Darius Slay likes to add sound effects whenever his tackles are shown on film. He sits in the back left corner of the Eagles’ defensive backs meeting room, and, like a class clown, sends his teammates into laughter.
Hey, smack ‘em!
“It could be pitch quiet in there, 7 o’clock in the morning, and you can hear a pin drop, and he’s giving sound effects on every hit,” cornerback Zech McPhearson said. “It could be even a conventional tackle, but he can also put a guy on the ground.”
Slay says he’s the best tackler on the Eagles. He’s joking. Sort of. With his always-present devilish grin, it’s sometimes hard to tell. He also thinks he’s the prettiest, the sexiest, and has the best waves in his hair. He does concede that DeVonta Smith is the best dresser on the team.
“I should be, like, 99 on Madden,” Slay said of his video game tackling rating. “It’s probably 37. But they tripping.”
The Madden game doesn’t provide numbers for off-the-field intangibles, but if there was one for personality, Slay likely would receive that 99. It’s difficult to quantify the effect the veteran cornerback’s sense of humor has on the squad.
The 8-0 Eagles have no-nonsense leaders (e.g. Jalen Hurts). They have passionate ones (Jason Kelce). And they have other characters as captains (Brandon Graham). But the happy-go-lucky Slay has a way, like no other, of keeping the locker room loose and yet tight-knit at the same time.
No one is spared from his jabs, from Hurts to the bottom of the depth chart.
“He doesn’t know a stranger,” cornerback James Bradberry said. “He jokes with the O-line, D-line, receivers, special teams. He communicates with everybody across the team. Even though it’s a kid’s game, this game can get stressful.
“There’s a thin line between being too serious and being too lackadaisical, and Slay cuts through that.”
An appreciation for life
The 31-year-old self-described “kid at heart” does have a pensive side. Born to young parents, Slay himself was forced to mature fast when he had a son at 15. But he said the struggles he encountered growing up in Brunswick, Ga., have fostered in him a childlike exuberance.
“I’m from a rough area. I’m one of the few that made it out,” Slay said. “It makes me appreciate life more. You only get one. The other day I was just thinking that I’m still starstruck being in the NFL. I’ve always been like that.
“People that are stuck up or have attitudes? I don’t have time for that.”
Slay also has little time for what he views as injustices — sporting or otherwise — and doesn’t hesitate to point them out on social media. Some are personal. One of his main gripes is the lack of recognition he believes he has received from the media for his performance on the field.
Few can deny he’s been among the NFL’s best cornerbacks the last two years. Only the Panthers’ Jaycee Horn has a lower passer rating (23.1) when targeted than Slay (36.2) among qualifying corners this season, according to Pro Football Focus.
It’s his 10 years of high-level play, ultimately, that allow for his voice to carry weight. But it took until his third season with the Eagles for Slay to be voted a captain. He has become such an integral part of the team’s leadership — up there with mainstays like Kelce, Graham, Fletcher Cox, and Lane Johnson — that a contract extension seems likely.
“There’s a reason he’s a captain because at his core he’s a guy who cares about his teammates,” coach Nick Sirianni said. “It’s like a day-after-day thing where he’s always coaching up the young guys. … But it’s also something that’s not made public, like last year, where did some of these guys go for Thanksgiving who maybe didn’t have a place to go?
“Slay’s house.”
Slay’s many jokes, his collection of voices, and a rapid-fire delivery can make even those fluent in his speech patterns slow to grasp his satire. When hip-hop artist Rod Wave’s music comes on in the locker room, Slay jumps up on his chair or dances around the room as if holding a concert.
When he hits on a routine, it can become a unifying theme, like he did with his September take on the Eagles having three Batmans — “Swole” A.J. Brown, “Skinny” Smith, and “Fast” Quez Watkins.
Brown bought a cape shortly thereafter for the receivers to wear on the sideline. Kelce joined the fray as “Fat” Batman and wore the mask on Halloween eve as the Eagles put the finishing touches on trouncing the Steelers.
Give and take
Most of Slay’s bits revolve around a braggadocious persona he has created.
“His latest thing is the waves in his hair. That’s all he talks about. But he has no waves,” cornerback Josiah Scott said. “He wears a do-rag that makes it seem like he has waves, but there’s nothing there.”
Hurts agreed.
“He don’t have waves. I have waves,” the quarterback said. “I give him a hard time about that.”
Slay may dish it out, but he can take the return fire. If he actually was genuine in his boasts, or busting of chops, he probably wouldn’t use his platform to shine a light on others as often as he does.
In Detroit, he started sending out invites on Twitter to youth football players looking for instruction, a practice he has continued here in Philadelphia. He remembers what it was like meeting his childhood hero, Kobe Bryant, for the first time. He still wears cleats with “Black Mamba,” Bryant’s nickname, written on the side.
Slay’s childhood was different than most. His father, Darius Sr., was 14 when he was born; his mother, Stephanie Lowe, was 13. She raised him, he has said, like a younger sibling. He did the same with his first son, Darion.
He has since, with two more sons and a daughter who followed, had to learn how to be a father. But Slay will never cease to approach his relationships and responsibilities with guileless enthusiasm.
“I don’t know how to be anybody else,” he said.
He felt his goofy personality would forever keep him from becoming a captain, but when he found out his teammates had voted him as one of the Eagles’ seven captains, he said then that he had tears in his eyes. It hasn’t, though, changed his approach to leading.
Slay may try to relate to everyone at NovaCare Complex, but as the only captain from his position, he organized a defensive backs-only weekly dinner on Mondays at The Capital Grille in South Jersey. They eat, watch football, and laugh — mostly at Slay’s jokes.
“Nothing is going to make me change who I am, with a ‘C’ on my chest or not,” he said. “I know when to play, when not to. I learned that.”
Slay may sit in the back of the classroom, where class clowns typically reside, but there’s a method to his seating. He said it’s much easier to offer tips to younger cornerbacks without always having to turn his head.
Defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson allows Slay to be the comedian to help break up the monotony, but it doesn’t take much for him to turn on his serious side.
“I can tell when the switch will click over,” Bradberry said. “It’s not like he becomes mad, but you can tell when he’s locking into a different mode, like that elite mode that he goes into. That can happen in the meeting room, but usually it occurs on game day when we have a big matchup — like with [Vikings receiver] Justin Jefferson.”
Slay had maybe the best game of his career covering Jefferson in Week 2. The All-Pro caught just one of six targeted passes for 7 yards when matched up against the cornerback, who also had two interceptions.
“He’s playing like he’s my age,” the 24-year-old McPhearson said. “That just goes to show that he still has a chip on his shoulder. He’s 31 and about to get another fat contract.”
He has one year left on the three-year extension he signed just after the Eagles traded for him during the 2020 offseason. Slay said he has the ability to play for seven more years. But he can envision a not-so-distant future watching his children play all their sports — Darion, younger sons Trent and Demetrius and daughter Desirae — with his wife, Jennifer Williams.
“I’m a family guy. I’ve got kids to raise,” Slay said. “Got a son who’s 15 years old. I want to try and catch all his high school games. I don’t want to be a parent that certain nights I can’t go see my son. Because I had a kid young, I don’t want to be that kind of parent.”
But for the time being, Slay was mostly thinking about his next haircut.
“I’m going to have the best waves,” he said.
