Ed Reed, *the* ball hawk safety, is officially a Hall of Famer

ATLANTA — When people mention a “ball hawk,” the image of Ed Reed should pop into everybody’s head. His iconic career has permanently intertwined him with the term. And he knows he’s the best one of all-time.

“Ronnie Lott said it,” he says. “So I’ll take it.”

Reed was announced as a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee on Saturday night at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta during the NFL Honors. His resume speaks for itself — he’s a Super Bowl champion, a nine-time Pro Bowler, a five-time first-team All-Pro, the 2004 NFL Defensive Player of the year, had 64 career interceptions, 11 forced fumbles and seven touchdowns.

But what made Reed such a special player was that he carried a presence that nobody else had. Fans and analysts alike often say that a player is “fearless,” but when you put many of those players next to Reed, they don’t even compare. Reed went full speed at all times in an era where the rules allowed violent hits, striking fear into receivers. He also carried the football like it was a can, because well, growing up he played football with a can. “We used to play football with anything we could get our hands on,” he says.

His ball-carrying technique was so loose and against what any football coach would teach. But it just had to do with that fearlessness — he didn’t think he’d ever lose the football: “It wasn’t happening.”

While not having the equipment to play football wasn’t ideal, Reed appreciates what it did for him. “Those are the moments that made me,” he says. “The times I was out with my dad at the park, not knowing that I’m training to be [an NFL player], you know? Playing baseball, walking to the game. Like literally walking a couple of miles to get to play baseball at a park where I was almost the only black on the team, the all-star team, you know?”

“When guys ask me, ‘Man can you help me to be like you?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, if you ain’t played a crapload of baseball, it’s gonna be hard.’”

And while he had the show-stopping athleticism to be a great player, his attention to detail and “chess not checkers” approach to the game is what really completed his game and made him the best ball hawk of all-time.

No, seriously:

“I studied to put myself in a position to make plays,” he says, explaining that it was his creativity that separated him from others.

This wealth of both knowledge and athleticism made him such a difficult player to prepare for. As good as the Patriots have been the past two decades, even they knew that Reed was not a player to take lightly.

An old conversation with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick showed just how much respect they had for the safety:

“You are always aware of where he is,” Brady tells Belichick. “It’s not like he sneaks up on you, he can’t sneak up on you.”

“Every time you break the huddle that’s who you’re looking at.”

If Reed were to add one play from his career to play on loop next to his Hall of Fame bust, he says it wouldn’t even be one where he made the play, but rather directions he gave out on the field to Cary Williams in the AFC Championship against the Patriots in 2012.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m gonna do this, and he’s gonna throw the ball right to you, and we’re going to the Super Bowl. Take us there.’” And Williams did:

“That’s just me as a player, a coach, a friend that would give anything for my teammates to win,” he says with a smile.