Jordan Reed Wes Martin Jersey , Year 6 - Is the Redskin star TE finally physically ready to play 16 regular season games? The InterviewCraig Hoffman of 106.7 The Fan did a 6 1鈦? minute interview with Jordan Reed at training camp this week, and listening to it, I felt that I was hearing from a player who had undergone a profound transformation.The key statement in the interview was this:“I’m gonna owe a lot of the success I’m gonna have this year to Dan.”The “Dan” he was referring to is physical therapist Daniel Karp of Premier Performance & Rehab, whom Jordan Reed credits with being the architect behind a total re-tooling of Jordan Reed’s body, which he describes as having been “rebuilt from the ground up”.Reed as a RedskinJordan Reed was taken by the Redskins in the 3rd round of the 2013 draft, at a time when the Redskins still believed that Robert Griffin was the foundation of a franchise re-build.Reed had been ‘the other’ tight end at the University of Florida, where the then-Patriots rising star Aaron Hernandez had been his teammate.Reed was a guy who had been recruited as a quarterback coming out of high school.For the Gators he played some games at receiver before finally getting 5 games at the QB position, where he seemed more like a running back, carrying the ball 48 times in the final three games of his 2010 season.In 2011, Reed was moved to tight end, and by 2012 he looked like a natural pass-catching receiver.The 6’2” player emerged as a legitimate receiving threat, hauling in 45 receptions for 559 yards and 3 TDs. Still, when the Redskins drafted him, I don’t think many Redskin fans realized what the team was getting.Reed is perhaps the most talented pass-catching tight end in the NFL, but his career has become known more for his inability to stay healthy than his incredible ability to catch the ball and score.Reports like this one from Sports Illustrated in 2015 have been all too common in the 5-year career of the Redskins talented pass catching tight end:Put him in bubble wrapThe problems with Jordan Reed’s health manifested early in his Rrdskins career. In a game against the Lions in late September, 2013, Reed left the game with a quad contusion after taking a helmet to the leg. What sounded like a fairly routine NFL injury — as innocuous-sounding as a bruise — was just the first sign of trouble in an NFL career that has seen Reed miss 28 games in 5 seasons, and to often be at much less than 100% even when he was on the field.While Reed’s injury history is impressive, with multiple concussions, knee surgery, toe problems and more, it may have been an injury to his quad ( a group of muscles located in the front of the thigh) in college that was the trigger for much of what has ailed him since.A key college injuryEven before his rookie season started, Jordan Reed was struggling to get on the field.In June 2013, Steve Shoup reported on Jordan Reed’s delicate condition:Put into this context, the quad injury against the Lions early in Reed’s rookie year seems much more serious.He had missed most of his preseason because his left quad wasn’t working the way it was supposed to, and it was re-injured in the Lions game.The SportsInjuryPredictor website indicates that Jordan Reed has injured his left quad multiple times.In fact, the original injury from college may have been the underlying cause for many of the lower-body ailments that Reed has suffered from in his professional career.Consider what Reed said in his radio interview this week:Players, coaches, trainers and even casual fans are all aware that the body ‘compensates’ for weakness or pain in one area by adding stress to other areas of the body.This week, on NFL Network, I watched an interesting interview with Andrew Luck, who talked about the effect that shoulder pain has had on his throwing motion, and how his body has ‘compensated’ by putting strain on other body parts.It sounds like Jordan Reed’s body has Dwayne Haskins Jersey , for years, been compensating for weakness in his left leg by building power in his right one.But that kind of natural compensation often comes at a cost.Reed has suffered multiple knee strains, hamstring injuries and toe problems, and reading the article penned by Craig Hoffman, it seems the imbalance in power between his right and left legs may have been much of the reason for this litany of lower body issues.Read a related article on Jordan Reed: Is Jordan Reed down to his last chance with Jay Gruden?Fixing what’s brokeIn the interview, Reed discussed the work he has done with physical therapist Daniel Karp and others to correct what’s been ailing him.But Reed has gone far beyond a simple surgical procedure.Remember what Jordan Reed said in his rookie year about his quad not “firing” properly?It seems that, while he was able to get well enough to play as a rookie, the underlying issue may have persisted.That was addressed this offseason.Training camp reportsThere are reasons to believe that 2018 may be different — that Jordan Reed may be healthy and productive, possibly for the first time in his NFL career.First of all, Jordan Reed himself has been vocal about how good he feels this year.After explaining the pain he suffered from toe injuries in 2017, he talked about the contrast this offseason.Reed has been enthusiastic in all of his interviews during this week’s training camp:This might sound a bit like Deja vu all over again; after all, we’ve heard similar things from Reed in the past.But then there are the reports of people who’ve seen him in camp, not the least from Jay Gruden:While the Redskins are taking a cautious approach with Reed and havinghim mostly do individual work and some limited drills at the start of camp, people attending camp have noticed how comfortable and crisp Reed looks so far:The proof of the pudding is in the eatingNot many people are going to believe that Jordan Reed — a player who, for five seasons as a Washington Redskin, has seemed as brittle as glass — is suddenly an iron man, capable of playing an entire season without injury.Still, the work that he seems to have put during the offseason is impressive, and Reed credits Dan Karp with bringing a whole new level of understanding about Reed’s body and his health, and a whole new approach to getting ready for the season.Reed says that he feels renewed.Jay Gruden says he’s ready to play.Camp observers uniformly report that Reed is moving around like a player who is feeling good and healthy enough to play.The next five months will reveal whether 2018 marks a renaissance for Jordan Reed, or whether his apparent health and readiness in this year’s training camp is simply a false dawn ahead of another season of unfulfilled promise. Washington got two of the players it coveted most in this year’s draft.The first was quarterback Dwayne Haskins, who fell to Washington at No. 15 even after there was some talk that they would trade all the way up into the Top 5 to get him. And the second was a player they really did trade up for: Washington traded its second-round pick and 2020 second-round pick to Indianapolis for the 26th overall pick, which it used on pass rusher Montez Sweat.Sweat was considered a Top 10 pick until talk that a heart condition could make it dangerous for him to play. Sweat insists that the heart condition was misdiagnosed and he’s fine to play, as he did in college without issue.hat the team’s doctors are satisfied with Sweat’s health and the coaches love what he does on the field.Asked where Sweat was on the draft board, Gruden said, “High. Very high, yes. Very, very high. . . . I think he’s a perfect fit for us.”If Sweat is a perfect fit as a pass rusher, and Haskins becomes the franchise quarterback of the future, everyone will be very, very high on this draft.