m going to make sure I listen to him and try to give him every piece of knowledge I can give him with everything I’ve learned,” Reed said of Young. “I don’t want to hold anything back. I want boys to be great. We all need these guys stepping up and playing this year and I just want to make sure he’s ready to give any type of help he needs, whether it’s positioning his hands or stepping out his hip strides, whatever whatever it may be, like reading the offense, seeing what’s going on, pre-snap buttons, gamertag, things like that.”
Regarding Morris, Reed said he thinks the Michigan product “is going to be really good.”
“I really like Mike … You can tell he got a good workout out of college,” Reed said. “Everyone taught differently in college and there are so many different coaching staffs, but he’s ready to play. I think he still has a long way to go but it’s really minimal what he has to do. His (growth) will be more mental than anything.”
Listen to the full interview with Reed at this link or in the player below.
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