Former USA star embodies Commanders’ ‘Anybody. Anywhere. Anytime.’

It’s painted on the wall in the Washington facility and coach Dan Quinn has quoted it after games: “Anybody. Anywhere. Anytime.”

Washington safety Jeremy Reaves figures his NFL career embodies that mentality.

“It’s kind of self-explanatory,” Reaves said. “We can do it however you want to do it wherever. That’s the mentality. I think – excuse my language – when you say dog-ass competitor, I think that’s what that means. It’s like it doesn’t matter what the situation is, where we’re at, who we’re going against, you got to come see about us. That’s the mentality you have to have. I think as an ultimate competitor, that’s what you have to think. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing against.

“Heck, I’m sitting up here. I was a two-star recruit. I went to South Alabama. But I turned myself into something different. That’s because of how I think about myself. And so when you have a team that thinks that way, that’s kind of the result that you get is just a bunch of guys that are going to compete their asses off no matter what the situation is.”

Washington will play the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship Game at 2 p.m. CST Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. FOX will televise the game.

The 2017 Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Year at South Alabama, Reaves got cut by the Eagles at the end of his first preseason as an undrafted rookie in 2018 – the first of five times he would be released by an NFL team.

Reaves caught on with Washington’s practice squad that season and played in 26 games across the 2018 through 2021 seasons, but he didn’t make the team’s initial 53-man active roster in any of those campaigns. As recently as 2021, Reaves still made four trips between Washington’s practice squad and the active roster.

But in 2022, Reaves received Pro Bowl recognition as the NFC special-teamer, and he signed a two-year contract with Washington before the 2024 season.

This season, Reaves joined outside linebacker Mykal Walker and inside linebacker Nick Bellore as the Washington players with more than 300 special-teams plays in the regular season.

“My career started (in Philadelphia), but this place became my home,” Reaves said. “And so to be able to go back there and compete for a chance to go to the big dance, you can’t draw it up any better. That’s what every kid dreams for, so I’m super excited, man, just to be able to go out there and just compete at the highest level on one of the biggest stages in the world with a chance to help my team go win. It’s a really, really cool moment, man. You don’t get that a lot.”

The Commanders carry a seven-game winning streak into Sunday’s game, including two postseason road victories – 23-20 over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Jan. 12 and 45-31 over the Detroit Lions on Jan. 18.

Washington has a 14-5 record this season after going 4-13 in 2023.

“I think it’s easy to fall in the hype when things are going good in the moment,” Reaves said. “But we’ve had moments when things weren’t going as well, and we still found ways to win. I think that’s when it becomes real for everybody in the building. I mean, when we started that run there, when we started winning three, four, it’s like, ‘OK, we got something different here.’ We got to maximize this. …

“When you believe outside noise, I think that can be misleading. Outside noise can be a false narrative. But when you have that confidence within, that’s what really translates and transcends. Everybody in this building, whether they had it before or didn’t, built that confidence within themselves and within each other till, like, this is the goal that we have, and it’s very attainable. We just got to go out there and prove it.”

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Sunday’s NFC Championship Game will be the first since the 1986 season to match NFC East rivals. That season, the New York Giants defeated the Washington Redskins 17-0 before downing the Denver Broncos 39-20 in Super Bowl XXI.

The third game between the Commanders and Eagles this season will determine the NFC representative in Super Bowl LIX.

Philadelphia defeated Washington 26-18 on Nov. 14, and Washington defeated Philadelphia 36-33 on Dec. 22, giving the Eagles the only loss in their past 15 games.

“It comes down to executing what we have going on and outrunning and outhitting,” Reaves said of the role of special teams in Sunday’s game. “That’s our mantra. We live by that; we die by that. It’s going to come down to that. At the end of the day, these are NFC East games. We know how they go. They are very tight games usually. And so every play matters whether that’s special teams, whether that’s kicks, whatever it may be. Every yard matters in these type of situations. And so being at your best when your best is required -- that’s the mentality I have and all these guys in here have.”

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at @AMarkG1.