Haason Reddick is back to being himself. Opponents should pay attention. The Eagles might have to pay up.
Reddick had made it clear in training camp that he believed he was underpaid. Now that he has recovered from his thumb injury, he's proving again to be worth every penny he's earning. And more.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Inside the visitors’ locker room here Sunday at SoFi Stadium, Haason Reddick was pleased to greet a SiriusXM NFL Radio producer who sought some of his time for a postgame interview.
Still sitting at his stall, Reddick took the phone for the chat, gave the show’s hosts 2½ minutes, and thanked the producer with a hearty handshake. It was good to get back to the way things had been for him with the Eagles, the way they were supposed to be.
His two late sacks of Matthew Stafford had sealed the Eagles’ 23-14 victory over the Rams. And with three in the last two games since he shed the cast on his right hand that was holding him back, Reddick has finally started fulfilling his dual desires this season: helping the Eagles win games and getting himself paid.
He had made it clear two months ago, after a training-camp practice, that he considered it an affront that 15 NFL pass-rushers earned more money per year than he did.
“Y’all see it — y’all know what’s going on,” he’d said at the NovaCare Complex when he was asked if he was underpaid, a good soldier suddenly wondering aloud why his average annual value didn’t approach the Bosas’ and the Watts’ and the Garretts’.
But the demand he made that day was aimed as much at himself as it was Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman. He had already missed two days of camp with a groin injury. In mid-August, he tore a ligament in his right thumb. For the Eagles’ first three games, he had been shut out, and for all his insistence that his lack of production wasn’t bothering him, he has reacted to each of his sacks since with the kind of triumphant scream that an innocent man would unleash upon escaping from Alcatraz.
» READ MORE: A winning machine: Unbeaten Eagles are coldly efficient as ever
All three have come in the fourth quarter. All three have been important to the Eagles. “He’s our closer,” coach Nick Sirianni said, and that matters to him. But when he signed that three-year deal last year with the Eagles, a contract worth up to $45 million, Reddick believed he had something to prove to the rest of the league, and he believes he is proving it.
“I know what type of player I am,” he said, “and I know the types of players I have on the team, especially on the defense. I never made no excuse, man. I never talked about the cast. If anybody ever asked me anything about it, all I kept saying was, ‘I’m happy to be out of it. I’m happy to be out of it. I’m happy to be out of it.’ That’s all I’ve ever said.”
To be sure, Reddick is wise to the ways of NFL owners and executives. The Eagles are the third team he has played for in six years, and he’s prepared to hear from them — or any other potential suitor — that his torn-up thumb shouldn’t have stopped him, for any length of time, from taking down quarterbacks. When it comes to a negotiation, for a new contract or a restructuring of a current one, no team is going to say, Well, you had a cast on his hand for three games. For the sake of saving even a single dollar, every team will say, Hey, you didn’t have a sack for three games.
“But when you talk about that [possibility of a new contract], of course, nobody cares that you had a cast on,” he said. “If you’re able to go out there, they want to see you produce. I understand that, right? It’s a business at the end of the day. I do understand that. But hey, we’ve got more opportunities. We’re sitting at five-and-oh. I’m contributing, helping the team win as best as I can, and that’s all that matters right now. Stack up these W’s, and we’re going to see where this goes after that.”
» READ MORE: Eagles grades: The Birds defense didn’t look good on the Rams’ first drive but bounced back
Same plan as last season, when he racked up 16 sacks during the regular season and another 3½ in the playoffs, when the only thing that slowed him down was the turf at State Farm Stadium in Super Bowl LVII.
The Rams certainly couldn’t do it Sunday, not with Jalen Carter collapsing the pocket on Stafford, sacking him twice and funneling him toward Reddick and the Eagles’ other edge rushers.
For his first sack, Reddick zoomed past Rams right tackle Rob Havenstein and chased Stafford down from behind. Havenstein immediately checked out with an injury. Rookie Warren McClendon — one of Carter’s teammates at Georgia — replaced him, and though Reddick already had studied enough film to know the kid’s major weakness, Carter felt the need to remind him of it: McClendon’s feet weren’t all that quick.
“Use speed on this guy,” he said. “Go.”
“No s—,” Reddick replied.
He went, running through an attempted chip block as if Rams tailback Tyren Williams were finish-line tape, surging past McClendon to crush Stafford. It was what he was supposed to do, the way he was supposed to do it. Those three weeks seemed like forever to Haason Reddick. They seem like forever ago now. The man is earning his money. And more.