Deron Irving-Bye is listed at 6-feet-5 and 245 pounds. He’s ranked by rivals.com as the No. 11 prospect in Michigan. He also reportedly had scholarship offers from Michigan State and Tennessee, among others.
Sitting in Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio’s office a year ago, Deron Irving-Bey couldn’t hold it back.
It seemed like the seminal moment in his journey.
“He surprised me with it,” Irving-Bey said of MSU’s scholarship offer. “We were on a little academic tour. He called me in his office and said he was going to offer me. That’s when I just started crying. I always thought I would have to go to a JUCO because I never thought I was good enough for that.
“Just the thought of Michigan State, one of the top colleges, I’m like, ‘This is a dream come true.’”
Dantonio asked Irving-Bey to share his story.
“I’m just a kid from Flint and I never thought I would have this opportunity,” Irving-Bey told him.
Entering his junior season, Irving-Bey was unknown. But holding that Michigan State offer after an explosive season at Flint Southwestern changed everything. Not that he knew it then.
Despite playing football since he was a kid in the Flint youth leagues, Irving-Bey wasn’t much of a fan of the game. His friends would talk about teams and games, and he’d just listen.
His mother, Dionne Richardson, was a Michigan fan and was passionate about the games. But Irving-Bey wasn’t.
So before they made the trip to East Lansing, Southwestern coach Chane Clingman had to explain some basic facts, such as the resume of the famous coach he was about to meet.
“I didn’t know who Dantonio was, (Jim) Harbaugh, Nick Saban,” Irving-Bey said. “I didn’t know who any of them were. I just got educated on this stuff.”
As tempting as it was to jump on the offer, his coaches wanted him to enjoy the recruiting process and learn more about the schools.
That didn’t end up working out for the Spartans. Irving-Bey will sign with Michigan next Wednesday, soaking in how far he’s come so quickly.
“Before this happened, nobody ever saw this coming,” he said. “I didn’t even see this coming.”
Embracing the game
Irving-Bey played football when he was young because he could.
He was athletic, fast, and the game came easy. It’s what Flint kids did to keep occupied — the alternatives, like in most struggling cities, were rough. But there was never a goal for football.
Self-described as “fat” — a tall kid with a belly and no desire to change his physique — he played offensive guard for a while. Even when he got leaner in high school, he didn’t have much motivation to do more.
But fortunately for him, his coaches saw the potential.
“We saw it coming,” Clingman said. “From the time Deron came in as a freshman, he was a 6-foot-2, 210-pound kid. But we saw he had a frame that would be able to hold the weight over the four years he was there. He wasn’t fat, but he didn’t have the muscle mass he has now.”
Sitting in Clingman’s office at Flint Carman-Ainsworth last week, the freshman team photo on the wall shows Irving-Bey near the back, with a skinny neck. He looks like he had half the body of his current 280-plus-pound frame.
“The crazy thing is I didn’t take football serious until my junior season,” Irving-Bey said.
Even watching his cousin Nick Matiere-Bey get recruited — he began at Austin Peay before transferring to Ferris State — didn’t click for him.
“Everybody develops at a different time, but he developed really, really late,” Matiere-Bey said. “I didn’t think he was going to play football. I thought he was going to stick to basketball. But then he fell in love with it.”
Entering his junior year, considering how he could go to college, he began to focus and began seriously lifting weights.
Southwestern assistant Tiger Maxwell accepted the challenge.
“He’s my trainer and one of the coaches. He told me, ‘If you don’t (mess with) me, I’m with you,’” Irving-Bey said. “I just went full head into the weightlifting program. It brought me to a closer bond, the people you grind with and grow closer as the days progress.”
Those first days in the weight room were humbling, as he maxed out at 205 pounds. In a year, he was a completely different person, benching 300 pounds and pushing 225 pounds 12 times.
Holding no scholarship offers from any level entering his junior year, Irving-Bey pushed himself.
Matiere-Bey put him through a workout and said Irving-Bey “didn’t feel it was punishing, so he started having fun with football. Started having fun, put the work in and became one of the best defensive ends out of Michigan.”
Still, playing for a 1-8 team, getting noticed was a challenge. So he attended the Camp Pride winter event and was the top performer. The D Zone, which covered the event, called him “the best edge rusher in attendance.”
He won the race as the fastest lineman, then repeated his success as the top player at the Big Man camp in Wixom. Eastern Michigan stepped in with his first offer.
Then Miami (Ohio) came in, with a warning: “After we offer, you’re going to go off the roof.”
“I didn’t believe him,” Irving-Bey said. “I thought he was just talking.”
The floodgates opened when the Spartans stepped in. Southwestern had a weight-room workout about 10 days later, and suddenly, 10 Division I schools were watching Irving-Bey lift. Tennessee, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Buffalo, Western Michigan, Central Michigan. All were hoping for a shot.
But when Michigan got its foot in the door, via defensive line coach Greg Mattison, Irving-Bey was slowly overwhelmed. He went to a barbecue in Ann Arbor, and future U-M co-captain Chris Wormley told him about the opportunities. Rashan Gary, his future teammate, also pitched the Wolverines. Bit by bit, he became more comfortable.
“Every time I went to Michigan, it felt like home,” said Irving-Bey, who took an official visit to Maryland but committed to U-M in mid-December. “It’s what I was looking for.”
Leaving home
Now, he’s seeing the world beyond Flint. After traveling to Maryland, he went to San Antonio to participate in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl with 90 of the nation’s top high school players.
After months in the national news for the water crisis, Irving-Bey was forced to become a quasi-spokesman for Flint.
Though his family’s home was not affected, thinking back, he remembers summer football workouts when the water was discolored. Players had stomach issues at the time.
These days, Flint schools are filled with bottled water. Shaking the stigma will be difficult, but if someone wants to knock his city, Irving-Bey gladly will stand up for it.
“I’m not angry about it, I just know it’s a problem in Flint that we have to take care of,” he said.
Leaving Flint will be challenging. Living with his mother, who battles multiple sclerosis, and his 14-year-old sister, Irving-Bey has taken care of many household chores.
He’ll leave them in hopes of lifting them up with an impressive career.
Football opportunity
Unlike many of his future teammates, Irving-Bey will arrive as a rough draft. At 6-feet-5 and 280 pounds and fast for his size, he’s loaded with potential.
“At Southwestern, we didn’t have the luxury of having all the coaches,” he said. “I never had a D-line coach. So going to Michigan, Greg Mattison is one of the best. I’m excited what’s coming.”
After watching the past two seasons — 156 tackles, 39 for loss, 18 sacks, nine forced fumbles and five fumble recoveries – Clingman sees a goal of being the next Jadeveon Clowney, a pass rusher with a long reach and explosion.
“He’s got great get-off,” Clingman said. “His twitch coming off the ball is what I would almost say is exceptional. That’s one of the things schools really like about him. … Let’s continue to build on that, show him how to put his hand in the ground, and he just got progressively better.
“Once he gets to Michigan and can amass that type of strength that Jadeveon has, I think the sky’s the limit for Deron.”
Contact Mark Snyder: msnyder@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark__snyder . Download our Wolverines Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!