For Jordan Reed, the journey to success didn’t begin with long days on the football field.
It began with a baseball tied around a pole.
His brother, David, a wide receiver for the Baltimore Ravens, said the earliest memory he has of his brother’s work ethic is from their childhood.
Jordan would relentlessly practice his swing on a “Hit-A-Way,” a hitting trainer with a baseball attached to an elastic cord.
“He would be outside at 6 o’clock, every weekend morning in the summer time hitting that thing,” David said.
Jordan was driven by a lack of confidence. That trait stayed with him even as he developed into a dominant football player.
In high school, he didn’t think he stacked up against other top quarterbacks in the country.
It was odd for Jordan to have that feeling, considering he was coming off a junior season in which he started at quarterback and led New London (Conn.) High to a state championship game appearance. He had also received a scholarship offer from Florida and was the 10th-ranked dual-threat quarterback in the country, according to Rivals.com.
His high school quarterbacks coach, Travis Meyer, was a first-hand witness to Jordan’s confounding inability to acknowledge his talent.
“When he got offered by the Gators, he said, ‘Coach, you really think I can play there?’” Meyer said. “I said, ‘Jordan, you’re out of your mind. Of course you can play there. In fact, you’re going to be one of the best players on the team. You’ll see.’”
Jordan didn’t like what he saw from his game, but he didn’t let that discourage him.
His belief that he wasn’t good enough at quarterback was a factor in him developing into one of the most dangerous playmakers on Florida’s offense — at tight end.
No one knows where the perpetual chip on Jordan’s shoulder came from. David said he and his brother have always been hard on themselves.
“That’s kind of how we are,” David said. “We’re our worst enemies. We’re our worst critiques. We’re perfectionists. Any little thing is going to throw him off. (It) is going to make him feel like he ain’t good enough, so he’s going to strive for perfection. It’s been as long as I can remember.”
Growing up, David said he and Jordan competed at almost every sport, but not football.
Jordan didn’t play football competitively until eighth grade. His high school coach, Jack Cochran, knew the position Jordan would play from the moment he saw him throw the ball in gym class.
“He had a great arm, so we figured we’d try him as a quarterback,” said Cochran, who was also the gym teacher at Jordan’s middle school. “He was always a great athlete.”
Jordan took over the starting job at New London in Week 3 of his freshman season, which was the only year he played with David. Meyer said Jordan did not develop much during his first year because he locked in on David too much.
“It was awesome,” David said. “He would throw me the ball every time. I was his main target, and we were pretty successful.”
Meyer joined the New London staff following Jordan’s sophomore year and helped him polish his technique.
In their training sessions, Meyer focused on Jordan’s throwing and dropback mechanics. Jordan quickly proved himself as a willing student.
“He took the coaching very well,” Meyer said. “He’s a great learner on the field. He is the hardest-working kid I ever worked with.”
Both Meyer and Cochran saw the pressure Jordan put on himself to improve as a quarterback. He knew he wasn’t playing against the best competition in Connecticut and assumed he was not on the level of quarterbacks in high-school football hotbeds such as Texas and Florida. To compensate, Jordan asked Cochran to arrange workouts with a personal trainer, who Jordan would meet with every day for two hours after he completed his high school practice.
“In most cases, I’d have to send another coach down to get him off the field,” Cochran said. “After practices, late at night, he’d be out there in the dark working on skills.”
On Thursdays before Friday games, Meyer would have to stop Jordan from doing uphill sprints.
The extra work and Meyer’s tutelage paid off, as Jordan developed into a more complete quarterback and led New London to the state championship game in 2007.
Prior to suffering a season-ending foot injury five games into his senior year, Jordan was completing about 48 percent of his passes, but Meyer estimated that more than 90 percent of his throws were accurate. Receivers just couldn’t handle them.
“If you tried to catch his passes, it would hurt your hands,” Meyer said. “Three passes into warm-ups, he would break a blood vessel in my finger.”
Despite the signs that he was coming into his own as a signal caller, it still wasn’t clear where he would play once he got to Gainesville.
