Q. Does anything change for you in the playoffs?
JARRAN REED: As in like?
Q. Your team, your preparation? Anything change at all for you?
JARRAN REED: No. We do everything the same. Everything stays the same.
Q. What are you expecting from the 49ers that you maybe didn't see the last time you played them?
JARRAN REED: I expect them to be who they are. We know what happened last game. We're expecting them to come out and try to attack us and hit us with some new stuff.
We're honing into our keys and we are just here to play good football.
Q. Your run numbers have been down lately. Are you expecting them to try to reemphasize that against you?
JARRAN REED: Absolutely. We expect them to try to run the ball more, but that's what we hone ourselves on as well, is stopping the run.
Q. Why do you think you guys are such goo -- you guys talk about being good against the run all the time. Numbers show that. What's the key to that?
JARRAN REED: I think the emphasis we put on it during the week. Everybody being in the right spots, nobody is trying to be a superhero on defense. Everybody is playing for the man next to him. You know, staying up front, playing with our hands, trying to get off blocks, trying to make negative plays or plays for no gain.
Q. When run defenses aren't clicking, is that what you alluded to there a big part of it, is guys trying to do someone else's job?
JARRAN REED: Yeah. Sometimes the guy's trying to do too much, not playing the right keys, trying to pick a play they think they may have seen. It may be different. Just playing outside of the box. That's not what we do. That's not what we want to do.
Q. If you know what the guy is going to do next to you, does that make you play faster?
JARRAN REED: Absolutely. You know, as long as we're in the same accord and I know what the guy next to me is doing, just makes our job easier. We can play more freely.
Q. How much pride do you take in what you guys have put on tape this season as a front line?
JARRAN REED: You know, you are what you put on film. We don't want to put no bad film on tape. We want to show who we are and make a statement with who we are. We want to play good, sound football, and I think we been doing that.
Q. Watch any of the games this weekend?
JARRAN REED: I watched all of them. I'm a football junkie.
Q. What stood out to you?
JARRAN REED: I thought all the games was great from each side of the division. Guys were out there battling. You could tell guys really wanted it out there. They're leaving it on the field. That's playoff-atmosphere football. That's what you can expect from everybody.
Q. There are a lot of young guys on this team that have not played in the postseason yet. Do you give them advice or let them go into...
JARRAN REED: Yeah, absolutely. Just letting them know like don't try to do nothing different. Do what we been doing the whole season. Lock into your film work. Make sure your preparation is right. Make sure your body is right, body and mind. You know, go into the week feeling good. Go into the game playing, feeling good and try to know it inside out if you can.
Q. It's been a few years for you to be in the playoffs. What does it mean for you to get back there at this point in your career?
JARRAN REED: It definitely feels good, man. To be playing as long as I have and to be able to get back to the playoffs, especially here in Seattle, it's real special. I said that couple weeks ago we had won the NFC. It felt good to be able to be here when we brought it back home. We got more work to do. The job is not done.
Q. Saturday night, division rival. What do you think the atmosphere is going to be like for the first home playoff game in a while?
JARRAN REED: I can't wait. I can't wait to see the fans. I can't wait to get out there and just feel the energy from the field. You know, we need our 12s out there. We need them as loud as ever. Trying to break the little sound meter. I think it topped at 109. We're trying to break it to where it can't record it.
We need it loud, man so the Dark Side can come alive. Especially we going into a situation, just playing our style of football.
Q. You got three of the four teams left in the playoffs are from the NFC West. What have you felt playing in this division this year?
JARRAN REED: This division is great, man. Just like you said, there is three of us in the playoffs. Especially at the point we at now, I don't know like what's statistics on that was, if it's been done before, but that's just a testament to the teams that's in our division.
Everybody is good. They're playing some great football. Some great quarterbacks involved. You know, it's competition, man. We can't shy away from it. We got to meet to face to face and head on.
Q. Can you remember a time you played the same team back-to-back?
JARRAN REED: Yeah, I think 2020 we did. We played the Rams. Won the NFC and played them in the wildcard like the week after. Yeah, so that was the last time I probably can recall.
Q. What's kind of unique about that in terms of how you prep for a situation like that?
JARRAN REED: For one, we get a team that we don't like. Me personally don't like nothing about them. But just get a chance to go at them again. We don't do too much talking. We let our pass talk. We know what's at stake; they know what's at stake.
We know it's about getting out between them lines and hitting it head on, man on man, mano-e-mano.
Q. Jarran, with the way you guys play two-high coverages, nickel defense predominantly, how special does your D-line have to be in order for this whole thing to work?
JARRAN REED: To be honest, I get the call, sometimes I don't know what the coverage is. I just know that we got a job to do up front. If it has to do with four man, five man, six man, seven man, we just got to win our one-on-ones. We got to defeat blocks and stay square and keep our linebackers clean.
Q. When did you first decide to celebrate sacks with the Michael Bennett dance?
JARRAN REED: I think the first year I got back in '23. It was when I think we had played the Carolina Panthers. I got a great memory. We was doing the -- I think it was the anniversary of the Super Bowl team and I just knew a lot of guys that I came in with when I was a rookie was going to be there.
Especially for me personally I was like, man, if I got a sack I got to do it. I was actually nervous because I didn't know how was it going to look. I said then I'll keep doing it. I like it. Hopefully the fans love it. Mike B loves it for sure.
Q. Do you hear from him when you do it?
JARRAN REED: Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's funny.
Q. When did you start not like the 49ers?
JARRAN REED: When I got here.
Q. Is that something that somebody told you that was part of the deal here?
JARRAN REED: No. I think it's like you may just go to a college or a high school, you got that rivalry school and it's always just like there. You have to see them. You have no choice. I'm not really just joining the other side, so I stick with who I came in with.
Q. When you keep the linebackers clean what does that allow them to do?
JARRAN REED: It allows them to flow, allows them see the ball better, see their gaps, what they need to read.
Q. Going back to, you know who the players are, Ernest Jones. Coach talked about the ability to put players in the right -- I mean, what have you seen? What can you say about his ability to get plays to the right position?
JARRAN REED: That's our quarterback of our defense. We want him to hold us accountable. We want him to be able to count on us to do our job so he doesn't have to think. We want to make his job as easy as possible.
Q. Seems like when you address the team that the gist of the message is always some version of just run and hit. Why is that always the thing you want to lead with the team?
JARRAN REED: Because at the end of the day we can talk about the Xs and Os all you want to. How hard are you playing is what's really going to stand out. That's why I want to keep reiterating that to the guys. At the end of the day we're still kids and we grew up playing this. I been playing since I was five years old.
At the end of the day when you don't know, you just run and hit. Hit everything moving.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports