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.”