However, there’s more to De’Shaan Dixon than what production he puts on the field and the impact he can make on an NFL team. His talent and athletic profile speaks for themselves; he will find a role in the NFL. His desire to chase an NFL dream is important, but so is his willingness and the want to positively influence the youth and serve his community.
“That’s been my dream since sixth grade, working with kids and working with the community.”
Sometimes, it’s bigger than football. And for Dixon, it’s all about leaving that lasting impact, long after he hangs up the pads and no longer plays between those white lines on a football field.
Offensive roots, defensive minded
For some future NFL prospects, pee-wee or youth tackle football were their introductions to the game of football. For Dixon, though, his start came through a flag football league at seven years old.
“My mom signed me up for a flag football league and there, I was just playing wide receiver and running back, I was an offensive guy at first,” Dixon recalls.
Growing up, Dixon says he played multiple sports, but his main two were basketball and football. Although basketball and football ended up becoming the main sports Dixon pursued at the high school level, the 2021 First-Team All-MEAC standout says football became his true passion.
“When it got to junior and senior year, I saw that I was getting noticed, people were talking about me saying ‘Okay, he’s going to be good, he can be a great player’ and I got the offers late but I realized this was something that I wanted to do to help me be successful in life,” Dixon explained.
His junior year of high school is when he made the jump in his development, although he says his development was still in progress, often lining up in a four-point stance, with both hands in the ground. Despite putting together a resume where he recorded 52 tackles, 18 tackles for loss, nine sacks and 23 quarterback hurries as a senior, Dixon still only gathered a few scholarship offers.
“I wasn’t a typical defensive end, 195, 200 pounds senior year of high school…all I needed was one offer from one school and Norfolk State was the one I picked.”
Norfolk State ended up being one of two division I offers for the Chesapeake native, but the culture and bond he felt when he stepped on its campus for a visit is what sold it for Dixon. That, and the relative distance from home, he says, played a part in him becoming a Spartan following his graduation from Western Branch High School.
Rise at Norfolk State
The first thing Dixon needed to do before he could become an impact player for Norfolk State, an Historically Black College & University (HBCU) was put some weight on his 200 pound frame as a freshman. And although he was originally planning to redshirt is true freshman season in 2017, after three games, Dixon ended up playing in the final eight games of the season. This was prior to the change of the rule, so it meant even if you played one snap of one game, that redshirt year was gone.
“That fourth game I got moved up to special teams, so I played special teams and backup, backup defensive end coming in for pass rush stuff…I understand why I was in that situation, I was undersized, I knew that I needed to gain weight to play and through the years, I naturally started getting bigger,” Dixon disseminated.
By his sophomore year, Dixon took on more of a role as a backup, appearing in 11 games while making four starts, totaling 31 tackles, one for loss, a pass deflection and three quarterback hurries. He took on more of a situational pass rusher role, utilizing his explosiveness and speed to bend the edges.
However, his junior season is where De’Shaan Dixon’s name not only popped on the FCS radar, but National radars as well. Dixon says his performance against South Carolina State back in 2019, a game in which he had four tackles and two sacks in a 20-17 overtime loss, is where he felt like he ‘arrived.’ Over the last three games, Dixon finished with six tackles and four sacks down the stretch of the season. His ‘breakout’ season resulted in a All-MEAC third-team selection.
The key to Dixon’s emergence? Energy and confidence, he says.
“Junior year one of my defensive line coaches, Justin Williamson, he really preached energy and that’s really brought my game to the next level, I wasn’t always confident in my abilities, I relied on athleticism most of the time and I didn’t really use moves most of the time, but now I’ve learned from a lot of people to add to my bag a little bit,” Dixon declared.
Before Dixon was put an exclamation point on a dominant senior season, he endured a coronavirus filled-2020 that threw him several life changes and put things in perspective for him as he dealt with life without football.
Career and life clarity
It’s not secret how difficult 2020 was for everyone. Whether it affected jobs, home life and even took away sports for some athletes, everyone faced hardship in one way or another.
The year for De’Shaan Dixon meant there was no football at all in the fall. And as it turned out, he didn’t get an opportunity at a spring season either, so it was nearly two years between snaps of 2019 and 2021 for Dixon and the Norfolk State football team.
As all of this was going on, Dixon says he was focusing in on his education, mentioning is work with the YMCA running summer camps and different programs over the last three years up until that point. When he mentioned his work at the YMCA, Dixon began laying out what his second passion was after playing football.
“It started in sixth grade, because we did a project where we would make the school and put it in the area and the details and I really enjoyed that project and from there, I {discovered} I want to be in parks and recreation career field, just working with the community, working with the community around me to make it better,” Dixon expressed.
“It would be like urban planning, urban affairs…using that while I’m in this process, I can use my platform to actually make some stuff happen.”