The 2018 NFL Draft will kick off on Thursday, Apr. 26. USF defensive tackle prospect Deadrin Senat and FanSided have teamed up on an exclusive multi-part blog heading into the draft.

Editor’s note: Deadrin Senat’s pre-Combine blog is told to and transcribed by FanSided senior editor Michelle Bruton.

Growing up, I had both my parents. We weren’t rich, but we were surviving. All the way up until 12 or 13, I was just a normal kid trying to fit in. And then, when I was 13, my mother passed, and that kind of shook everybody. From that point on, things just got kind of crazy.

My dad was here in Florida when she passed, but after the funeral, he went to Haiti. He had family in Haiti and was born there, and he would go back for half the year.

I’m the youngest of three. It was me; my sister, who is two years older than me; and my brother, who’s two years older than her. My mom’s passing hit all of us differently, but my sister’s way of coping with things was getting a boyfriend. She got pregnant and had three kids, and that was kind of a crazy situation with our father not being there and our mother being dead. Our brother was in jail when it happened, and when he got out it affected him bad. Not being able to go to the funeral kind of messed with him. He got locked back up, and he kept going back to jail.

So around age14, going into high school, I had to learn how to take care of my sister while she was pregnant. I didn’t have a license just yet. I had to learn how to drive, and I had to learn how to pay the bills for the house and the rent and the water with the money my dad sent. Me and my sister had a pretty close relationship, and when she had her first child, I helped her, taking her to the hospital, getting her food. Whatever she needed, I was there for her.

“That guy’s

gonna be good.”

I got into football because of my Immokalee High head coach, Israel Gallegos. His son had a class with me but didn’t really play football that much. He told his dad about me and said, “That guy’s gonna be good.” Coach Gallegos was picking up his son one day after school and he saw me. I was hanging out with the wrong people, and he pulled over and called me over to his truck and told me, “Get in the truck; I’m gonna take you home.” And he took me home and he told me, “You’re gonna play football.” I was pretty big then. I was bigger than everybody else that I was with. I had never played organized football before; I didn’t have the money for it. But he said not to worry about it, and that was a blessing. I don’t know if I would have gotten into football if it wasn’t for him coming to me.

Coach Gallegos had me start coming across the street to the high school after school to work out. He told me he wasn’t going to just give me a spot, I had to work for it. My freshman year, I played varsity. I started at offensive guard, and then I was a rotational guy in the defensive line on varsity at high school.

I met some great people by playing football. My teammate’s father, Homer Betancourt, was a pastor. I kept running into him, and he would always speak to me. One day I ran into him after practice, and I needed a ride home. Sometimes I didn’t have anywhere to go eat, and I couldn’t wash my practice clothes every night. He invited me to his house, he helped me go to church, and he gave me a place to eat. He did a lot for me. If it wasn’t for him, it would have been really, really hard. He just helped me with the little things, like having somewhere to sleep and staying out of trouble. He helped me get to where I was trying to get to.

Shortly after that I gave my life to Christ. Not everything got easier, but it got better. A lot of hard things happened throughout my childhood, but having God in my life, when things were really hard I just prayed about it. I know at the end of the tunnel there’s gonna be a better day, a better way.

Homer had five kids and an adopted son, who I grew up with. Homer is Mexican, and his adopted son is black. He didn’t want to see me end up like everyone else stuck in Immokalee. He always told me he didn’t want anything in return. Back then, if somebody helped you out they basically wanted something in return, but everything he was doing was out of the kindness of his heart. He just didn’t want to see me end up in jail or in a bad predicament.

To this day, I still speak to him. He lost his eyesight, but he’s still preaching and he still texts me. His favorite thing to text me is, “Read your Bible.” I don’t go home much, but every time I go home, my first thought is to go see him.

In my sophomore year of high school, my dad came back from Haiti, and he had gotten really sick. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was kind of rocky, because we had to grow up basically by ourselves, with the family not being all together. But we tried to make it work.

I had a decision to make. I was committed to Florida State; I had offers from almost every school in the country. I had chosen to stay close to home because I knew my dad was dying, and he wanted me to be able to come visit him some weekends. He didn’t want me to be a plane flight away. I made the decision to go to South Florida to be closer to my sister and my dad.

