After a decade of waiting, Darius Slay finally gets his big chance: ‘Time to go finish it’

Slay is known as many things with the Eagles: Playmaker, leader, mentor. He hopes to at long last add champion to the list on Sunday.

Eagles cornerback Darius Slay talks during Super Bowl LVII Opening Night at the Footprint Center in Phoenix on Monday.Read moreMonica Herndon / Staff Photographer

by EJ Smith

Published Feb. 8, 2023, 5:00 a.m. ET

PHOENIX — Darius Slay needed a chain.

In the lead-up to the opening night of Super Bowl LVII festivities at the Footprint Center on Monday, the Eagles cornerback noticed most of his teammates donning jewelry in anticipation of the onslaught of cameras, questions that awaited them.

Slay has worn his share of bold pendants throughout the season, but he came unprepared.

Chalk it up to inexperience.

After just two playoff trips in the first seven seasons of his career, Slay’s 10th year offers him his first chance at a Super Bowl. The defensive back known for his lighthearted and joking demeanor has taken on a slightly more serious tone as he prepares for the biggest game of his career, following the cues from the Eagles players who remain from the team’s 2017 Super Bowl victory.

So when Fletcher Cox offered Slay a silver, Cuban-link necklace before taking the stage on media night, he quickly obliged.

“I see everybody coming in, right?” Slay said. “Everybody got on jewelry and stuff. Fletch said, ‘I got one in my locker, you want mine?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, gimme one.’ So I’m bling-blinging with Fletch’s stuff.

“I’m not going to sit here and say it’s mine. That’s what fake folks do. Fletch let me hold his jewelry; I’m looking sweet in it.”

The spectacle that is the Super Bowl week’s opening night was predictably tailor-made for Slay. He was one of 10 Eagles players selected for a podium and held court for nearly an hour, seeming more like a stand-up comedian than a cornerback preparing for the biggest game of his career.

Slay leaned into the mic to sing the hook to Rihanna’s “Work,” just before lobbying for a role in the Eagles offense, saying he was the “new edition Percy Harvin.”

He identified Mike Epps as the actor best suited to play him in a movie and explained why he’d never get on a Spirit Airlines flight.

“I heard they be shaking and stuff like that,” Slay said. “I only got one life to live; I don’t want to be shaking or nothing in the air.”

Slay had his fun, but even between the jokes and theatrics, the opportunity to play in a game he could only dream of for nine years — the type of game that can vault him up the rankings of cornerbacks from his era — looms large.

“It’s been a whole week now,” Slay said. “I’m ready to play.”

Becoming ‘big bro’

Nobody has shared a football field with Slay more than Glover Quin.

Slay was the first to realize. After six seasons with each other in Detroit, the two had played nearly 90 games together as a cornerback-safety duo. Only the long-snapper played as many games for Detroit as Quin from 2013 to 2018.

Quin, 37 and retired, signed with the Lions in 2013 and quickly became a mentor for Slay, a second-round pick with the athleticism and disposition to become one of the league’s top cover corners.

“He’s never been afraid to ask a question or admit something that he wasn’t good at or didn’t understand,” Quin said Monday. “Anybody that’s not afraid to admit when they are wrong and when they don’t know something, they’re going to end up being pretty good because they have a humble spirit and they just want to learn. He’s always been that way.”

Slay credits Quin and former Lions cornerback Rashean Mathis with being two of his biggest mentors in Detroit. They taught him the mental side of the game, how to handle things off the field, and — whether they knew it or not — how to eventually become a leader himself.

Even as Slay developed into an All-Pro corner in Detroit, the Lions experienced mostly lean years. The team made two playoff appearances in his seven seasons and never made it past the wild-card round.

When the Eagles traded two mid-round picks to the Lions for Slay and signed him to a $50 million contract extension in 2020, the corner wanted to prove he was a winning player. He chafed at questions about his effort on tackling and his lack of experience on winning teams during his introductory news conference.

When the Eagles clinched a first-round bye in the playoffs, Slay acknowledged the emotions of finally making it to the divisional round.

“This means a lot, I’ve been in the league 10 years and I’ve never won the division,” he said. “I’ve never gotten a bye week, I’ve never seen the second round. It’s huge.”

When Slay got traded, Quin wasn’t sure how Slay would handle going from the lighthearted mentee to a leader in the Eagles’ cornerback room with a big contract and something to prove.

“I was worried for a little while because I did know his personality,” Quin said. “He always was able to just be that young, fun, happy guy because other guys were considered the leaders and the captains. But now Philly is paying for you and trading for you; you’re going to be the guy in that room. The guy that you’ve always looked up to and asked questions to, that’s going to be you now.”

Slay has spent the last two years melding into the Eagles’ leadership nucleus without compromising on his personality and was voted one of the team’s captains before the 2022 season. He has also been to the playoffs twice in as many years, doubling the number of postseason trips he has had in his career.

He can be the class clown during film study and makes his share of jokes even during games, but his teammates and coaches also see the serious side of him when the situation calls for it.

