Seahawks’ Jarran Reed denies spitting in face of Bucs’ Joe Hawley
Dec 2, 2016, 3:24 PM | Updated: 3:36 pm
(AP)
RENTON – Seahawks rookie defensive tackle Jarran Reed said he didn’t spit in the face of Buccaneers center Joe Hawley last week, calling the allegation that he may have done so “not true at all.”
“I don’t know. He could say whatever he wants,” Reed said Friday. “I don’t know why he would think that, bring that allegation towards me.”
Reed fired back at Hawley for making that allegation and for the way he played in the Buccaneers’ 14-5 win over Seattle.
“First of all, we play in between the lines,” Reed said. “You can go back and watch the film. You will see that. If he thinks he’s a clean player, then I don’t know what he’s seeing. But as far as the allegation of me spitting in his face, that’s not true at all. I mean, show me the play, show me where I did it, then you can say something. Other than that, I just think it’s funny.”
Hawley said during his radio show in Tampa Bay on Thursday that a Seahawks player spat in his face after one play Sunday without specifying when it happened. Hawley said he wasn’t sure who it was but that he thought it was Reed.
“They were hitting me late and then one guy got up, and when I came up all fired up, he actually spit in my face after one of the plays,” Hawley told Tampa Bay Sports Radio 620 WDAE. “And that really got me fired up because I just don’t think that should be a part of the game at all.”
Hawley added: “I mean, it’s one thing thing [to be] pushing, shouting, yelling. But as soon as he spit in my face, I was pretty fired up about that. He’s a young guy. I guess he just – that’s not the way to do it.”
Reed said he was aware of the allegation.
“Yeah, I definitely seen it. I seen it earlier on my Twitter account. I guess the Buccaneers are pretty pissed, but I really don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care for him or that organization or about the comments he made, so that’s really it. They can keep on talking about it all they want to.”
Hawley stormed off the field in obvious anger after the first play of the fourth quarter. He had blocked Reed to the ground on that play, and the two players went at it after getting up. Asked about a point in the game where Hawley was noticeably upset, Reed suggested it was “because he couldn’t block a rookie the way he wanted to. I’d be pretty pissed, too. I guess he needs to do a better job.”
Asked if the game was more chippy than usual, Reed said: “They were trying. Why, I don’t know. They was trying. I thought as the whistle blows, the play was dead. Obviously to them it wasn’t. So that’s all I know about that.”
Asked if any of the Buccaneers said anything to him after the game, Reed said they didn’t and that it was “all cordial.”
“Nobody was mad or anything,” he said. “And all of the sudden – I thought we were all grown men. Things are pretty funny. He sounds like a 14-year-old girl running to everybody, ‘Oh, he spit in my face’ and all that. Anyways. Next. Anything about the game this week?”