ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Geoff Collins is a nickname all-timer. He has handed out some good ones in his career, but he's also the type of coach who hands out nicknames to pretty much everyone. The best usually stick. One he gave, though, became something larger.

It became a way to describe Darius Slay's entire game.

Slay arrived at Mississippi State from Itawamba Community College in 2011 and Collins -- then coaching the Bulldogs' defense -- immediately took a liking to the brash cornerback in practice. Collins saw the potential, if not quite the production, right away.

"When I first got there to Mississippi State, he said, 'Slay, you know what? I'm gonna call you Big Play. You know why? Because you're going to make a big play. I know you will,' " said Slay, who is about to enter his fifth season with the Detroit Lions. "Then he started saying, 'Big Play Slay, Big Play Slay,' all the time in practice.

"So I stuck with it and it became a big name."

Collins saw a raw athlete, a player with speed to stay with any receiver Mississippi State matched him up with and ball skills that, if refined, could turn him into a good SEC cornerback.

However, there was a learning process and in 2011, Slay was still adjusting to the skill and speed of the SEC. But the talent was there, so Collins wanted to motivate a player he thought could be a future star.

"He'd come out there in practice and he was a very raw athlete, kind of, I don't want to say he didn't know what he was doing but it was kind of to that point," said Collins, now the head coach at Temple. "He started making plays and I like to give nicknames that are positive and I started calling him ‘Big Play Slay' all the time and then he just kept making more and more big plays and the nickname kind of stuck.

"But ask him. I'm the one who gave it to him. Every time I see his Twitter name, Big Play Slay, I'm like, 'You know who gave you that nickname there, buddy.'"

He does. He also lived up to it. Slay had a 72-yard interception return for a touchdown at Georgia in 2011 -- one of the longest in Mississippi State history. After that game, perhaps not coincidentally, he said "make plays" or "make big plays" five times in a 90-second interview.

He added 40 tackles along with five interceptions and six pass breakups his senior year in 2012. In two years with the Bulldogs, he defended 16 passes, intercepted six and scored two touchdowns. Many were, as his nickname described, big plays.

"He embraced it," Collins said. "It's a pretty good nickname. He embraced it and everybody around him embraced it, too. He continually made big plays for us."

It was an easy nickname for Slay to embrace. It described what type of cornerback he wanted to be -- a big-play, shutdown corner opposing defenses wanted to avoid. It was catchy, rhymed and rolled off the tongue.

So once the nickname got out beyond Slay, Collins and his teammates to the Mississippi State fans and then Lions fans after he was a second-round pick in 2013, it became part of him. He uses it as his Twitter (@_bigplayslay23) and Instagram handles. He also incorporates the nickname on his website and uses it to market himself through his merchandise.

The nickname has, in essence, become part of him -- all because of a coach who saw potential and wanted to try to motivate. And he's OK with that, because before that he didn't really have a nickname.

"Just Slay. Just Slay," he said. "Was none of that Darius calling. I don't like folks calling me Darius."

After four NFL seasons, signing a $50.2 million extension a little under a year ago and making game-changing plays at least twice last season, he doesn't need to worry about that much anymore. By continually making big plays, he's earned it. Even now, he knows he has Collins to thank for the name that describes so much of his career.