SAN FRANCISCO — The Moscone Center floor vibrated with the manufactured hype of Super Bowl LX, a circus of cameras, overlapping radio shouts, and NFL elites. Amid the madness of Radio Row earlier this month, New Orleans Saints safety Justin Reid found his quiet place. He didn’t talk defensive coverages. He talked computer science.
Returning to the Bay Area hits differently for the Stanford product. Reid anchored the Cardinal defense from 2015 to 2017 before hearing his name called in the draft. Now a seasoned veteran navigating the grueling reality of the modern NFL, stepping off the plane in Northern California felt like a sudden exhale.
“I feel like I’m right back in my backyard,” Reid said, his voice cutting through the surrounding media static. “It’s so cool.”
Reid mapped out his Super Bowl week itinerary, and it heavily featured a trip 30 miles south to Palo Alto. He planned to walk the campus and track down his old professors. For a guy who makes a living delivering bone-rattling hits in the secondary, his fondest college memories completely ignore the gridiron.
He bypassed the rivalry wins and stadium highlights. Instead, he painted a picture of everyday campus life.
“The best memories aren’t anything that’s necessarily on the football field,” he explained. “It’s the locker room. It’s the dormitories.”
Reid landed in Ujamaa House during his Stanford days. He admitted the transition threw him off balance. Sharing tight quarters and communal spaces didn’t immediately appeal to a star athlete focused on his craft.
“I thought I would hate being in the dormitory,” Reid said. “I did not like it the first month. But then after that, you start to actually like it. You get to know all the people down the hall.”
“You talk to people you would have never otherwise talked to and connect with them. You learn how to get along with anybody. That turns into real skills in the real world.”
— Justin Reid, New Orleans Saints Safety
That forced proximity birthed a unique kind of growth. Football locker rooms require a specific chemistry. You take 53 men from drastically different backgrounds and ask them to bleed for a common goal. Reid learned the blueprint for that chemistry in the halls of Ujamaa.
When pressed on his favorite academic experience, Reid didn’t hesitate. He named CS106A—Stanford’s famously rigorous introductory computer science course. He embraced the academic grind just as fiercely as the athletic one.
“It’s such a special place. It’s different than anywhere else in the world,” Reid said. “The people you meet, the connections you make, networking, it’s unbelievable.”
The 2025-2026 NFL season tested the Saints, requiring veteran leadership in the secondary to weather a turbulent NFC South. Reid brings exactly that. His ability to read offenses pre-snap translates directly from the analytical mindset he sharpened in Palo Alto. As New Orleans heads into the offseason looking to retool their defensive front, Reid remains a vital anchor on the back end. He already understands how to connect different personalities into a cohesive unit. He learned it long before his first NFL paycheck.
