Before he was the 15th overall pick by the Seattle Seahawks, and before he was a pass-rush specialist at West Virginia, Bruce Irvin was known as B.J. Irvin, a highly-recruited prospect from Atlanta who dropped out of high school in the 11th grade and got into trouble with drugs and crime.
Given his background, Irvin was sure to pay close attention to what fellow WVU alum Adam Jones had to say during Monday's rookie symposium.
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"Everybody knows, I’m sure has heard of, what his situation was and his recent incidents, but I honestly feel like he’s a changed man, and like you said, he's Adam today," Irvin said in an interview with NFL Network. "We're both from Atlanta, we both went to West Virginia. We both have faced a lot of adversity in our lives. We both came from inner city Atlanta and faced a lot of troubles; ... we both bounced back from it, and I think it made us both better men today. I think Adam really got the message across."
Irvin had a slip of the tongue and referred to Jones as "Pacman", the nickname the Cincinnati Bengals cornerback has been trying to shed after a rocky start to his career. The rookie defensive end understands why Jones isn't going by that moniker anymore.
"He’s Adam. You're so used to calling him 'Pacman' but he's Adam Jones now," Irvin said. "Myself, I feel like he's changed. I went by B.J. when I was getting in trouble ... and I'm Bruce now. People change, and certainly situations make people who they are today."
As a testament to how slow things are in the NFL now that OTAs and minicamps are behind us, Irvin has made headlines for another slip of the tongue, mixing up the Seahawks with the Washington Redskins during an appearance on teammate Michael Robinson's web series, "The Real Rob Report".
Irvin is far from alone in mixing up Seattle, Washington and the Washington Redskins.
During a trip to Seattle in 2005, a waiter in a waterfront restaurant asked me what I was doing in town. When I said that I was going to the Seahawks-Rams game that Sunday, the waiter, a Seattle native, informed me that he was a Redskins fan because he had at one time thought that franchise was based in Washington state.