Becoming a parent as a teenager, when you are still a child and haven’t yet found your path in life, is an unexpected and scary experience.

Sometimes, though, the things we think are scary and might derail us turn out to be the things that bring us joy and drive us to be better.

That has certainly been the case for Darius Alexander, the Toledo defensive tackle drafted in the third round (No. 65 overall) by the New York Giants over the weekend.

Alexander, now 24, is raising a 6-year-old son named Messiah.

“That experience right there, I wouldn’t change that for the world. That means everything to me,” Alexander said after being selected by the Giants. “Just to watch him love the game like I did when I was his age, and for him to be around it for a very long time, day in and day out, watching how hard I work, to wake up early in the morning with me and go to sleep late at night with me, it’s been wonderful. It’s a joy watching him do what he loves to do, as he watches me do what I love to do, so I get enjoyment out of it for sure.”

Those who have coached him on his journey to the NFL believe the experience of fatherhood helped turn him into the player and person he is.

“Him having a son, I think that really efforts maturation,’ said Ben Johnson, Alexander’s head coach at Fort Wayne High School. “And then him facing some adversity when he got to Toledo.

“When he first got there they transitioned him to o-line. It was pretty much like, hey if you want to play D-line, this is where you need to get your body. This is the work ethic we need to see. This is what we’re looking for. Instead of complaining and hitting the transfer portal, he stayed and did what the coaches asked him to do.

“Him staying focused and doing what the coaches asked him to do, and just believing in himself, he was able to transition to the D-line and be there full time. Now he’s a New York Giant.”

Vince Kehres arrived at Toledo as defensive coordinator in 2020 after Alexander had spent his redshirt year as an offensive lineman. It was Kehres who went to head coach Jason Candle and asked for Alexander to be moved to the defensive line.

“I think in his mind when he was coming out of high school, he was more of a d-lineman or, he’d say an athlete. Heck, he wanted to touch the ball. So he just didn’t picture himself as an o-lineman,” Kehres said.

“I don’t think he fully embraced the vision of what he could be as an offensive tackle, like what maybe the coaches would. He envisioned himself as something else.”

In high school, when Alexander was still around 240 pounds, he even played some tight end.

When Kehres arrived at Toledo Alexander was 340 pounds — not nearly in good enough physical condition to chase down quarterbacks and running backs from the defensive line.

Kehres said Alexander “embraced that” when Kehres told him he would need to lose weight and improve his conditioning to play defense because “he wanted to be a d-lineman.”

“Picture a 340-pound guy who’s 18, 19 years old, whatever he is, to now a 24-year-old man who’s 305 pounds,” Kehres said of Alexander’s transformation. “He transitioned the distribution of his body weight. There’s not nearly as much around the belly as there used to be. That’s redistributed into the legs and up into the back and shoulders.”

What Alexander has turned into is a player with terrific athletic gifts for the defensive tackle spot.

Kehres said he watched Alexander grow up during his five years with him at Toledo.

“He’s really matured. I think as a young player he was a little bit immature, he needed a little bit of prodding, he needed [to be] motivated a little bit to get going,” Kehres said. “Over the last couple of years, he’s really matured. I think part of that is the experience of being a father and the responsibility that comes with that.

“And the fact that [he was] starting to see the light at the tunnel of what he could do, what opportunities that football might be able to provide for him. His daily attitude towards life, maybe a little bit more of a pessimistic attitude as a young guy, maybe a little bit lazy at times to much more of a positive attitude, smile on my face. A guy who understands that everybody’s looking at you, how you carry yourself is going to be really, really important. Not only from the guys in the room with you and what they think about you or NFL personnel, what they see, to your own son and how your own son’s looking at you.”

Alexander was dominant his final two seasons at Toledo with 7.5 sacks, 13 tackles for loss and eight passes defensed.

Kehres’ favorite play during Alexander’s Toledo career came in 2024 when he put his athleticism and one-time tight end skills to use by dropping into coverage, leaping to pick off a pass and returning it 58 yards for a touchdown against Pitt.

It is the second play on the highlight reel below. The first is an Alexander sack.

“Sometimes those plays happen and the game may already be well decided one way or another,” Kehres said. “There were eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. And we were down by 10. So we were kind of on our last leg where, man, they get a couple more first downs we’re going to have a hard time getting the ball back enough to get 10 points, especially if they go down and get points on the board.

“That was a big play because now it goes from Pitt’s driving and using a lot of clock and running it down to, now it’s 30 to 27 with still eight, nine minutes left in the fourth quarter. So that was a significant play.”

Kehres wasn’t shocked by the play because he had seen Alexander make a similar one in practice.

“He’s way more athletic than what you would expect somebody who weighs 300 pounds plus to be,” Kehres said. “You just don’t expect somebody at that size to be able to be that explosive.”

Kahres believes a good NFL locker room with the right leaders could bring even more out of Alexander.

“I think his best football is still in front of him,” Kehres said. “Coach Candle and I talked about this a little bit, not necessarily an NFL locker room, but the right NFL locker room, I think is important because he’ll kind of follow the lead of some veteran players. If those veteran players are really pushing him, challenging him to look at new techniques and to really study video tape, to be a professional, he’ll feed off that and he’ll benefit from that.”