“The Door Was Always Open”

The business side of the NFL ended Jarran Reed’s time with the Seahawks after five seasons, but despite things not working out during that 2021 offseason, neither Reed nor the team that drafted him closed the door on a potential reunion somewhere down the road.

And two years later, after spending a season with Kansas City and one in Green Bay, Reed indeed ended up back in Seattle, signing with the team that made him a second-round pick in 2016.

“They had a decision to make, I had a decision to make, and obviously I made that one and they had to make theirs,” Reed said of his 2021 release after the sides could not agree on a restructured deal. “There were no hard feelings, it was just all business. Eventually, it led me back here.

“Nobody really wanted to part ways, but the door was always open. That was the one thing that I knew… When I left, I knew there would always be a possibility of me coming back; it was just when. They had to move on, I had to move on, but it eventually led us back to here, back to me being a 12 again.”

As was the case with Bobby Wagner, who also returned to the Seahawks this offseason, and as has been the case with so many other players over the years, the culture built in Seattle by Pete Carroll and John Schneider was far more significant than any lingering hard feelings over an earlier breakup.

“I think it is that the Seahawks let you be you as a person,” Reed said. “To them, it’s more than just football. In some organizations, it’s strictly football and they want you to be a certain type of way, act a certain way, look a certain way, and dress a certain way, but here, they let you be you. They let your personality show in the most respectful way. I feel like you as a person can be free. You can play better that way when you are free as a person, you can express yourself as a person and who you are, which I think everybody has a right to do. Those type of things, along with the culture and the coaching staff, you have fun around there. You have fun, you have a good time, and you actually enjoy being at work. All of those things accumulate to just wanting to be there.

“When you get to know the people in the building, it gets beyond football. I have built a relationship with the equipment guys, I’ve built a relationship with the cafeteria staff, and I’ve built a relationship with the weight training coaches. Everything for me personally on my end was just built around being family oriented. I was really comfortable there and I felt…