Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Las Vegas’ own DeMarco Murray making run at NFL record

DeMarco Murray

Brandon Wade / AP

Dallas Cowboys running back DeMarco Murray avoids Washington Redskins linebacker Keenan Robinson, center, during the second half Monday, Oct. 27, 2014, in Arlington, Texas.

Click to enlarge photo

DeMarco Murray runs the ball during a game against Cheyenne High School in 2004.

What is the pace, anyway?

DeMarco Murray has rushed for 1,233 yards through the first 10 games of the season. Technically, he's no longer on pace to break Eric Dickerson's NFL rushing record, set in 1984. If in the final six games of the season, including two in the next five days, Murray rushes for his season average, he will finish with 1,973 yards.

But he is ahead of Dickerson, who had 1,171 yards through 10 games and finished with 2,105.

The following are the 10-game numbers for the other running backs who have finished with 2,000-plus yards in an NFL season:

• Adrian Peterson, 2012: 1,128 (he finished with 2,097 yards)

• Jamal Lewis, 2003: 1,247 (he finished with 2,066 yards)

• Barry Sanders, 1997: 1,103 (he finished with 2,053 yards)

• Terrell Davis, 1998: 1,330 (he finished with 2,008 yards)

• Chris Johnson, 2009: 1,242 (he finished with 2,006)

• O.J. Simpson, 1973: 1,323 (he finished with 2,003 yards in a 14-game season and was on pace for 2,289 yards if the NFL had played 16 games back then)

History of injuries

• 2007: Dislocated kneecap forced him to miss final three games; unavailable for spring practice.

• 2008: Hamstring injury during Big 12 championship game; missed national championship game.

• 2011: Fractured right ankle during rookie NFL season; missed final three games; Also had a hamstring issue in preseason.

• 2012: Missed six games with sprained foot; limited in the offseason with a hamstring pull.

• 2013: Missed two games with MCL sprain.

• 2014: Healthy.

• Source: Sports Injury Predictor

DeMarco Murray couldn’t resist drinking his favorite lemon-lime-flavored soda.

Long before Murray, the Dallas Cowboys’ fourth-year running back, became one of the NFL’s best rushers, he was like most high school players still learning how to prepare for a season.

“He hated the weight room, never ate his vegetables and drank too much Sprite,” said Dave White, Murray’s coach at Bishop Gorman High. “I told him, ‘To be that guy, you have to be able to put it all together.’ I told him, ‘There are 30 other guys like you. You have to play with passion. At any second you can be leapfrogged.’ ”

Murray has certainly put it together this season. He has gone from one of the best high school football players in Las Vegas to maybe the best running back in the NFL with a historic season in the making.

Murray has rushed for an NFL-best 1,233 yards in 10 games, breaking Hall of Famer Jim Brown’s NFL record from 1958 with seven straight 100-yard rushing games to start a season. The 26-year-old Murray was on pace to break Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record of 2,105 yards, but after a 79-yard effort against Arizona on Nov. 2 when starting quarterback Tony Romo was out, Murray’s pace slipped to 1,987 yards (though he’s still ahead of Dickerson’s 10-game total from that season).

“You always wonder if a kid you coach will make the NFL,” White said. “It’s surreal sitting back and watching him play. You think back to when he was in one of our meeting rooms at Gorman trying to figure out life.”

White and Murray quickly forged a friendship when White became the Gorman coach after Murray’s freshman season. When Murray played in college at Oklahoma, following Adrian Peterson as the Sooners’ starter and becoming their all-time leader in touchdowns (65) and all-purpose yards (6,718), White joined the coaching staff as a graduate assistant.

“We’ve had so many experiences on and off the field,” White said. “It’s a love-hate relationship. It’s like a dad, coach and brother all in one. I can tell him anything, he can tell me anything.”

One of those heart-to-hearts took place last offseason. Murray had been injured in each of his three seasons with the Cowboys, and with his contract up after this season, needed to avoid being hurt to show the Cowboys (or other teams) he was durable enough to handle the rigors of the NFL season.

Murray fractured his ankle one season, sprained his foot the next, then pulled his hamstring the next. He first injured his hamstring during the 2008 Big 12 championship game against Missouri and was forced to miss the national championship game that season.

Having the reputation of being injury-prone, especially with lingering hamstring problems, caused Murray to slip to the third round of the 2011 NFL Draft. He rushed for 1,214 yards as a senior at Oklahoma and was equally dangerous catching the ball, but he slipped to the Cowboys with the 71st overall pick.

“I told him part of being a good football player is not getting hurt,” White said. “He was pissed that I was getting on his butt. But it was true. Those injuries were the only thing standing in his way.”

Las Vegas Cowboys

Dave White, DeMarco Murray’s former high school coach, coaches a middle-school youth football team in Las Vegas, the Cowboys. Murray’s nephew is on the team and wears No. 3, Murray’s number at Bishop Gorman High. Most of the team has ties to Gorman, including former players who serve as White’s assistant coaches. Aiden White, son of UFC President Dana White but no relation to Dave White, wears Murray’s No. 29 (also worn by NFL single-season record-holder Eric Dickerson).

Murray rededicated himself in the offseason — weight training, conditioning and doing field work — to ready himself for the important contract year. He came back to Dallas in the best shape of his career and ready to take the punishment of an every-down back in the NFL. And he’s withstood the punishment, carrying the ball an average of 24 times a game this season, prompting some experts to question how frequently Murray touches the ball.

But the new-and-improved DeMarco Murray is ready.

“He had a full summer to get his body right,” White said. “He knows it’s a contract year. He wants to prove people wrong. Week in and week out, he’s going down swinging.”

And along the way, he cut out the Sprite.

How Murray proved me wrong

Yes, I said it: DeMarco Murray is overrated.

When Murray was a senior at Bishop Gorman, I told anyone willing to listen that he was overrated. Oops.

He rushed for 1,947 yards and 27 touchdowns as a senior in 2005 and caught 22 passes for 624 yards and seven touchdowns.

This was before Gorman became a perennial power and before the new campus in Summerlin was finished in 2007. The Gaels during Murray’s days were knocked out of the playoffs early, usually eliminated by Cheyenne.

That’s why I thought Murray wasn’t anything special. Most of those yards, I argued, came against inferior competition. Las Vegas has more than its share of struggling high school programs. When Gorman played a team of Cheyenne’s caliber, Murray wasn’t able to take over. He was destined to be a backup at Oklahoma, not a star in the NFL.

“Football is easy right now for DeMarco,” Dave White, his coach at Bishop Gorman, said at the time. “His football IQ is off the charts. He’s so smart and seeing the game perfectly.”

Back then, Gorman practiced on a 45-yard-wide, 70-yard-long field at its old Maryland Parkway and Charleston Boulevard campus.

“We called it the concrete jungle,” White said. “The weight room was the size of a kitchen. But some good came out of that place.”

Yes, DeMarco Murray turned out to be pretty special. I was wrong.

— Sports Editor Ray Brewer has covered high school sports in Las Vegas for nearly two decades

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