“I had offers from almost every school in the country.”

Three years into college, my dad passed. The day before, my head coach told me to go home to Lehigh. He was on hospice; I think he told somebody to call me. His last words to me were to move my sister up to college with me and for me to take care of her and to continue playing football and finish out my dreams. That it would make him proud. After he said that, he stopped breathing. He told me he loved me before he died. And that was his dying wish.

I had a game coming up, so I came back up to to USF. I played in the game, against Syracuse, and did what he told me to do. Two weeks later, I moved my sister up to college with me. So my sister and my three nieces were staying with me in my college apartment after that.

I’m happy I went to USF, because I created my own legacy. I left USF on a winning note. Meeting the people that I met, Coach Charlie Strong, and the relationships I’ve created with those guys. We all came in with the same mindset, which was to create a legacy, and to leave USF better than we found it. I had a whole bunch of offers to play in the SEC, and I chose to play in the AAC, which a lot of guys didn’t really understand. But I knew that wherever I did play, I was going to make the best of it, and I was going to be myself. I took ownership over that.

USF means a lot to me because of the stuff we did that will go down in history. We took a team that was 2-10 to three seasons with more than eight wins. We went in there with a mission to turn the program around.

Football is fun and Deadrin exemplifies it. That passion helped earn him first team all-conference honors. #BullStrong pic.twitter.com/RlzXLg0NYf — USF Football (@USFFootball) December 16, 2017

USF's Deadrin Senat did more than hold his own in run-defense this past season pic.twitter.com/CZOTTChdi2 — PFF Draft (@PFF_College) February 15, 2018

I think coaches and scouts will see in me a guy who hustles. A guy who’s running sideline-to-sideline, a guy who is determined to be great. It doesn’t matter who he’s playing against, an AAC team or an All-Conference team, he’s going to give it his all, every snap.

It was always a dream for my mom and dad to see me play, and it was hard for me that they weren’t there. But I know they’re watching over me, and I picture them on the sideline. I do everything that I do for them. Having the opportunity to play football is more motivation than anything else. It’s not just about me, it’s about them, and that’s why I go so hard in what I do.

I’m training at EXOS, one of the best training facilities in the world right now. They’re putting me in the best position to be successful for my height, for my size, for my body weight, for the position that I play. [Editor’s note: Deadrin is 6’0″, 301 pounds.] We’re working out five times a day. In a normal day, we’ll do two lift periods, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and two training sessions. Some days we’ll be working on our 40-yard dash, and some days our position drills and our cone drills. We mix it up. No workout really lasts more than an hour.

They’ve got some of the best trainers there, great people to rehab you, with cold tubs, hot tubs and steam rooms. I believe I’ve been doing everything right. A lot of guys before me, like Aaron Donald and Javdeveon Clowney, came to the same facility and had success, so I feel like I’ve been doing everything in my ability to get better each and every day to go to the Combine with confidence.

To prepare for the interview segment, my agent came into town and we sat down with Charley Casserly and had an hour interview with him. We went over how to draw up plays, how an interview would go. At EXOS they provide you with training for that, so on the weekend, we’ll have film review and they’ll have classes that our agents set up for us. We’ve been preparing for it great, and my agent has put me in a great position to be able to speak to these teams. We’ve been putting a lot of practice into it, and practice makes perfect. I might be nervous, but I’ll be prepared.

“I’ve been dedicating everything to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

They put the platform in front of me and told me to trust the process. I put a lot of time into what I do, both with EXOS and on my own. I believe in doing extra stretching, extra cardio. My body’s different from everybody else’s. I’ve been dedicating everything to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I have.

Deadrin Senat is a defensive tackle prospect out of the University of South Florida. The Immokalee, Florida, product has collected numerous accolades throughout his college career, including being named an All-Conference (AAC) first-team selection in 2017, a season in which he ranked second for the Bulls in tackles. Heading into the 2018 NFL Draft, he is ranked fourth in the nation among interior defenders in run stops. Follow Deadrin’s NFL Draft journey by checking back for NFL Draft Blog Part 2: Post-Combine the week of Mar. 5.