Then

"I don't want to get into details, but I was doing a lot of crazy stuff out there."

Bruce Irvin knows this much: He should be dead or in jail right now.

Not here. Not in the NFL.

As a high school junior at Stockbridge (Ga.) High, 20 minutes outside of Atlanta, Irvin dropped out, and then his mother kicked him out of the house. So he lived in the streets. Irvin wandered couch to couch, floor to floor, street to street, night to night for about six months. He'd stay at one friend's house until wearing out his welcome and then try to move to another's. When he had nowhere to turn, he'd nestle up against a bus ramp at a local school and use his backpack as a pillow.

He was homeless, carried a gun, hung out with drug dealers.

Though in the past Irvin has said he sold drugs, today he says he was only the one taking drugs and "getting it by any means."

After growing up in Ellenwood, Georgia, Irvin was languishing in the rough streets of the Decatur-Lithonia area. When Mom knew where Irvin was sleeping, she'd bring him a home-cooked meal.

"I enjoy this life way more than that life."

— Bruce Irvin

Yes, at points he has been in the crosshairs of bullets. Who? When? How? Irvin won't go there, only saying he quite literally lived "one day at a time."

And quite literally dodged bullets.

"You never know when it's going to be your last day," Irvin says. "You're taking chances every day to get money, to survive just to make it to the next day. You're taking chances, whether it be penitentiary chances or life chances. You've got to get it by any means. That's the mindset that I was living.

"No matter how I did it or when I did it, I had to get it. You know? That was the mentality."

His only punishment, mercifully, was two-and-a-half weeks in jail.

In May 2007, with two others, Irvin broke into a drug dealer's house in suburban Atlanta to steal cash. A neighbor who witnessed the break-in called police, and Irvin was charged with burglary and carrying a concealed weapon. Nobody testified against him because, you know, dealers aren't in a rush to show up in court.

But behind bars, Irvin wondered what would've happened if those dealers were in the house. He could've been, would've been, shot dead.

"Another chance at life," Irvin says. "Anything could've happened. I took that as an eye-opener that you need to get your life together before you don't have any more chances."

"We're not bringing up the past, but..." says his mother, Bessie Lee, realizing the past is inescapable. "But when he did get locked up, that's when he said, 'I can't do this, Mama. I'm getting this together.' And I said, 'You need to.' I didn't want to bury him."

It'd take one more wake-up call to reroute his life.

On Nov. 13, 2007, Irvin was playing video games inside a drug house when a former Stockbridge teammate showed up, recognized him and said Irvin should join him at Ware Prep Academy to play football. "Go home," he told Irvin. Irvin threw everything he had into a trash bag and joined him.

The very next day, police raided that exact house. Over the phone, one friend arrested provided a final jolt.

"God got you out that house for a reason," he told Irvin. "Live your dream."

So Irvin returned home to Mom. The night he should've graduated, Irvin cried in her bed and told her she was right all along. The same people who were laughing with him as a kid were now laughing at him. "They won't laugh long," she told him.

The kid pulling a 0.86 GPA before dropping out got his act together. He got his GED. When Ware Prep shut down, he attended Butler (Kan.) Community College, then Mt. San Antonio (Calif.) College, then West Virginia University. His first season with the Mountaineers, Irvin finished second in the nation with 14 sacks. Then the Seahawks made him the 15th overall pick in 2012.

Bruce Irvin (second from right) poses for a photo with (from left) his mentor, Chad Allen, his now-wife, Alyssa Hackworth, and his mom, Bessie Lee, at the draft in 2012 (Ted S. Warren / AP Photo).

"It was a decision," Irvin says. "Do I want to continue to go down that road and end up where I knew I was going to end up? That's either dead or in jail. Or did I want to use my God-given ability and just leave it all out there and take a chance? I made a decision to go for it, and there's no turning back."

BJ was forced to find his way when Mom gave him the boot.

"It really showed me how to be a man, how to be a survivor," Irvin says. "Most guys don't grow up until they're 21. I grew up when I was 16."

He pauses.

"But I've lived two lives."

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