Free safety who wears Ed Reed Ravens jersey and Pittsburgh wide receiver in Hines Ward Steelers jersey are obviously not the best of friends. They play for their respective teams on the field.

Howver, about an hour before Wednesday’s practice and four days prior to Sunday’s season opener between the bitter AFC North opponents, Reed showed his sympathy to Ward over his DUI arrest July 9 in his home state of Georgia and said he was glad that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did not suspend Ward for Sunday’s showdown.

“The DUI was something that happened, and I’m sure Hines took care of that with the courts and community service or whatever it may be,” Reed said. “It’s an unfortunate situation. You don’t want to see any player in that situation. As far as suspension goes, you never want to see a player out of the game either. It’s not even a decision of mine to comment on. Whatever happened, happened. I’m just glad he’s all right [and] that there wasn’t anything tragic that came out of that because we know about situations where that has [occurred]. They took care of that situation and that’s behind them. We’re going to play football, and he’s going to come at me, and I’m going to go at him the way we do.”