Ed Reed

“My dad would leave at 4 or 5 in the morning and then I wouldn't see him until evening. The conversations we used to have, he would tell me, 'A man takes care of his home first. A man handles his responsibility. He doesn't ask another man for anything.'”

“When you've been playing the game for so long and sports for so long, it can take a toll on your body, and that's what we're putting on the line, and that's what our argument is as players when we're doing negotiations and stuff like that.”

“Yeah, some people don't know anything about football.”

“Not every officer is a bad police. I work with police officers. I know first responders.”

“If you play NFL football, you play football, these are the consequences. There's choices and consequences in life for everything. There's consequences if you play football.”

“Help each other, encourage each other, lift each other up.”

“I know everybody wants to make it to the NFL, but it doesn't happen like that.”

“You've got to be smart about tackling.”

“I've just been playing football for a long time. I've been playing football since I was a little kid, so it's just some natural blessings that God has blessed me with to get to the ball and understand what I've been doing over the years.”

“Just being from Louisiana, being from the southern part of Louisiana, Metairie, close to New Orleans and growing up in St. Rose. There are a lot of things to overcome.”

“My time in Baltimore was awesome, every bit of it.”

“It's a kid's game we play. Nothing more than that.”

“Football is what we do. It's our job, it's a business.”

“We had a great staff in college, so after I got to the league, I'd already seen stuff I knew. Then it was enhanced, playing the game with great guys like Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs, Haloti Ngata, Chris McAlister.”

“I can't be lackadaisical when it's time for me to make any play, whether it's a tackle, fumble recovery, anything that it might be.”

“You know mental illness is one of the biggest problems in our world.”

“I know I have the abilities to be a head coach or D-coordinator. It's something I wouldn't mind doing. But it's tough being a player and going back and doing something like that, because egos get in the way.”

“You don't hear about tradition in the NFL, but we have a tradition in Baltimore. It was just an awesome place to be.”

“I tried to go and get my master's in-season. That's a tough cookie to try to eat, but it's just a great thing.”

“I was a two-star athlete. I got looked over.”