Robert Griffin III’s partially torn LCL and ACL was the main story following the Redskins Seahawks playoff game on Sunday, but it wasn’t the only devastating knee injury suffered during the contest.
Chris Clemons, the Seahawks’ leader in sacks during the regular season, tore his left ACL and meniscus early in the third quarter. His replacement: rookie defensive end Bruce Irvin.
“Bruce Irvin will step up and take a bunch of those snaps,” head coach Pete Carroll said in the postgame press conference. “This is Bruce’s opportunity. It’s what we drafted him to play. We’ll see how he does. We expect him to really play well as he steps up.”
Seattle surprised NFL experts when they selected Irvin with the 15th pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. The shock didn’t come because of what he didn’t do on the field during his college career, but rather what he did off of it.
Irvin racked up more than 40 sacks in his three seasons at West Virginia and was a fan favorite. He was a pure pass rusher in a draft devoid of them. He had the perfect combination of speed and strength, standing at 6’ 3” and 245 pounds and running a 4.41 40 yard dash, yet he wasn’t projected as a first rounder in any major mock draft.
The reasons dated back to when he was in high school.
Irvin attended Stockbridge High, a mostly white high school in Stone Mountain, Ga. He had trouble adjusting to the different culture and when he overheard teachers talking about him wishing he would leave, he dropped out. His mother responded by kicking him out of the house.
After leaving high school in the rearview, Irvin started hanging out with other troubled teens. On May 23, 2007, he and two others broke into a drug dealer’s house in suburban Atlanta. He was arrested and charged with burglary and carrying a concealed weapon.
After a two-week stay in jail, Irvin said he was done breaking in, but his life was still in shambles. He didn’t have a job, was living on friends’ couches, and had no desire to go back to school.
He settled in a drug house owned by one of his unsavory friends. He was playing video games one day when one of his former teammates stepped in the front door. The player remembered Irvin and his tremendous talent and urged him to join him at Ware Prep Academy – a kind of last chance place for high school athletes who gave in to the streets.
Irvin threw his possessions into a trash bag and was off to Atlanta. The next day, police raided the drug house and all of its residents were arrested.
“God got you out of that house for a reason,” one of the residents told him over the phone. “Go to school, live your dream and don’t look back.”
The grass wasn’t exactly bright green at Ware Prep either. The school shut down five days after Irvin moved into the dormitory because its owners were fed up with a corrupt recruiting world. Irvin was seemingly right back where he started, sitting on the street with nothing but a trash bag full of clothes.
This time was different though. He knew god had a plan for him.
Chad Allen, a former college football player Irvin had met a few days before, drove up and invited Irvin to move in with him. The two set up a plan for him to take the GED and attend a junior college to get back on track academically before he even thought about football again.
On December 12, 2007 Irvin took the GED after weeks of studying. He passed and enrolled in Butler Community College in Kansas with the financial support of his mother and stepfather, who were ecstatic to see him back in the classroom. Irvin didn’t play football at Butler because of a rule limiting the number of out-of-state athletes that can be on teams, but he had a good semester academically and returned to Atlanta in the summer to train with Allen.
Irvin’s next stop was Mt. San Antonio College in California. Even though he played running back and wide receiver in high school, Irvin’s new coaches wanted to try him at defensive end. He didn’t have any sacks in his first season, but broke through with 15 in his second, which led to a flood of mail and calls from division one coaches around the country.
On his visit to West Virginia, Irvin felt right at home. When he made his debut as WVU’s pass rushing specialist, he’d never even had a lesson or been taught proper technique. It didn’t matter though, as his high motor and ridiculous speed and athleticism helped him tally the second most sacks in the nation.
Irvin has a background that no doubt scared some teams off, when in reality, they should’ve dug deeper to discover how he overcame the many obstacles put before him. He made some mistakes growing up, like many young men do, but unlike others that have been in similar positions, he accepted help and made the conscious decision to change his life. Irvin learned from his mishaps and used them as fuel to build character and an unparalleled work ethic.
Pete Carroll, who recruited Irvin out of Mt. San Antonio, saw past the “red flags” and took a gamble on Irvin’s tremendous potential despite the fact that he’s still learning to play defensive end. It seems to have paid off, as Irvin has nine sacks on the year, second on the team to only Clemons.
“I beat the odds and I did what I said I was going to do,” Irvin said. “I left the house. I got back in school. I got to junior college, and I said I was going to go to a division one school. I said I was going to kill it and go in the draft. I did what a lot of people said I wasn’t going to do. I faced a lot of adversity. I feed off that type of stuff.”
The Seahawks hope Irvin can feed off the adversity of losing their best player on the defensive line and propel them to an upset win over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday.
