Panthers’ Haason Reddick went from walk-on to one of the best edge rushers in the NFL
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Panthers linebacker Haason Reddick doesn’t care that people doubt him.
He doesn’t care that the Arizona Cardinals didn’t extend the fifth-year option on his rookie deal last year. He doesn’t care that he’s not viewed as one of the best pass rushers in the league yet.
Reddick wasn’t even a one-star recruit coming out of Haddon Heights High School, according to his 247sports recruiting profile. He didn’t enroll at Temple on scholarship. He was a walk-on.
Yet, here he is in Charlotte, doing what so many thought he couldn’t.
“My whole career I’ve been through ups and downs, especially the beginning of my career in the NFL,” Reddick told The Observer recently. “People calling me a bust. I just ignored that stuff.”
Ignoring that worked. Reddick began to find success in 2020 in his final season with the Cardinals — his fourth as a pro — and it has carried over in his first season with the Panthers this fall.
He has 6.5 sacks through seven games this season, which leads the Panthers’ defense and is tied for fourth in the NFL.
What Carolina is paying him is a bargain considering — a one-year, $8 million deal with $6 million guaranteed. But bringing him in was a no-brainer for this Panthers staff. Reddick played at Temple under Matt Rhule and defensive coordinator Phil Snow and they knew, based upon experience, what he was capable of.
In a league where the rules favor quarterbacks and offenses, Reddick’s pass-rushing ability is vital to the Panthers’ success on defense, which has allowed the third-fewest yards in the NFL through the first seven weeks.
The Panthers’ defense has taken a step forward in Year 2 under Rhule and Snow, and a big reason for that is Reddick. A year ago, they lacked a pass rusher opposite defensive end Brian Burns, allowing teams to double-team him. With Reddick on the other edge, that’s no longer an option.
He’ll be one of the Panthers’ top priorities to re-sign heading into the offseason when his contract expires.
“Haason been ballin’,” Burns said. “He brings a different kind of edge to the defense. I feel like his mentality on the field really rubs off on everybody. He’s salty. That’s a funny way to put it, but he’s salty.
“He really gets after it.”
Been through a lot
Reddick was born and raised in Camden, N.J., a city he said helped him become the person he is today.
Tough. Hard-working. Relentless.
“Getting after it,” as Burns said, is all Reddick knows.
Camden, a city of about 72,000 people, is known for its high crime and low incomes — 36.4% of the population lives at or below the poverty line. Reddick witnessed a lot as a child.
He was about 11 or 12 years old when first saw a person lying dead on the ground.
“Seeing a dead body right in front of my face in broad daylight in the middle of the summer,” Reddick recalled. “It will wake you up.”
That image remains ingrained in Reddick’s mind. It’s a reminder of what could have happened to him had he chosen a different path, had he followed in the footsteps of some of his friends who didn’t have the same positive influences he had growing up.
Seeing that body was life-changing.
“It just let me know if I’m not on my P’s and Q’s and I’m not doing the right things, something like that could happen to me,” he said. “I got family members. I don’t want to be somebody that gets taken out, being in the streets and having my mom crying.”
Reddick wanted to make something of himself. He wanted to play in the NFL. He wanted to move his mother out of Camden.
Few offers
Reddick had always dreamed of playing in the NFL, as football players do. His dad, who played college football at Division II Clarion University in Pennsylvania, introduced him to the sport when he was four years old.
Reddick lived with his mother for most of his life but saw the crowd he had been hanging out with and thought it was best he move in with his father during his sophomore and junior years of high school at Haddon Heights.
He was physically gifted and talented. He played cornerback, safety, wide receiver and running back.
“When you saw him on the field, you saw his athleticism,” Paul Palmer, one of Reddick’s coaches at Haddon Heights, said. “Dude can jump, dude’s got good hands. Physical as hell. All the things you see at the professional level, you saw in high school.”
Palmer knows talent; he was a Heisman Trophy runner-up as a running back at Temple in 1986.
Christopher Lina, Reddick’s coach his senior year at Haddon Heights, remembers one play in particular. Reddick was lined up at receiver and they threw him a bubble screen on the right side of the field. As he caught the ball and took it upfield, a linebacker tried to tackle him.
Instead of running from the contact, Reddick embraced it.
“He hits the dude so hard, knocks his helmet off, and keeps running,” Lina said of Reddick. “He was just a maniac.”
Somewhere in New Jersey, that helmet is still airborne.
Reddick was big, weighing more than 200 pounds and with impressive speed.
His only problem was the injuries his junior and senior years. He’d play, get injured, rehab the injury, come back great, and get injured again. He played in only three games his senior year before a nagging knee injury ended his season. Those were the crucial years in his college recruitment — and lack thereof.
‘Self-made’
Reddick was a preferred walk-on defensive back at Temple, but was cut by then-Temple coach Steve Addazio in November 2012 before ever playing in a game.
Addazio left Temple for Boston College the following month, and Rhule was hired. Rhule’s staff eventually sought Reddick out and convinced him to come back on the team.
Snow, who was the defensive coordinator at Temple then, said they tried Reddick out at two different linebacker spots before settling in at weakside defensive end. There, he flourished.
“He had all the physical abilities to play inside linebacker, but his traits are on the line of scrimmage and going forward,” Snow said. “It took us about a year to figure out, and once we put him there, shoot, his senior year he was gone.”
To go from a defensive back to a defensive end, and a successful one at that, is almost unheard of. But Reddick stayed in the weight room and put in the work.
“I just worked hard every day and I made sure when I had my opportunity, I was prepared for it,” Reddick said. “Eventually coaches saw my hard work and they got me on the field.”
During his junior season at Temple, Reddick had 46 tackles, five sacks and 13 tackles for loss.
His senior year, he had 65 tackles, 22.5 tackles for loss and 9.5 sacks and three forced fumbles. He had become one of the best defensive players in the country, and was rewarded when the Cardinals took him with the 13th overall pick in 2017.
“He really self-made himself,” Snow said. “He kept fighting and getting better. He’s done a helluva job with everything.”
Doing the right thing
Reddick’s primary motivation remains his family. His mother was the one who took out a loan so he could go to Temple before he earned a scholarship during his senior season.
He’s also the oldest of seven kids and has three younger brothers, all under 14, who look up to him. They want to be the next Haason Reddick.
They watch his play on the field. They watch what outfit he’s wearing prior to games. One of Reddick’s passions outside of football is fashion. Even teammate Donte Jackson, who is normally boastful, admitted that Reddick is the best dressed on the team.
“Being the oldest, being who I am, somebody who loves fashion, they all see it, they all soak it up,” Reddick said of his younger brothers. “And just being a big brother — I don’t have none, but I can only imagine — I just try to make sure I’m doing all the right things.”
Reddick said he’s trying to be the best version of himself.
He knows what it took to get there and he knows he has people watching.
This story was originally published October 31, 2021 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Panthers’ Haason Reddick went from walk-on to one of the best edge rushers in the NFL."
