It will be a surreal moment for Raelakia Reddick when her son straps up his cleats and takes the field for Super Bowl LVII.
“It really hasn’t hit yet, like my son is not only going to the Super Bowl, but playing in the Super Bowl,” Raelakia said.
On the field where he first launched his NFL career as an Arizona Cardinal in 2017, Haason Reddick will try to help the team he grew up rooting for bring home the Lombardi Trophy.
“It’s a big deal, all these little pieces that just make this even more of a big deal,” Raelakia said.
Raelakia proudly displays pictures of Haason during his playing career a Haddon Heights High School.
Haason excelled on both sides of the football at Haddon Height High School, but his college recruitment was stunted by a broken femur his senior year that limited him to just four games.
Drawing inspiration from the never-say-quit attitude Raelakia instilled on him at a young age, Haason went to Temple as a walk-on and climbed the depth chart which caught the eye of NFL scouts.
“We finish what we start we don’t give up, and he has literally taken that to heart and that’s what he’s done,” Raelakia said.
With the 13th overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft, the Arizona Cardinals selected Haason. Raelakia, a South Jersey native and lifelong Eagles fan, remembers keeping her eye on the Eagles pick on draft night.
“When he got drafted for Arizona, Eagles were the next pick, and he got drafted, absolutely loved it, but I was like ‘one pick short!’,” Raelakia said.
Through four seasons in Arizona and a brief stop in Carolina where Haason linked back up with former Temple coach Matt Ruhle, Raelakia proudly watched her son become one of the game’s best linebackers.
“It’s excitement, like, I know that this is my son and I know that last name on the back of that jersey, but that is my son out there giving it his all, and I am losing my mind,” Raelakia said.
Now with the Eagles in the Super Bowl, Haason’s football career that first started less than 10 miles away from Lincoln Financial Field has nearly come full circle.
“I knew it was coming, I knew it was coming, faster than I thought it would, but I knew we would be here,” Raelakia said.