He makes a point of teaching the Eagles’ young cornerbacks and swapping tips with the receiving corps. He hosts Thanksgiving dinners and passes out coffee cups filled with his wife’s homemade banana pudding each Friday.

“He’s one of the best at [mentorship],” defensive backs coach Dennard Wilson said Monday. “He genuinely loves taking care of those guys on and off the field. They can always go to him. He takes them out, takes them to dinner. It’s great having that presence and that leadership.”

Second-year corner Zech McPhearson said Slay followed him on social media and reached out to him within hours of his getting drafted in 2021, offering to help with whatever he needed.

When McPhearson met Slay in person, he backed up that offer.

“He took me under his wing immediately,” McPhearson said. “He’s helped me with everything. I call him big bro.”

Slay also reminds his younger teammates not to overlook the rarity of making it this far in the playoffs. He waited too long for the chance himself to let them not understand the importance of the achievement.

“He always touches on how it took him 10 years to get here,” McPhearson said. “When someone says it like that, it really hits home. ... When you really look at it to see how hard he worked, all the work he put in throughout his whole career, 10 years is crazy. I was in middle school or something.”

‘It’s that moment’

Even Slay figured he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if the Eagles made it this far.

Dreaming of a Super Bowl run earlier this season with receiver DeVonta Smith, the veteran cornerback conceded as much.

“He always talks about it,” Smith said. “Getting here, [he said] he wouldn’t know how to act. Right now I think he’s handling it well.”

The opportunity isn’t lost on Slay. He has long kept his own list of the top cornerbacks in the game and cares about his standing among them. He felt slighted when the Associated Press All-Pro teams didn’t include him last month, and he often talks about the public perception of cornerbacks being misguided.

Winning a Super Bowl would further his legacy, and he knows it.

“These are the ones that kind of stamp yourself,” Slay said. “A lot of the great cornerbacks got great accolades and played in big, major games and made big plays. … All kinds of stuff can happen in big moments like that.”

Slay’s disposition heading into the game has even surprised Smith a little. A few days before the Eagles left for Arizona, he kept the jokes to a minimum and emphasized the importance of keeping the moment from changing his routine.

“Regular old week to me, really,” he said. “Just the excitement of playing in the Super Bowl, that’s really it, but I’m treating it like any other week.”

By the time Slay landed in Phoenix, Quin hadn’t yet offered his mentee any advice for the biggest game of his career. He was too busy teasing Slay in a group chat with him and Seattle Seahawks cornerback Quandre Diggs, who overlapped with the two for four seasons in Detroit.

Slay had a relatively clean game in the Eagles’ NFC championship win over the San Francisco 49ers, but he missed a tackle on a Christian McCaffrey touchdown run. Even worse, he compared McCaffrey to Barry Sanders the next day on his podcast, “Big Play Slay.”

“We’re like, ‘Slay, bro, you just didn’t want to go tackle him,’” Quin said. “’Don’t try to act like he’s Barry Sanders and all of this. You just didn’t want to tackle him.’ We always give him a hard time.”

Quin conceded any advice he’d give Slay would be based on feeling rather than experience, citing the Lions’ lean years and his own lack of playoff experience. Still, Slay’s older-brother figure wants to see him keep doing what got him to this unfamiliar situation.

“It’s just another game, man,” Quin said. “You just got more eyes on you. Don’t make it bigger than what it really is. It is the Super Bowl, but if you play hard and play the game the right way, every game is like a Super Bowl.”

The serious side of Slay hasn’t often been as public-facing as it was last week, but it’s one his teammates and coaches are familiar with.

Part of it comes from following the lead of the seven players who remain from the Eagles Super Bowl team in 2017. Part comes from a desire to set the example for the rest of the players.

“He’s setting the tone, ‘This is what we’re going to do when we come out here,’” Wilson said. “He knows that all that matters is coming out here and trying to win this game. All the other stuff isn’t important.”

“He’s locked in,” Wilson said. “He’s in a good space. He’s been in the zone all year. … You can tell, it’s that moment. He’s trying to go finish it.”

Quin, self-admittedly Slay’s biggest critic, considered traveling from Houston to support Slay, but instead will watch at home with a discerning eye for his former teammate.

Once the game’s over, he’ll start working to find a time for him, Slay, and Diggs to all get together to celebrate the seasons the two had, regardless of the result. The seasons they endured in Detroit are enough for them all to understand how rare an opportunity like the one in front of Slay can be.

But, since Slay has made it this far, he had better make an impact somehow.

“I’m just going to be a happy big brother,” Quin said. “To see him out there at the Super Bowl is going to be big-time, just to know, like, man, he made it. Him making it to the Super Bowl is going to be a celebration and then winning would be even bigger.”

“If he goes to the Super Bowl and don’t make any plays, we’re going to be like, ‘Bro, you didn’t make any plays, you may as well not even been to the Super Bowl. You could have been on the coach with me.’ We give each other a hard time, but it’s all love.”