Fantasy, Meet Reality: A Running Back Breaks Out, Then Disappears

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2019

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When New England running back Jonas Gray took the field vs. the Indianapolis Colts five years ago, no one could have predicted the incredible outburst of scoring that would land him national attention, and even a magazine cover. Nor could anyone have predicted how quickly that success would disappear, through a series of mishaps. ESPN senior writer Liz Merrill tells Mina Kimes the story of an underdog, his big shot, and how players might always be one step away from glory - or obscurity - in the NFL. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	waiting under center, gives it to Gray. He runs it left. He runs it to the end zone for the fourth time. Touchdown Patriots.
0:10.1	That's the sound of an unknown running back becoming an overnight sensation. Jonas Gray burst onto the scene with the New England Patriots five years ago with his 200-yard four-touchdown performance
0:21.9	on Sunday night football. And then, as quickly as he arrived, he was gone. Today, what really
0:29.7	happened with one of the NFL's biggest one-hit wonders? I'm Mina Kimes. It's Thursday, November 14th. This is ESPN Daily, presented by Indeed.
0:50.5	Liz, when I saw the headline on this story and that you were writing about Jonas Gray,
0:56.8	my reaction was, oh yeah, that guy. Like, whatever happened to him? Yeah, he's one of those names
1:04.0	in sports that make people's ears perk up. Liz Merrill is a senior writer for ESPN.
1:18.0	So we're doing a package on one-hit wonders, and the editor thought who'd be better to sort of headline this, but Jonas Gray's story.
1:21.1	It's been about five years since his breakout game.
1:27.1	It was November 16th, 2014. What happened on that day?
1:32.7	New England had gone through one of those Septembers in which everyone had written them off.
1:37.4	You know, they'd lost at Miami in the opening game. And then they went to Kansas City and just
1:42.0	got clobbered. And in two Patriots form, they rattle off five wins and they're back to their dominating
1:50.0	selves.
1:50.8	Tom Brady leads his Patriots into town to take on Andrew Luck and the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday
1:56.5	night football.
1:57.7	This game was a Sunday night football game, and it was a highly anticipated game
2:04.1	because it was a rematch of that year's AFC divisional round game. But tonight it's Andrew
2:09.0	Luck against Tom Brady. Get your calculators out. This should be really fun. Two rested teams
2:14.4	both come off by weeks. And then there's this kid named Jonas Gray who's about to make a start.
2:21.5	Back to the ground.
2:23.2	This is Jonas Gray, Gray to the 30-yard line.
	...

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