NFL draft: Michigan State football's Jayden Reed drafted by Packers in Round 2
Jayden Reed’s father would be proud. His “Bird” is taking flight to the pros. And on his 23rd birthday, no less.
The Michigan State football wide receiver was selected Friday night in the second round of the NFL draft by the Green Bay Packers with the No. 50 overall pick.
Reed is MSU's highest-selected wide receiver since Devin Thomas went in the second round of the 2008 draft to Washington with the 34th pick.
The 5-foot-11, 187-pound Reed returned to MSU for his fifth collegiate season in 2022 but battled injuries all fall, from a foot issue during preseason camp to a sore hip against Western Michigan in the season opener to a deep laceration on his lower back from sliding into a corner of a bench against Akron in Week 2. That forced him to miss the only game of his college career at Washington the next week.
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Ultimately, the physical ailments caused Reed to go from leading the Spartans with 59 catches for 1,026 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2021 to finishing last season with 55 catches for 636 yards and five scores. A first-team All-American as an all-purpose player and a finalist for the Paul Hornung Award as the nation's most versatile player in 2021, Reed stopped returning kickoffs last fall after the injuries but continued to return punts, averaging 8.8 yards on 13 returns, having potential touchdowns called back against Akron and Wisconsin.
Reed’s father, Sabian, died from kidney failure Sept. 15, 2015 when his son was a sophomore at Metea Valley High in suburban Chicago. Jayden played in a game the day before his father's funeral, according to the Naperville Sun, because he felt that’s what his dad would have wanted.
Three years later, the younger Reed began his college career at Western Michigan, where he earned freshman All-America honors with his 56 catches for 797 yards and eight TDs receiving while also scoring another time on a punt return. He left Kalamazoo for MSU in the spring of 2019 to join Mark Dantonio’s program and his former high school quarterback Payton Thorne, but the wide receiver had to sit out that fall due to NCAA transfer regulations.
Reed returned to the field with a new coach in Mel Tucker in 2020, leading MSU with 33 catches for 407 receiving yards with three touchdowns. Then came a breakout year in 2021 as Reed and Thorne reconnected as starters for the Spartans. Reed earned offensive MVP honors in MSU’s Peach Bowl win over Pitt, catching two touchdowns among his six catches for 80 yards from Thorne.
Though he could have returned to college for a sixth season with the COVID waiver for 2020, Reed opted to enter the draft, unlike the previous year. In early February, he impressed scouts at the Senior Bowl, then carried it over to the NFL combine a month later in Indianapolis. Reed ran a 4.45 40-yard dash with a 1.57-second 10-yard split at the combine, posting a 4.29 in the 20-yard shuttle while going 33.5 inches in the vertical jump and 10 feet, 1 inch in the broad jump. And he did so with one eye swollen shut due to an infection.
Reed becomes the 30th MSU wide receiver selected all time, following former teammate Jalen Nailor going to Minnesota in the sixth round last year with the 191st pick.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: NFL draft: Michigan State's Jayden Reed drafted by Packers in Round 2
