REISTERSTOWN — Baltimore Ravens star free safety Ed Reed made it abundantly clear that he didn’t compliment Rex Ryan to slight coach John Harbaugh during an ESPN interview in June at his football camp in Louisiana.
Reed said that the network left out the portion of the interview where he said nice things about Harbaugh, who has led the Ravens to three consecutive playoff appearances.
During his youth football camp today at Franklin High, Reed said he might not talk to ESPN in the future after this experience.
"It made us look like we didn’t have a good coach and I don’t like my coach and I’d rather be playing with New York," Reed told a small group of reporters. "Now, you’re causing situations in our family to make it look like we’re separated when it’s not the case. Show the whole interview.
"Show me at least saying I have a great coach in Baltimore. Don’t make it seem like I wanted Rex as a coach. If Coach can’t see through that, we’ll have problems, but I know he’s better than that."
While Reed has acknowledged that players were hoping that Ryan, who’s now the New York Jets’ coach, would be promoted from defensive coordinator in Baltimore after the firing of Brian Billick, he said the locker room is happy with Harbaugh.
"I still love Rex and I spent a lot of years with Rex, he was like a father figure and a brother," Reed said. "He taught me a lot about the game. But we have a great coach in Baltimore right now. That’s what I said right after that part, but they cut that out.
"Coach Harbaugh has done a great job with us. We’ve been through some things, but we’ve worked around it. There is a reason why we’ve had success in Baltimore with coach here. ESPN is all about drama. It will be hard for me to do another interview with them after that."
Touching on several other topics, Reed said he feels healthy after missing the first six games of last season following hip surgery.
And, ideally, he would like to finish his career in Baltimore and retire as a Raven, but made no specific prediction of when he would stop playing.
