Drafted fifteenth overall by the Seahawks a decade go, linebacker Bruce Irvin is back in Seattle.
This time around, he’s closing in on his 35th birthday.
“I feel like I am 25, have you seen me move yet?” Irvin told reporters on Thursday. “Wait until you see me move, ‘This dude isn’t 34.’ I feel good, my body feels good, my mental is good, and I can’t complain. I get to live out my dream at 34 and a half, I’m about to be 35 in three weeks. I have no complaints.”
Irvin joined the team just as we was getting ready to hang up the cleats for good.
“Truth be told, I was driving an hour to work out every day and I would drive an hour back,” Irvin said. “I told my wife, ‘This is getting old. I’m going to give it three more weeks and I’m going to hang it up.’ Three days later my agents reached out to me and said that Seattle had contacted them about me coming out here to work out.”
When Irvin wasn’t working out, he was “at home taking care of kids, poopy diapers.” He’ll now resume trying to make quarterbacks crap their pants.
He really didn’t think it was happening again. He went through the entire offseason without hearing from another team.
“No call, you would have thought that my phone was on do not disturb,” Irvin said. “It was very depressing. I’m at a point where I don’t need football. I’ve won a Super Bowl, I’ve played well, I have my money, and I took care of my money, so for me, it’s just proving that I can still play. If I couldn’t move and felt like I couldn’t play at a high level, I wouldn’t be here wasting your time. I wouldn’t waste my time because I feel like my face card means everything. Me just trying to stay ready and motivating myself for when the time came, being prepared. Thank God that Pete [Carroll] and them reached out to me. I packed a big ol’ bag and my wife was like, ‘Why are you packing your bag so big?’ I said, ‘Baby, I’m not coming back.’ It worked out and I’m here with y’all.”
It almost didn’t. Irvin tore an ACL two years ago. He said he “had a doctor botch my knee, so I had to do another procedure.” He got cleared in November of 2021, and he signed with the Bears.
“I didn’t want to go out like that,” Irvin said. “I was working out for any opportunity, but obviously, I love the Seahawks and I have a lot of history here. These guys love me too, so once my folks told me, it was a no brainer.”
So now Irvin is back where he started. And he’s reunited with former West Virginia quarterback Geno Smith, as the Seahawks try to turn a 2-3 start into something better than that.
