Reginald Clinton Tongue (born April 11, 1973) is a former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

safety Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to risk management, the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk. Meanings There are ...

Early life

Tongue attended Lathrop High School in

Fairbanks, Alaska Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska and the second largest in the state. The 2020 Census put the po ...

. As a senior for Lathrop, Tongue played running back/defensive back and rushed for 932 yards and 12 scores. On defense, he had 11 interceptions. He was named 1990 Alaska football player of the year and signed a letter of intent to play RB for Oregon State University.

College career

Tongue attended and played

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

for the

Oregon State Beavers The Oregon State Beavers are the athletic teams that represent Oregon State University, located in Corvallis, Oregon. The Beavers compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I ( Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) for c ...

. Originally recruited as a running back, Tongue was redshirted his freshman year, during his sophomore year, due to injuries in the defensive backfield Tongue moved to cornerback and eventually to free safety his junior year. During his tenure, Reggie tied a pac-10 record with 4 interceptions returned for touchdowns. He finished at OSU with 9 interceptions, 362 tackles and was named to the 2nd team all-pac-10 team in 1994 and the 1st team in 1995.

Professional career

Tongue was selected in the second round (58th overall) in the 1996 NFL Draft by the

Kansas City Chiefs The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The tea ...

. He would play there for 4 seasons, until being picked up by the

Seattle Seahawks The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 as ...

for the 2000 season, where he played until 2004. In 2004 he played for the

New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The J ...

and completed his career in

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

with the

Oakland Raiders The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Raide ...

NFL career statistics

References

External links

Database Football: Reggie Tongue stats
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tongue, Reggie 1973 births African-American players of American football American football safeties Kansas City Chiefs players Lathrop High School (Alaska) alumni Living people New York Jets players Oakland Raiders players Oregon State Beavers football players Players of American football from Baltimore Sportspeople from Fairbanks, Alaska Seattle Seahawks players 21st-century African-American sportspeople 20th-century African-American sportspeople