Eijah Reed is in his sixth year at the University of South Dakota, during which he's stepped up and played a ton of downs at safety as a Coyote.
 
He has demonstrated a knack for great instincts and sure tackling in that time with a nose for the football.
 
It's what you want out of your safeties, in other words. Add to that being a good student and someone who has established himself as a strong, mature presence on the team and you have the kind of player you hope stays around for six years.
 
Or, in this case, the kind of player you need when you have playoff aspirations and a pile of Missouri Valley Conference foes in front of you.
 
"It's great to be in a defense that you've been playing for two years," said Reed, a 6-2, 220-pounder who will likely receive NFL interest at the end of his tenure with the Coyotes. "You get to learn the system through and through. I'm excited about the season right now – we're playing good football at every position on defense."
 
Safety in particular. Reed has two interceptions and is third on the team with 28 tackles as part of a unit that held Indiana State to 205 yards of offense and just 33 yards on the ground last week in a 38-10 Dakota Days win.
 
He and his teammates will get another opportunity to show how much better they are when they take on No. 13/15 North Dakota at the DakotaDome on Saturday. The Fighting Hawks posted an impressive 21-10 win over the Coyotes last spring.
 
"Scheme-wise we're much improved," Reed said. "Coach (Travis) Johansen and the rest of the staff run it very well. They've been very good at teaching us what we need to do. I like it a lot and it has really helped us out this season."
 
Reed, who has already earned a bachelor's degree in communication at USD, was an excellent football player at Rangeview High School in Aurora, Colorado, earning all-conference honors three times. He was a part of a state-ranked basketball team, averaging more than 16 points a game as a senior and he also cleared 6-4 in the high jump, setting a school record at Rangeview.
 
Any one of those things would qualify him as a strong athlete, but all together, it makes sense that he was going to figure things out.
 
Plus, football was part of his life at an early age.
 
"I just loved it," he said. "I loved watching it, I loved the football video games. Plus my dad and my uncles and a lot of my family played the sport, too. It grew on me. It's always been a love of mine. I'm just a big sports guy."
 
Reed is a family guy, too. He's close to his three older sisters and their children and he's tight, too, with his two brothers who are closer to his age.
 
"We all grew up tough guys," Reed said. "We were very competitive with each other."
 
That environment was refreshingly old school, as Reed tells it.
 
"It was snowing one time – we lived in Colorado, right? – and we were playing football with the neighbors," Reed said. "We played on the street – tackle football on the street. With the snow on the ground, we were OK, though. Thankfully, nobody got hurt. We actually enjoyed it."
 
Though obviously a good athlete with a high ceiling, Reed was not heavily recruited by Division I programs in high school. When USD became interested, Reed was quick to reciprocate. He wanted to play at this level.
 
"I didn't know anything about South Dakota," he said. "But when they got interested, I wanted to talk to them. So I looked it up, I went on an official visit and I fell in love with it. I loved the facilities, I loved the idea of playing inside and I liked the way the coaching staff dealt with the players. It was a very good atmosphere."
 
Reed showed up as a 6-2, 185-pounder who could dunk, but would not have been easily identified as a football player until he started spending time lifting weights. He's now 220 and he looks like he plays football.
 
"I was really skinny," he said. "By the end of my first year I was 195 and I've worked from there. I started eating better and I got my body to where it needed to be."
 
He has also got his brain where it needs to be. It's part of the fabric of football for coaches and players to spend a lot of time watching video. It's not an automatic, however, that everyone who watches lots of video gets better for having done so. At some point, you have to apply context to what you're watching.
 
"When I got here, I didn't know how to watch film," Reed said. "I watched it like a spectator would. Throughout the years, I learned how to watch it in a way where I was getting an understanding of what they were doing. It has made me a better player."
 
It's been a long haul for Reed, who joined the program in 2016. Like a few other Coyotes, he's now playing in his second consecutive final season thanks to the pandemic.
 
The great thing is he's just fine with that.
 
"It's been a journey and I've enjoyed the process," he said. "I'm grateful to be here and grateful for the guys – the coaching staff and my teammates. It's all been great and I'm looking forward to the future."