FLOWERY BRANCH Youth Matt Ryan Jersey , Ga. (AP) —Falcons since he was a kid.Now that the seventh-year pass rusher is back home and about to make his Falcons debut, Irvin said he won’t take this opportunity for granted.It’s a rebirth for a 31-year-old who acknowledges he made bad decisions as an Atlanta teenager and now gets a chance to rewrite his local legacy.“Yesterday it hit me a little bit,” Irvin said Thursday. “I know that I look scared but I really was crying yesterday, this is a childhood dream for me. Growing up, watching Michael Vick, and guys like Terance Mathis … this was always my dream so for me to be able to come and live it out it was a surreal moment and I’m just very fortunate to be an Atlanta Falcon right now.”Irvin was cut last Saturday by Oakland, part of a housecleaning with the rebuilding Raiders. He cleared waivers and was a free agent with offers from several teams.He never doubted where he wanted to land.“My agent said, ‘You know everybody thinks you’re going to Atlanta,’ and I said under my breath, ‘Well, they’re right,'” Irvin said. “So it was no comparison, man. My family is here. My wife is from here. It was a childhood dream.”Irvin said life passed him by growing up in nearby Stone Mountain. He watched friends from Stephenson High School — Perry Riley, Kelvin Sheppard and Jermaine Cunningham — focus on their football careers while he was getting having run-ins with law enforcement and constantly putting himself in danger.“I was out in the streets doing stuff, and those guys were getting four-year scholarships to Florida and LSU and it hurt me,” Irvin said. “It hurt me seeing those guys go off, and I was just around here doing God knows what. It was a motivating factor. Look at me now. I outlasted Perry and Jermaine (in the NFL). Sheppard just got on so, but it was a motivating factor. I’m glad that I figured it out and got my head on straight.”Irvin returned recently to Stephenson to meet with current students and offer some advice.“Like I said Black Jake Matthews Jersey , I never played at Stephenson,” he said. “I didn’t play football since the ninth grade and I didn’t play for six years. Going back there and letting those young guys know that anything is possible. You can be in the worst situation and if you surround yourself by the right people and not around a bunch of yes-men, you can make it around anything. So that was the biggest thing.”Now Irvin gets to show what he can do on the field. Before his first practice with the Falcons on Thursday, Irvin wanted to show his new teammates he can still be a force in disrupting the quarterback.Irvin will wear jersey No. 52 when the Falcons (4-4) take a three-game winning streak to (2-6-1). He intends to help Atlanta improve a pass rush that ranks 27th in sacks.“I think I bring a lot of swagger, a lot of attitude,” Irvin said. “I speak my mind. I talk a lot of mess. Just running around having fun, man. That’s the biggest thing in this league. If you’re not having fun, it doesn’t take you a long way. Me just bringing energy and knowledge to these guys. Just being the best Bruce Irvin I can be every day.”The 6-foot-3, 250-pound Irvin was a first-round draft pick for Seattle out of West Virginia in 2012. He played four seasons with the Seahawks and two-plus with the Raiders, and had 40 sacks. His 15 forced fumbles over that span lead the NFL.“Me and DQ can’t dwell on what we did in Seattle, going to the Super Bowl and things like that,” Irvin said. “It’s more about right now and I feel like they needed me. I wanted to be here. I did what I had to do. We made it happen.” The Citadel didn’t beat Alabama on Saturday, or even come that close to it. Nobody else will this year, either. But this FCS team from South Carolina put up a better fight for longer than anyone else has so far, taking the No. 1 Tide to halftime at 10-10. Bama didn’t score at all until 12 minutes had passed. In the whole first half, the Tide only got four drives. One was a three-and-out. One was a two-and-out with a fumble. Even Bama’s TD drive required eight plays and 4:23 of clock time, an eternity by its standards. While there was never any risk of a loss, The Citadel legitimately made Bama look un-Bama-like. I can think of a large handful of SEC teams — hello Jake Matthews Jersey 2019 , Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and Missouri, at least — that should have been taking some notes. The Citadel, a military college kind of like Army, Navy, and Air Force*, runs the same triple-option offense those schools run. That system — the flexbone, with two slotbacks and a fullback lined up behind the QB — yielded a 45-yard touchdown run, the longest Alabama had given up in three years. The Citadel’s version of the flexbone produced 4.6 yards per carry for the day. The Bulldogs only threw two passes and completed neither, but their 4.4 yards per snap were the sixth-best out of 11 teams to play Alabama this year. The Citadel got more yards per play against Bama than Louisville, Ole Miss, Mizzou, LSU, or Mississippi State did. That’s incredible, given that the Citadel a) is an FCS team Black Andy Levitre Jersey , b) is a service academy that can’t even recruit top FCS talent, and c) doesn’t offer a credible threat to pass the ball. Bama knew a lot about what was coming every play, and the Tide still couldn’t totally stop it. *A big difference between The Citadel and the FBS service academies is that students there aren’t required to join the military after graduating, though many do. A big similarity is that most football recruits don’t have any interest in going to either type of school. The triple option has two obvious, equalizing benefits: It runs clock. Almost every play is a run, and a lot of the runs are handoffs straight back into the line, which often takes the out-of-bounds line out of play. Defenses aren’t used to it. In FBS, only the service academies, Georgia Tech, and Georgia Southern run a true flexbone. While a lot of schools now dabble in similar concepts out of the shotgun, coaches of real triple-option teams will tell you that some of their biggest preparation challenges come when they’re facing other triple-option squads. The Citadel had the ball for more than 19 minutes in the first half. On that long touchdown run above, maybe you noticed Bama cornerback Saivion Smith (No. 4, a really good cornerback whose position coach is Nick Saban) looking confused and getting put on skates while the eventual touchdown-scorer looped around him and started off to the races. And this is the second time in seven years that a team Bama should beat by a zillion kept things interesting by using the triple. In 2011, Georgia Southern (then still an FCS power) ran 39 times for 302 yards against the Tide, staying within 10 at halftime and exasperating Saban, who said years later: That Bama team did indeed win a national championship. But Georgia Southern put up a preposterous 7.4 yards per play, three yards better than any other team the Tide played. The Citadel tried to replicate that and did a solid job, especially in the first half. “We were just seeing a lot of movement Andy Levitre Jersey 2019 , kind of window dressing,” Bama starting free safety Deionte Thompson said. “We kind of got our eyes out in the wrong place at times and just did not fill our gaps. They did a good job with window dressing and got our eyes in the wrong place. When our eyes are on the wrong place, they made big plays.” Bama linebacker Mack Wilson added: Bama hasn’t played any other flexbone teams in this span. It did dominate FCS Charleston Southern, which runs a modified shotgun triple option, in 2015. The teams that play the Tide every year should be paying attention. Every team in the conference is going to be out-talented every time it plays Bama. No one is saying all of those teams must immediately adopt the flexbone. I’d say Auburn should for next week, except LSU tried to quickly install triple-option plays after seeing what GaSo did to Bama in 2011. LSU then got 2.1 yards per play in a title-game loss to Bama. When you go flexbone, you pay a recruiting price. Talented quarterbacks and receivers probably won’t want to play in that scheme. Certain types of offensive linemen, ones who are heavy and specialize in pass-blocking, won’t be options for you, either. Teams like LSU, Auburn, and Georgia would never do that just to have a unique look for Bama. But the majority of the Tide’s competition will never even get close to their talent level. If one of the SEC schools that isn’t a recruiting power wanted to be different and take a chance, it could do a lot worse than the bone. It’s not like Mississippi State, for instance, would be sacrificing much of a passing game. But it might at least give Saban an unpleasant week.