Each week during the 2025 season, we’re going through the Eagles media guide to find an interesting nugget.
The Eagles’ PR staff does a great job filling out these little oddities in the media guide and they serve as a good way to meet the players behind the helmets.
This week we chatted with safety Reed Blankenship, whose first job was working on a farm back home in Alabama.
Me: It says your first job was working on a farm in high school.
Blankenship: Yes.
Me: Tell me what you were doing on that farm.
Blankenship: So I think a lot of the high school kids, a lot of my friends, kind of chipped in and worked there. It was a chicken farm. We also hauled hay during the summer. Square bales. We would legit go from football workouts in the morning, straight to the hayfield and then kind of work all day with each other and then get home and get paid for it.
Me: How old were you?
Blankenship: What was I … 16. 15, 16. It was fun. It was a different environment, obviously. It was tough. But you were out there with your friends.
Me: Did it help you build strength?
Blankenship: Absolutely. It’s like that natural strength. However heavy they are, and you’re throwing them up on a trailer, stacking them. Once you stack them, you got to unload them in a hayloft so you’ve got to throw them. It’s like power cleans all over again.
Me: Is was like you and your buddies though?
Blankenship: Yeah, it was me and my buddies. It was a handful of us that would go out there and work. It was just different. It was fun. But it was work, obviously.
Me: Some change in your pocket, though, at that age?
Blankenship: Absolutely. It felt great to get straight cash, get a check. Use it on the weekend, whether it’s gas or whatever.
Me: What was the purchase you needed the money for back then?
Blankenship: Well, I wanted to upgrade my truck. The big thing down south was straight popping your truck.
Me: What’s that mean?
Blankenship: No muffler basically. Take the muffler off and it would just be loud. Pretty much everybody did that. I did that with my money. Just saving up for your truck or saving up to go out to eat at Waffle House.
Me: I’m just picturing your teachers at the high school like, ‘Man, here they come again.”
Blankenship: My mom used to say, ‘I can hear you come down the road. I knew you were home.’
Me: Did it teach you work ethic and that sort of thing?
Blankenship: Absolutely. Even before that too, how I was raised. Give 110 percent. My dad has always said that, my mom has always said that. Regardless of what I’m doing, whether it’s school, whether it’s doing stuff outside of football, whether it’s sports, always give my all.
Me: Thank you, man. I appreciate it.
Blankenship: No problem.