Bruce Irvin in 3rd Seahawks stint: Thankful, reflecting during games on how far he’s come
Whenever the games pause, Bruce Irvin stops, too.
He stops and thinks.
Not about the next Seahawks defensive call. Not about what the opposing offense might do next.
Irvin is thinking pretty much every time there’s a lull during games about being in jail for two weeks before Seattle drafted him 10 years ago. He’s thinking about his former life around his native Atlanta, his life of stealing, getting thrown out of his mother’s house, carrying a gun in the home of a drug dealer, trying to collect money the hardest way. He was arrested and jailed for two weeks when he was 19. He was set free when the drug dealer didn’t come forward to testify against him, for obvious reasons.
Irvin thinks about all that and how instead, he’s playing in another NFL game. He’s playing his 11th season in a league with an average career length of about three years. He’s playing when he could — maybe, as he’s said, should — be incarcerated. Or worse.
“Lord knows I was supposed to be in jail or dead somewhere,” Irvin told The News Tribune in 2015.
Instead, he’s a husband and father of three children. They are ages nine, two and one. He’s back for his third go-round as an outside linebacker with the first-place Seahawks. He played in the third game of his return Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium.
“I think about that, a lot,” Irvin said before he started against Kyler Murray and the Cardinals Sunday. “I often catch myself thinking about that a lot in games, like during a TV timeout or just between plays. I just kind of look up in the crowd and I’m like ‘Dang! I’m really in the league, from where I came from. And not only in the league, I’m in my 11th year.
“A lot of people don’t get to experience three years, and I’m on 11.
“Man, every chance I get I just thank the Lord and I just thank the people who helped get me here.”
At the head of that list: the coach who looked past Irvin’s past and took him 15th overall in the 2012 NFL draft, and called him out of 10 months of idling and working out last month.
Last month, Pete Carroll asked Irvin to come back to Seattle to give its floundering, last-ranked defense depth, leadership, knowledge — and most of all, a kick in the rear end.
“He’s one of my favorites,” Carroll said Friday.
And vice versa. Friday, Irvin again publicly stated his gratefulness for Carroll, general manager John Schneider and former Seahawks linebackers coach Ken Norton Jr. (now a UCLA assistant) for drafting a supposed “one-trick pony.” That’s what Irvin called himself, supposedly only a third-down, speed edge rusher out of West Virginia, a third-round pick at best.
Carroll took him in round one in 2012. He and Norton made Irvin an every-down strongside linebacker in Seattle’s 4-3, a Super Bowl champion in the 2013 season — and a $47.8 million man. That’s how much Irvin has earned in his unlikely NFL career.
It’s a lifetime away from trying to rob drug dealers.
“I just get chills,” Irvin said. “I don’t know, man, just, there are a lot of people looking at me — and looking at me for a good reason. People are not looking at me saying, ‘He’s a troublemaker. He’s going to do this or that.’ They are here and they support me and are cheering me on.
“It gives me a weird feeling, man. It’s just weird how it comes about in a game, during a break or something.
“Just part of my story, man. Like I said, I’m thankful to continue to live my dream.”
Pete Carroll’s roots to Irvin
Carroll first met Irvin in the late 2000s.
Having never graduated from high school, Irvin took and passed the GED test. That and acquaintances he made got him out of Georgia, to junior colleges in Kansas and then to Mt. San Antonio, a community college east of Los Angeles.
Mt. San Antonio turned the high-school running back, receiver and defensive back into a defensive end.
“I go all the way back to before he was in junior college. That’s when I first touched base with him,” Carroll said. “He had been through a lot of stuff, and he righted the ship and got on course.
“We lost track of him a little bit at SC, but when we came back around, it felt like I had a lot of background on him, really appreciated his background, and always could feel that he was going to be one of those guys that could really find the edge and find the deep desire to be something special.
“I’m always willing to give him a chance at it,” Carroll said, “so it’s really fun to see him here again.”
Off the couch, into Seattle’s defense
Irvin had been watching the first Seahawks games of this season on his couch. He jumped at the chance to play for Carroll and Seattle again.
The last time, in 2020, he lasted only two games with the Seahawks before a season-ending knee injury. He had to have two surgeries into 2021 to fix it. He was out from September 2020 until late last season.
He played the last six games of the 2021 season for Chicago. Then no one signed him this spring, summer and fall.
For his third Seahawks stint, Irvin has been more than a needed locker-room leader since he re-signed Oct. 13. After sitting out a game to get acclimated to football again, he played 24 snaps two weeks ago in the team’s win at the Los Angeles Chargers. On his first play since January for Chicago, Irvin beat his blocker, sped through a gap and tackled Chargers running back Austin Eckler at the line of scrimmage.
In Seattle’s win over the New York Giants Oct. 30, Irvin was a mainstay. He had two tackles. He had a tackle for loss. He pressured on quarterback Daniel Jones. He was too good for Carroll and defensive coordinator Clint Hurtt to take off the field. In just his second game in 11 months, two days before his 35th birthday, Irvin played 47 of 65 defensive snaps.
“You wouldn’t be able to tell that he missed training camp and the first month or so of the season,” Hurtt said. “He played really, really well.”
Bruce Irvin gives up alcohol
What has allowed him to come off his couch and play 72% of snaps for a first-place team, right away?
“Shoot, I haven’t played football (much) in, what, two years, 2020?” Irvin said. “I played, what, six games last year? Two games the year before? I haven’t played a lot of football in a minute.
“So, you know, my body had a chance to heal. I did no training camp, which is good.
“S***, if I can come in Week Eight (of the regular season) every year I can do this about five more years.”
He laughed.
“I don’t drink alcohol no more. So I think that played a great deal in me recovering so fast,” Irvin said of all the snaps his first two games back.
Yes, Irvin is truly a new man.
“Yes. I haven’t had a drink in about four months,” Irvin said. “I’m just done with it.
“My kidneys was kind of bothering me. So, you know, I’m trying to live and play with my grandkids and stuff.
“So I just made the decision.”
This — not two knee surgeries and a smattering of games over the 2020 and ‘21 seasons — is how Irvin wanted to go out.
“This has provided me an opportunity to continue and to finish my career how I wanted to finish,” Irvin said. “The last couple years ain’t been how I wanted it to be, from injuries to playing time to not winning. I didn’t want to go out like that.
“Once it’s over, it’s over. I don’t want to be five years from now thinking, ‘Dang, I could have gotten two or three more years.‘ “
This story was originally published November 6, 2022 at 9:36 AM.
