J.R. Reed announced earlier this week that he will return to Georgia football for his final year of eligibility. Redd has started nearly every game since transferring in 2017.
Georgia football isn’t the only party benefiting in J.R. Reed’s decision to return to school. J.R. Reed will also benefit as he really needs one more year to work on the rest of his game. With a solid senior season, Reed can be a player worth taking as high as early round three.
But there’s a few things he has to work on first. Mostly coverage. Dominick Sanders masked a lot of the defenses’ shortcomings for a few years. So many that it’s mind-blowing that no NFL team drafted him. Sanders shut down the middle-intermediate areas of the field for two whole years. Passes just weren’t completed between the hash marks against Georgia.
For the first time in a while this season, opposing teams began completing passes to those spots. As the more experienced safety, Reed had to take on more of Sanders’ role than Richard LeCounte. He did a pretty good job clearly. It’s not like Georgia’s pass defense began giving up yards like it’s 2009. But in both zone and man coverage, Reed couldn’t make the plays to close off the area.
But how was he or the coaches supposed to know how much he needed to work on before this past season? His flaws weren’t evident after his first year at Georgia. Now they are and by returning, Reed buys himself another year to work on coverage so he can enter the NFL Draft with confidence.
Now, on to what Reed gets right. He’s a great tackler, one of the best. Even in the open field against great athletes, he’ll at least stop a ball carrier so a teammate can make the tackle. His tackling ability would be nothing if not for his reaction time though. He can go sideline-to-sideline. Make the rush into the backfield to tackle a running back, and close in on receivers catching short passes. No one on this past defense prevented more big plays than Reed.