Haason Reddick: ‘I cried’ after setting Cardinals sack record vs. Giants

Markus Golden believed Haason Reddick when his Arizona Cardinals teammate said Wednesday that he was going to get after New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones.

“The look he had in his eyes this week, rushing all week, I knew he was going to have a big one,” Golden said. “I ain’t know it was going to be that big.”

Reddick’s individual performance in a 26-7 win against New York was record big.

The fourth-year pro finished with a Cardinals single-game franchise record five sacks, and three of those came on strip-sacks.

Reddick surpassed Curtis Greer’s 4.5 sacks set in 1983 against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Record or not, the importance of the big game for Reddick came in what this game — and this season — has meant for the career of the 2017 first-round pick, who had gone through three position changes and three coaching staff changes his four years in the NFL.

“Right now I’m just processing it, I’m just taking it in. I cried at the end of the game, filled with joy, felt blessed,” Reddick said. “This whole year has just been important to me, to see things going in the way that I want them to (be) going.”

.@Haason7Reddick was emotional on the sidelines after breaking a @AZCardinals franchise record with 5 sacks today 🙏 pic.twitter.com/55AIG45o2G

— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) December 13, 2020

Entering Week 14 with 5.0 sacks to lead Arizona, Reddick now has 10. He posted six total quarterback hits against New York with two tackles for loss.

“I had worked with Charlie (Bullen) and Buck (Brentson Buckner) … and looked at what I could do to make my pass-rushes work,'” Reddick said of his outside linebacker and defensive line coaches. “As far as what got me going, the energy today from the team, from the coaches, man, it was crazy. After I got my first one, second one, they just told me, ‘Keep going.’

“It was a mixture of that and just the want-to.”

Reddick said he shared a moment with defensive coordinator Vance Joseph after the game at MetLife Stadium.

It was Joseph who, in the middle of last season, helped Reddick transition to outside linebacker after he started at inside backer but struggled.

A year prior, Reddick had also scuffled in picking up an off-ball linebacker position under head coach Steve Wilks. And as a rookie under the Bruce Arians regime, he made a position switch mid-year due to personnel holes.

Heading into 2020, Arizona opted against picking up the fifth year on Reddick’s rookie deal, making this a contract year.

“I’ve said it all along, how much respect I have for him, the perseverance he’s shown,” head coach Kliff Kingsbury said. “We tried to make him a standup linebacker the past three years — it’s just not his deal.

“A guy like that, who stuck to it, who didn’t let the noise get him down, didn’t let any sort of frustration to get him down … to have a game like that, you couldn’t be happier for him.”

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