When Bruce Arians was first hired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers back in January, one of the first topics he spoke about was “finding diamonds in the rough”.
You have to search for them. You have to dig for them. But sometimes, they surface on their own.
Jelani Irby may be one of the latter.
Irby’s story is unique. He first started school in 2008 at Central State University, a Division II school in Ohio, but a back injury forced him to sit out training camp. It didn’t work out at CSU, so he decided to transfer to Dean College, one of the nation’s top JUCO programs.