Son helps keep Lions’ Darius Slay grounded, focused

Detroit Lions cornerback Darius Slay is giving up plays all over the field. A deep pass. A short pass. Another deep pass. Slay can’t defend anything.

Then it happens.

Slay gets an interception. Then another. And another.

By halftime, Slay has a handful of picks, and his Baltimore Ravens have a healthy lead against the New York Giants, the team his 8-year-old son, Darion, is playing in the “Madden 16” video game.

Last year, Darion moved from his grandmother’s home in Brunswick, Ga., to Michigan to live with his dad full time. Since then, this has been a common scene in Slay’s two-bedroom townhouse. Father and son playing together with neither giving an inch.

Slay never lets his son win. He wants him to earn his victories. But that’s not tough love.

You want tough love? You’ve got to listen to Darion as he gives a spirited tour of his bedroom while he loads a Nerf gun and explains that he’s proud of his father being in the NFL.

“Mm-hmm,” Darion said, “even though he got Mossed a few times. Like I tell him, ‘Don’t get Mossed.’ ”

Slay can only smile.

“Mm-hmm,” Slay said. “He tells me that every time I go out there.”

For those not familiar with the term, getting “Mossed” is a reference to retired receiver Randy Moss and the way he used to make defenders look bad with his spectacular catches.

It’s Tuesday afternoon, not quite 48 hours removed from Slay getting Mossed twice on prime-time television against the Broncos, and Darion isn’t exactly helping his dad forget about it. But this is a common scene, too, in the Slay household. Father pushing son. Son pushing father.

“He’s the one that really built all the confidence in me,” Slay said. “He’s the one who made me ‘Big Play Slay.’ When my son came here, the first thing he said was, ‘Dad, no touchdowns today.’ He knows. So he understands what I’ve got going on. He’s my drive. He’s the one pushing me.”

It has been that way since Slay was a freshman at Brunswick High and found out his girlfriend was pregnant.

“I was just shocked and nervous,” Slay said when he discovered his impending fatherhood. “I was like, ‘Man, I’m 15 years old. I’ve got a whole other person to take care of.’ I’m outside riding bikes, outside playing tag or something. Now I’ve got to change some diapers. It was just something different.”

Different, but not entirely so. Slay’s mother, Stephanie Lowe (née Walthour), was 13 when she gave birth to her only child on New Year’s Day in 1991. Lowe stayed in school, and her mother, Dorothy Walthour, took care of little Darius. Knowing the hardship his mother had endured made it hard for Slay to tell her he was about to repeat the cycle.

“She probably thought I would have been following her same footsteps, having a child at a young age,” Slay said, “so I didn’t tell my mama till she was at least, like, six months (pregnant). But she just figured it out.”

Slay decided to drop out of school and find a job to take care of his son.

“I offered to do it for myself and my son,” he said. “Me and his mom were both in school, so (my mom) was like, ‘How are you going to take care of your child if you’re both in school?’ I knew I had football practice, and I had basketball practice, and I had this and I had that. So it was just tough.

“She just said, ‘Don’t worry about all that. Just finish school.’ And then I was blessed and fortunate enough that I got a scholarship for football. So she was like, ‘Keep going.’ ”

Although Slay eventually got a scholarship to play at Mississippi State, Lowe knew he was bucking the odds even as she exhorted him.

“I wasn’t looking forward to no NFL,” Slay said. “I just liked playing ball. As I got older, I realized I could maybe be one of the guys in the NFL. I knew it was a small percentage chance. But the first thing my mom said is get your schoolwork done. There’s only like a 2% chance you can make it. But I felt real strong about my 2%, so I worked as hard as I could.”

Even though Lowe knew the dire numbers — according to the NCAA, only 1.6% of college football players are drafted into the NFL — she was honest with her son in a way that shaped his forthright nature.

“She’s my best friend,” Slay said. “We’re only 13 years apart. So she just explained a lot of things, and she was straight up with me. My dad, we’re only but 14 years apart. So I had more straight-up (adults) for parents. When I was growing, I just understood them more. I didn’t have no normal parent that was 20 years old that had been through it all. Just like I was, they was a kid raising a kid.

“So, great experience. I loved it. I love my parents. They showed me a lot.”

Naked honesty

It’s Tuesday, which is the normal day off for NFL players. Darion is in second grade, and on a rainy day Slay drives to the elementary school to pick him up. Then it’s off to Darion’s dentist appointment. He has a cavity but no homework, so he goes straight to “Madden” when he gets home.

Slay shares his townhome with his cousin, Tyrell Carroll, who helps look after Darion. Slay is thinking about dinner while Darion plays. Shrimp Alfredo and chicken wings are some of Darion’s favorite dishes, but on this night Slay will pan-fry steaks.

They are simple recipes, but Slay has learned to cook them well. It has come with the territory. Diaper changes, burping, teething, midnight crying jags. Slay’s mother helped and guided her son, but Slay was still just a teenager with a child.

