Leaving Cincinnati was hard for D.J. Reader, harder, he said, than leaving Houston four years ago: "You go through a lot of emotions with who you were with previously. That organization took me to a Super Bowl, so there were a lot of connections there." Helps that he landed in Detroit.
"I'm on to a better opportunity that I'm really, really excited about," Reader said Thursday after signing a two-year, $27 million deal with the Lions.
The massive defensive tackle is here to help push this team over the top, like a late-arriving man to the pile. Reader has been to where the Lions are trying to go, though he didn't quite get there himself. He lost in the Super Bowl with the Bengals two years ago, then the AFC championship game last year. He still feels the pain the Lions experienced this year.
“I was telling them upstairs, these guys got that same taste that I got. I got to a Super Bowl and lost. These guys got to the NFC Championship and lost. So everybody in this building has that same goal to go get that taste out of their mouth," Reader said. "I’m so ecstatic about that part. I could run through a wall right now, because you don’t (always) have time to right those wrongs, and this is an opportunity. And I don’t think we’re going to take it lightly as a team to go out there and do our thing.”
Reader tends to inflict pain on others. He's 6'3, 335 pounds and plays with a mean streak, a lot like the 6'2, 315-pound defensive tackle he's about to team up with in the trenches: Alim McNeill. In acquiring Reader, the Lions are doubling down on a defensive identity: You will not run the ball against us. They smothered running backs last season, and next season might just swallow them whole.
At its best, Detroit's defense is violent. McNeill uses that word often, which comes top-down from coordinator Aaron Glenn. Reader basically defined violence Thursday when he said "the best part" of playing defensive tackle is "being able to, play after play after play, just dominate with my physicality."
He said he's "super excited" about lining up next to McNeill, "a young player who has a lot -- a lot -- of talent." Both of them ranked among the NFL's top 10 interior defenders against the run last season, per Pro Football Focus, and among the top 15 overall. And both of them can collapse the pocket against the pass. They had 34 quarterback pressures a pop last season, Reader in 14 games, McNeill in 13.
It was impossible not to hear McNeill when Reader said, "That grit, that nastiness, if you're a D-lineman, you want to play in an environment like that."
"Guys are going to fly around, play hard, their coaches are tough-nosed, he's demanding, he's not disrespectful, that's amazing. As a player, if you don't want that type of stuff, then you don't want to get better," said Reader. "Being here and feeling the energy here, it seems like everyone in this building has an agenda to get better."
Reader is still physically getting better after tearing his quad late last season, which required surgery. He suffered the same injury to his other leg in 2020 and said the rehab is a little easier this time around: "My body is more familiar with what's going on." Reader, who turns 30 this summer, is pleased so far with his recovery and said that he expects "to be out there at the beginning of the season. I expect to be ready."
He also points out that the season after his "last quad injury, came back, went to the Super Bowl, got a sack in the Super Bowl, balled out, right?"
"It's the same confidence here," he said. "That's why I say, never let people paint the vision of what you see in the mirror. You know who you are. You see it every day. I couldn't be more confident in where I'm going to be."
Assuming he does make a full recovery, Reader's injury may have worked in the Lions' favor. While several defensive tackles are now making north of $20 million a year, including a few that signed this offseason, Reader will cost about $13.5 million per year in Detroit. He compared his situation to when "a car gets hit and you try to get it on less value. It's just depreciation. That's just how people feel."
Reader flew to Detroit this week to meet with the Lions and their medical staff and said that "for me, it was important to come into a place and let them know and understand, I still understand my value and who I am as a person." Everything checked out for the Lions.
"We were able to get here, talk through the language, work through those things and feel in a good place for both (sides)," he said. "This is one of the places that gave me the opportunity to do that, so I was super excited."
Reader's heart really started pumping when he shook hands for the first time with Dan Campbell. As clear as Campbell's passion is from afar, Reader said it resonated to an even deeper degree in person.
"It was something that comes over you when you know somebody cares about you and they're talking to you and they're being honest," he said. "They look you dead in your eye when they're talking to you. It almost gives you chills. It makes you feel like, 'Alright, I would really run through a wall for this guy.'"
That's two walls he wants to run through in Detroit, where the Lions' defense is building one up front.