Just promoted Lt. j.g. Reynolds looking to land with Seahawks
Former Navy star, ex-Raven adapting to new roles
Keenan Reynolds just got promoted. Twice.
He’s risen from a fringe free agent thinking about playing in Canada to catching passes from Russell Wilson in the first days of Seattle Seahawks training camp. He’s in the right place at the right time, part of Seattle’s suddenly depleted receiver unit.
And recently, he became Lieutenant Junior Grade Reynolds.
The wide receiver and kick returner is a cryptologic warfare officer in United States Navy.
“J.G. Just got promoted,” Reynolds said with a grin after the fifth practice of training camp at team headquarters.
Asked whether he has brought up the fact that Wilson, his quarterback, and every other Seahawk teammate should be calling him “sir,” if not saluting him, Reynolds laughed. Somewhat nervously laughed, too, as if someone passing by him into the locker roommight hear about his seemingly secret, second life. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t even talk about it.” But the fact is that the former four-year quarterback for the Naval Academy who set NCAA Division I records with 88 touchdowns and 4,559 rushing yards by a quarterback — now a 23-year-old who is trying to win a Seahawks roster spot as a receiver and on special teams and make his NFL regular-season debut — has rank.
Reynolds’ got rank like no other player in the NFL.
He is the last graduate of a service academy to directly enter the NFL instead of active duty in the military upon graduation. Reynolds was the last approved case of a short-lived waiver from the Department of Defense. It allowed elite-athlete graduates of a service academy the chance to defer active-duty time and go into the Ready Reserve immediately to pursue pro football careers.
The recent history of service academy graduates playing in the NFLhasbeenamix of new opportunities, Super Bowls and doors slammed shut.
If Barack Obama had not been president when Reynolds graduated from the Naval Academy two years ago, Reynolds might be a full-time officer on active duty. The Obama administration relaxed service rules and granted by-case service waivers.
Months before Reynolds graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, Navy football retired his jersey number 19. He joined Roger Staubach, Joe Bellino and Napoleon McCallum as the only USNA football players the Midshipmen have so honored.
Yet in the spring of 2016, the NFL did not invite the record-setting Reynolds to the league’s annual scouting combine, presumably because of uncertainty about his service obligations to the Navy. Service academy graduates have a commitment to serve as an officer on active duty, typically for about five years.
That April, the Ravens drafted Reynolds in the sixth round. Hespent most of the 2016 season on the team’s practice squad. The Ravens promoted him to the 53-man active roster for the last game of his rookie season, but left him inactive on game day. The Ravens released him Sept. 1 among its final preseason cuts. Wide receiver Keenan Reynolds, on active-reserve status in the Navy, is trying to make the Seahawks roster after being let go by the Ravens and Redskins.
The Washington Redskins signed him to their practice squad last November but left him there to end the 2017 season.
The former star quarterback said his experience with the Ravens taught him the work it takes to convert from a college quarterback to NFL wide receiver and kick returner — “a lot of work, a lot of trial by fire,” he said. It also taught him the value of special teams in breaking through with an NFL team.
At the 2017 combine, Air Force wide receiver Jalen Robinette was hoping to follow Reynolds into the NFL. But Robinette was at that time sensing a change may be coming in DoD policy under the new president, Donald Trump.
Indeed, two months later, in the spring of 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the two-year waiver-request policy.
Does Reynolds have second thoughts on not joining his Annapolis classmates, plus almost all academy graduates before and every one of them since, in serving on active duty right now?
“I’m not sure if ‘second thoughts’ is the proper way to put it,” Reynolds said.
“It’s definitely a humbling thing to know that my class was the last class [that could apply for the waiver]. I definitely feel for those guys that came before me. But I know that they are still thinking about pursuing [their professional-sports dreams] after they complete their first two years of active service.
“And the important thing to remember is, I am still doing what’s required of me in the reserves. I am still doing my drills and my requirements. I’ve got eight years in the reserves. I am two years in. So, basically, I owe a certain number of drills [training] a year, and a certain number of active-duty days.”
That’s why Reynolds was in Pensacola, Fla., this offseason. That is where the Navy assigned him, to its eight-week Information Warfare Basic Course (IWBC) at the Center for Information Dominance at Corry Station. The Department of the Navy requires reserve officers to complete the IWBC within 36 months of their date of commissioning. Reynolds was commissioned as an ensign into the Navy in the spring of 2016.
Lieutenant Junior Grade Reynolds is on active-reserve status in the Navy, attached to a reserve center in Nashville. He is cross-assigned to his original post-Naval Academy unit, Cryptologic Warfare Group Six at Fort Meade, Maryland.
He’s also on pressing-duty status in the NFL, trying to make the Seahawks roster out of training camp at the end of this month.