Kevin Van Valkenburg · @KVanValkenburg
30th Jan 2013 from Twitlonger
Ed Reed follow up: If you're interested in a more technical breakdown of what makes Reed great, read this...
If you've ready any of my stories before, you can probably tell football fascinates me on many different levels. There are human elements to it, but also strategic and technical aspects to it that I find mesmerizing. Yesterday in my profile of Ravens safety Ed Reed, I tried to touch on both aspects, including why Reed's leadership has been underrated over the years. But there is a very analytical side to Reed that I could only scratch the surface of (the piece was long enough already), and if you're interested in it, this outtake from an interview where I asked former Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth to help explain what makes Reed different from every other player might be worth your time.
Here is Foxworth:
He’s not all that fast, but somehow you’ll ask any quarterback in the league and it seems like he can get from numbers to numbers faster than anybody. It’s not because he’s faster or quicker than all these young kids coming in or that he runs a 4.1. He never was even a 4.3 guy.
But he puts a bunch of info into his computer brain. Now, we all do the same thing [as NFL players]. We throw a lot of information in to our brains, and it’s one of the remarkable things that doesn’t get touted as much. We all throw things in there, and we make decisions based on it within that three second play. The difference between Ed and other people is Ed puts in more, he studies more, he can recall that information and react to that information faster than anybody else.
He’ll watch film all week long, a couple hundred plays, and dozens of formations. But he can understand the way teams will subtly change things up. They’ll do different formations for different plays, but the formations are potentially similar. So for example, maybe they’ll run a deep pass with quarterback in shotgun with two backs in the backfield and three wide receivers. So later in the year, they’ll line up in a similar position, but they'll put a tight end in for one of the backs and put the quarterback under center, but the wide receiver split is what’s unique.
While that formation looks entirely different, Ed can still recognize immediately that it’s similar. They can still have the same max protection that they would have from two backs in the backfield, they’re trying to make it look like they don’t. The quarterback is under center so you don’t think they’re going to do the same deep pass, but the split is the same, the down and distance is very similar to the last time they ran this play, and the field position is similar.
Those type of mental leaps are things that it would require someone like me to sit down and think about it. After they run the play, you’ll sit down and think about it and say “Oh damn!” This is exactly what they did before, they just moved this running back out and moved a tight end up, but everything else is exactly the same. I think Ed makes those type of correlations in game really quickly.
Everything you put in — computer like is the best way of saying it — he can recall. We can’t all recall everything, or transform it and manipulate it so it covers a broader field. A lot of us would have to see the exact same formation, all the exact same conditions, but he’s able to realize what the offense is trying to do, understand the game situation, and make those leaps. Because those opportunities don’t come back. They’re not going to run that play again in the game. Somebody like me, or an average safety or an average linebacker would see it and say “Oh damn, next time I’ll be ready for it." Well, it’s too late. If they completed a first down that led to a scoring drive or if they threw a touchdown, it's over. That might decide the game.
Ed's that special. He doesn’t need to see it after the fact. He understands what we’re trying to do, and what the offense is trying to do. He does that every week. He really is intent on setting guys up and outthinking them. What makes him good he thinks and plays like a quarterback. It’s not in the same way where if I’m a corner, I'm focused on: What play should I expect? I think he thinks like a quarterback and a coordinator. He says 'OK, if I see this, what do I want to do?'
I think often times, it used to drive me crazy and it still drives corners crazy is Ed does unpredictable stuff. And it drives you nuts. You think, why would you leave the middle wide open? We have one deep safety, and that's you. And sometimes it will bite us in the a--. But what I learned when I put in the effort to watch film with him and talk to him is it wasn’t completely unexpected. It was based on experience.
If they show single-high [a lone wide receiver split wide to one side of the field] and they throw to the single receiver side every time, it's is a good read by them, because you’ve got man-to-man coverage over there. If you run a backside slant it should be open. Well, if it’s 3rd-and-1, and we get out of our disguise early we end up seeing single safety high, in Ed’s mind, he’s the quarterback. He’s thinking 3rd and 3, I got a single safety, I’ve got a backside slant wide open. He might jump that because if he were the quarterback, that's his read. It helped me to understand that his decision to abandon the defense weren’t just "We need a play, so I’m going to roll the dice." They’re completely calculated, and to some degree, they’re pretty predictable. As predictable as the quarterback was.
If they run the same genre of play a number of times, Ed is going to leave that space open. I think Ed’s gotten better of communicating that to the other guys when they’re going to lose their help. He views the game from what I see as a quarterback or a coordinator and then at the last second, switches back to playing safety.
What I’d hate if I was a quarterback if "This guy is not where he’s supposed to be, where I know he’s supposed to be." People wonder how quarterbacks can’t stay away from him. If you know he’s going to get picks, why don’t you avoid throwing where he is? Well, it’s because he’s where he’s not supposed to be. He knows they know he’s supposed to be a certain place, so he’s like the heck with it, I’m going somewhere else. I’m going where they don’t think I’m going to be. That’s the only way he could get as many interceptions as he does because quarterbacks are terrified of him. They don’t want to throw it anywhere near him. So he goes to them.
I think he goes over the quarterbacks head sometimes. I think it’s him and the coordinators sometimes. That's the chess match. I think if it’s Peyton or Brady they have a lot of autonomy in their thinking, but a lot of the quarterbacks around the league are robots. That’s why Ed eats them alive because he knows exactly what they’re going to do. The times when Ed is freelancing hurts when you’re playing against kind of a veteran quarterback. The young guys kind of go by the book, and Ed knows the book. More accurately: Everyone knows the book, but not everybody can apply it as quickly as he can.