As much as he loved catching passes from Jordan in high school, David didn’t see his brother as a long-term quarterback.
“I kind of told him he should play another position: tight end or receiver,” David said. “Cause with his athletic ability and his speed and his hands … I know what he can do and what he is capable of.”
Cochran also thought Jordan would be better suited at tight end in Urban Meyer’s spread offense, telling Jordan he should consider a different school if he wanted to be a quarterback in the NFL.
The Gators’ coaches had different ideas.
“We absolutely did see him as a quarterback long-term,” said Temple head coach and former Florida offensive coordinator Steve Addazio.
During his redshirt season in 2009, Jordan practiced at quarterback. He switched to tight end during spring practice in 2010 after realizing that John Brantley was the likely heir to Tim Tebow.
Despite practicing primarily at tight end during the 2010 season, Jordan was more productive at quarterback. He caught only six passes for 79 yards but completed 26 of 46 passes for 252 yards and three touchdowns while throwing just one interception.
Most of his action at quarterback came in the Wildcat formation.
Fans clamored to see an offense built around Jordan in the Wildcat following an up-and-down season from Brantley and the Florida offense, but Jordan decided to focus on playing tight end after talking it over with offensive coordinator Charlie Weis.
“He wants an opportunity to play on Sundays,” Weis said, “and he felt a lot more comfortable about his chances at the tight end position than he did at the quarterback position.”
Travis Meyer said he wasn’t surprised by the choice. Jordan simply felt more confident at tight end than he ever had at quarterback.
“He called me one day and he’s like, ‘Coach,’ and this was completely out of character for him,” Meyer said. “He goes, ‘Coach, I’m ballin’ today.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he says, ‘I was runnin’ all over dudes.’”
Encouraged by how confident he felt at his new position, Jordan shifted his full-time focus to improving as a tight end.
“He’s a guy that really works hard at it in practice,” defensive coordinator Dan Quinn said. “When he comes off the practice field, he is drenched in sweat and puts the time in and works at it hard. I’ve got a lot of respect for him and the way he prepares and practices and goes against the guys.”
Jordan already had an understanding of route running from his time as a quarterback, but his skills as a pass catcher still needed fine-tuning. Most importantly, he had to improve his blocking.
“Footwork and hand placement, [helmet] placement,” Jordan said in the week leading up to Florida’s Southeastern Conference opener against Texas A&M. “Being more physical and tenacious.”
Improved blocking led to more consistent playing time at tight end in 2011, when Jordan led all pass catchers with 28 receptions. Jordan said he continued to work on blocking with tight ends coach Derek Lewis.
Offensive coordinator Brent Pease said Jordan has refined his receiving technique and learned how to beat defenses since spring practice.
The results have been promising. Through four games, Jordan has caught 16 passes for 193 yards, including the go-ahead touchdown in the Gators’ 37-20 win at Tennessee. Coach Will Muschamp said in September that he wasn’t surprised to see Jordan’s production increase.
“This is his second year of playing the tight end position,” Muschamp said. “The natural process is your first year, you do however you do, and then you improve a little bit or a lot based on your dedication in the offseason. He worked extremely hard and had a great offseason.”
Since Jordan’s permanent switch to tight end, David has seen one aspect of his brother’s game improve more than any other.
“His confidence,” David said. “He’s definitely looking like he’s getting comfortable at the position.”
Travis Meyer sees the same progress as David, and he sees it more clearly than he ever did when Jordan was under center.
“If there was one thing that prevented him from continuing at quarterback it was … not because he couldn’t, but because he didn’t believe in himself,” Meyer said. “But physically and mentally now, I think he believes in himself.”
Contact Josh Jurnovoy at jjurnovoy@alligator.org.
Jordan Reed (11) has improved his blocking and receiving abilities during his second season as a full-time tight end. The junior leads Florida with 16 catches in 2012.
After excelling as a quarterback in high school, Jordan Reed (11) alternated between signal caller and tight end during his first two years at Florida. He completed 57 percent of his passes for 252 yards and three touchdowns his redshirt freshman season.
