KANSAS CITY, Mo. — You first knew Justin Reid as the new Chiefs safety who came over from Houston.
Then, thanks to some preseason fun and a not-so-fun injury to Harrison Butker in Week 1 in Arizona, you knew Reid as a kicker.
But it turns out, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
"I kind of enjoy trying new things all the time, dabbling in stuff," Reid said.
And he's not just talking about football. In fact, he's barely talking about football.
"I like to call myself, what do you call it? Like, a renaissance man," Reid said through laughter.
Reid is spot on — he can juggle, is a big fisherman and majored in engineering at Stanford, where he also developed codes to help predict the weather as well as computer programs used to determine a player's worth in football.
The list goes on.
"I tried to teach myself to play the piano, do some origami," Reid said. "I like to play different sports, take trips."
It makes sense that being well-rounded is at the heart of his charity, the J. Reid Indeed Foundation, which aims to get kids excited about technology.
"It really kind of follows my journey as I was growing up," said Reid, who grew up right on the Mississippi River just outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "I grew up and I was good at math but I wasn't the most familiar with computers, typing, Excel, definitely not coding or anything like that."
Stanford changed that. Now Reid is trying to spark the renaissance spirit in others by catching them early on subjects like science, technology, engineering and math.
"I never would've known that if I wasn't exposed to it," Reid said. "I know there's a lot of kids, there's kind of some anxiety behind even trying it...I just wanted to be able to expose them to it at a younger age."
Reid himself is still learning new things.
"My two favorite hobbies right now are bowling and golf," he said. "I'm not afraid to try something new...doesn't matter if I'm the best at it or not. But I just like to go have fun with it."
