Gold Jacket Spotlight: Ed Reed made plays 'most safeties can’t do'
Gold Jacket Spotlight
Published on : 3/10/2025
During the Week 7 game between the Baltimore Ravens and Tampa Buccaneers this past season, PEYTON MANNING on the “ManningCast” of “Monday Night Football” described one of his career interceptions as it played in flashback during the broadcast.
His description of what went wrong on the play was simple: “Most safeties can’t do that.”
Leading up to a matchup in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, coach Bill Belichick was quoted as saying, “He just does things that nobody else at that position does, or I don’t know if they have ever done it. He is special. He is really special.”
Manning and Belichick were praising Hall of Famer ED REED, whose special ability to change a game with one big play is the focus of this week’s Gold Jacket Spotlight.
When many football fans hear Ed’s name, they think of his skills as a free safety. They remember the game-changing interceptions and the long returns that almost always seemed to follow.
Belichick has seen a lot of football, racking up 302 wins and six Super Bowl championships as a coach in the National Football League. Once while mic’d up by NFL Films, he told Ed before a game, “You’re the best free safety that has ever played this game that I’ve seen.”
Being labeled as the best free safety in football history by a legendary coach is noteworthy. Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger are all quarterbacks who were victims of throwing an interception to Ed during their careers.
“Ed was one of those guys who was so incredibly special. He was smart, athletic. Sometimes you get a guy who is either really athletic or really smart,” Roethlisberger said in an interview with ESPN. “It’s not too often you meet a guy who has both. Ed was one of those guys who literally had it all."
Social media has been abuzz this past year over a Twitch streamer and YouTuber who caught the attention of the NFL to the point the league used one of his more iconic lines as a caption for an Instagram post: “Special teams, special plays, special players.”
Special teams can be an often-overlooked component of the game. It is where coaches seek to find “hidden yardage” to win the field position battle and game-changing momentum that can swing on one big play. Early in Ed’s career, he introduced himself to the football world with these special plays.
“The greatest punt blocker that I ever coached against,” is how Belichick described Ed on The CW Network’s “Inside the NFL.” During the first two years of Ed’s career, he totaled four blocked punts. And if blocking the punt was not special enough, three times he picked up the ball and returned it for a touchdown.
These types of plays put fear into the minds of opponents.
When his time striking fear into opposing coaches and players was over on the field, Ed continued to make an impact off the field through The Ed Reed Foundation.
Whether he is feeding families in Baltimore through Reed Feeds or by providing the REED House as a safe space for Baltimore-area youth to find daily programming during out-of-school time, Ed continues to make special plays.
His description of what went wrong on the play was simple: “Most safeties can’t do that.”
Leading up to a matchup in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, coach Bill Belichick was quoted as saying, “He just does things that nobody else at that position does, or I don’t know if they have ever done it. He is special. He is really special.”
Manning and Belichick were praising Hall of Famer ED REED, whose special ability to change a game with one big play is the focus of this week’s Gold Jacket Spotlight.
When many football fans hear Ed’s name, they think of his skills as a free safety. They remember the game-changing interceptions and the long returns that almost always seemed to follow.
Belichick has seen a lot of football, racking up 302 wins and six Super Bowl championships as a coach in the National Football League. Once while mic’d up by NFL Films, he told Ed before a game, “You’re the best free safety that has ever played this game that I’ve seen.”
Being labeled as the best free safety in football history by a legendary coach is noteworthy. Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger are all quarterbacks who were victims of throwing an interception to Ed during their careers.
“Ed was one of those guys who was so incredibly special. He was smart, athletic. Sometimes you get a guy who is either really athletic or really smart,” Roethlisberger said in an interview with ESPN. “It’s not too often you meet a guy who has both. Ed was one of those guys who literally had it all."
Social media has been abuzz this past year over a Twitch streamer and YouTuber who caught the attention of the NFL to the point the league used one of his more iconic lines as a caption for an Instagram post: “Special teams, special plays, special players.”
Special teams can be an often-overlooked component of the game. It is where coaches seek to find “hidden yardage” to win the field position battle and game-changing momentum that can swing on one big play. Early in Ed’s career, he introduced himself to the football world with these special plays.
“The greatest punt blocker that I ever coached against,” is how Belichick described Ed on The CW Network’s “Inside the NFL.” During the first two years of Ed’s career, he totaled four blocked punts. And if blocking the punt was not special enough, three times he picked up the ball and returned it for a touchdown.
These types of plays put fear into the minds of opponents.
When his time striking fear into opposing coaches and players was over on the field, Ed continued to make an impact off the field through The Ed Reed Foundation.
Whether he is feeding families in Baltimore through Reed Feeds or by providing the REED House as a safe space for Baltimore-area youth to find daily programming during out-of-school time, Ed continues to make special plays.
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