“You had to grow up at a young age,” he said. “I had a great childhood. A great, great, great childhood. But I didn’t have a normal one. It was just up and down, up and down, up and down. Sometimes so down that I couldn’t hardly get back up.

From earlier this season: Slay's a funny guy

“So I was like, ‘Damn, is this what it’s like being a father?’ That’s why I didn’t have another one for a long time, because I knew how much time and how much it takes to raise a baby.”

Slay has another son by a different mother. Demetrius Darius Slay is 6 months old and lives with his mom in Mississippi.

This is not a story about perfect, and Slay doesn’t pretend that it is. If you want Ward and June Cleaver, look elsewhere. Slay doesn’t try to disguise who he is and what he has done, and he certainly doesn’t apologize for it.

If there is one thing that sets Slay apart from most football players, it’s his naked honesty. He speaks his mind without guile and answers his critics without acrimony. His favorite curse words are “Lord” and “goodness.”

“It’s hard for me to get upset about something, to get down about something,” Slay said. “My mom gets mad at me about that because she feels like I have a I-don’t-care attitude because I don’t show emotion.

“I told her the only thing that can affect me is my kids. Nobody outside my kids can affect me. I don’t care what it is or what they’ve got going on. I don’t care how people look at me or how people feel about my reactions to certain things, because I’m just going to tell it like it is.”

Slay’s normal speech is very quick, with a clipped cadence. But here he slows down as he describes a heartfelt frailty.

“But if I can just see my son telling me something, and he’s like, ‘Daddy, I don’t like that,’ that can affect me,” he said. “But somebody else tells me they don’t like it? Hey, I don’t worry about you. You can’t judge me. I feel like the only people that can judge me are the Lord and my kids. I just want to be the best daddy to them.”

Learning and growing

When Slay was a senior at Brunswick High, his new coach, Victor Floyd, kicked him off the team. Slay had been a star running back, but Floyd knew his future lay at cornerback. Slay refused, and Floyd gave him the boot.

“He wasn’t going to bring me back to the team. I had to come to him,” Slay said. “So I came to his office one day, and I was like, ‘Man, I need to be on the team. I’ve got a son to take care of and all that.’ He understood it, and he let me back on the team. But I had a lot of stuff to do before I could be back on the team.”

Slay likes to look good on the field, so Floyd hit him where it hurt. He made him wear a single-bar kicker’s helmet and a ratty No. 77 jersey.

Slay learned two lessons. There was more at stake than his own pride, and if he wanted to keep playing football, he would have to seek those who could help him. In his time with the Lions, Slay has attached himself to veterans and criss-crossed the country in search of answers.

In the off-season, Slay learned to analyze game film with teammate Rashean Mathis in Jacksonville, Fla., and with Hall of Famer Rod Woodson in Oakland, Calif. He has learned the importance of body maintenance with teammate Glover Quin in Houston.

“I’ve definitely seen a lot of growth,” Quin said. “I’ve seen his approach from how he takes care of his body to his technique. It’s all the little things that you have to develop early in your career in order to sustain later, because at some point you can’t just survive off athleticism.”

On one of the game’s biggest stages Monday night, Slay plans to learn some more when the Lions play at Seattle. Slay believes Richard Sherman has the best ball skills of any cornerback, and he intends to take notes during the game.

“After we go through our plays on our sideline,” Slay said, “I know for a fact I’m going to be standing on the sideline looking to see what Sherman is doing to make himself better the way he does. I just like learning from one of the greats.”

Working for it

Darion has gone from baby to toddler to boy, with Slay helping along the way until finally he has become a full-time parent. It seems unlikely that a 24-year-old NFL player would choose to raise a child on his own during the season. There are a million reasons not to. But for Slay, there doesn’t seem to be another choice.

“I feel like if he wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be where I’m at,” Slay said. “I just felt like as a kid I had it so much easier. Growing up until I had him was just like, ‘I’ll just get this, I’ll just get that.’ I never had to work for nothing because it was just too easy. But when I had him, it changed my whole mind-set, like, ‘I’ve got to go out there and get things.’ ”

Pursuit. It’s a cornerback’s lot in life. But if there’s one thing Slay doesn’t have to wrangle, it’s his son’s devotion. That much is clear when Darion was asked which NFL team is his favorite. Darion pointed a thumb toward his dad, who was wearing a Lions hoodie.

“I was going to say the Seahawks,” Darion said.

Meet Darius Slay

Who: Third-year Lions cornerback.

Vitals: 6 feet, 190 pounds.

Age: 24.

College: Mississippi State.

From: Brunswick, Ga.

Drafted: By Lions in second round of 2013 draft (No. 36 overall).

Last season: Started 16 games and had 62 tackles and two interceptions, with 18 passes defended.

This season: Has one pick, one pass defended and 15 tackles in three games.

Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.

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