Professional Career
In 1961 he was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Dallas Cowboys, but because Tom Landry didn't have any room for him on the roster, Gil Brandt called Dallas Texans head coach Hank Stram to give Grayson a try.
He ended up making the team and played four years with the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs before joining the Oakland Raiders in 1965.
Grayson held the AFL record for longest interception return for a touchdown, 99 yards, against the New York Titans in 1961.
He had an interception off George Blanda in the Texans' classic 1962 double-overtime championship game victory over the defending AFL Champion Houston Oilers.
Grayson was an American Football League All-Star six times, in Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs in 1962, 1963 and 1964, and in Oakland Raiders in 1965, 1966 and 1969.
He made a 48-yard return with the opening kickoff against the Oilers in the 1967 AFL Championship Game.
At Oakland in 1968, he led the American Football League with ten interceptions.
He is the all-time AFL leader in interceptions with 47, for a 20-yard return average and 5 touchdowns, and he averaged 25.4 yards on 110 kickoff returns. He is a member of the American Football League All-Time Team.
Read more about this topic: Dave Grayson
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or career:
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (19161962)
“A black boxers career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)