“I’ve been playing football since I was a kid, seven or eight years old, not even counting the times we played without pads, when you’ve got guys as we called it ‘drop in the bucket,’ to try to get those extra yards,” Reed said. “I’m sure there’s going to be something related to football [when I retire]. Like I said, I signed up for this. I knew it’s a contact sport. I know there’s going to be pains and ailments and injuries. Do I want that to affect my livelihood? No, but do I know that it’s going to affect it?”
Yet despite his own ailments, Reed, as a future Hall of Famer who commands attention, became extremely outspoken toward the end of his tenure in Baltimore in regard to fines being levied for hits, more so than the penalties. It’s a thin line between policing the game and protecting the players. Commissioner Roger Goodell has played the role of the bully as well as judge and jury in some cases.
“Honestly, there’s a catch-22 with that. You have to police the situation, but at the same time, you have to make sure you’re doing the right thing for the players also,” Reed said. “Not everybody is making the money that you’re taking, and not every offense is deserving of $100,000, $50,000 fines. And these are players on that committee, Merton Hanks and guys like that, who have been in the game, but also have a boss to answer to. A lot needs to be done with it. I don’t think every fine is right. You have to go back and really look at how guys play the game before you judge them, is what I’m trying to say.”
But outspokenness and visits with some of his media friends led to some unnecessary conversation during his final years as he really wanted the Ravens to guarantee him more money and give him an extension. Moments that were often referred to in Baltimore as “Ed being Ed.”
During the January 2012 playoff run, after beating Houston and in the week leading up to the AFC Championship Game, Reed told SiriusXM Radio “Joe was kind of rattled a little bit by that [Texans] defense. They had a lot of guys in the box on him and they were giving it to him. I think a couple of times he needed to get rid of the ball. It just didn’t look like he had a hold on the offense. He can’t play like that. One specific play that sticks out to me was when Ray Rice came out and got pushed out of the backfield and [Flacco] still threw him the ball and he had Torrey Smith on the outside. I can say that sitting on the sideline or sitting in the stands. You don’t know what someone else is seeing.”
Flacco privately took umbrage with the comments at the time because he never blamed Reed when he guessed wrong and the ball went over his head for a touchdown, and that had happened more times over the years than fans realize. In the Houston game, the Ravens had a 17-3 lead and decided to let the defense pressure a third-string quarterback named T.J. Yates instead of throw the ball with the lead.
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“I threw two touchdowns and no picks in a playoff game that we won against a really good defense,” Flacco said. “We were going to the AFC Championship Game and I thought fans would be saying, ‘Sweet game! You won!’ And instead I wound up taking heat all week because people said that I sucked. It was at that point when I realized that fans or the media could make the reality whatever they wanted to make it. I had to laugh about it.”
Flacco appeared on WNST.net later in the week and did laugh about it. “I already kicked Ed’s ass in the locker room,” Flacco joked.
It’s all anyone with the Ravens organization could do, simply laugh it off. They couldn’t edit him. They couldn’t apologize for it. It was “Ed being Ed.”
Reed certainly has had a love/hate relationship with authority, but in the end his effort, commitment, and talents have always been respected by those in the Ravens organization. His independence is apparent when you consider that for the bulk of his career he didn’t have an agent. In fact, he never had an agent until he penned his recent deal with Houston. He has openly criticized the NFL Players Association. He has criticized the commissioner. He has criticized the NFL competition committee for rules changes. He is a rebel and an iconoclast in many ways and doesn’t seek to be understood by all.
