Arizona football countdown: 24 days, Terris Jones-Grigsby waited four years for his chance

Four years in the making

Terris Jones-Grigsby will probably always be remembered as the younger brother of former Arizona Wildcats running back Nic Grigsby.

But if not for injuries in 2014, he had a real chance to step out of that shadow.

In his first four years at Arizona, Terris had really only played special teams, picking up ten tackles in 2013. But with the departure of Ka'Deem Carey and Daniel Jenkins, all of the sudden there was an opening for him at running back.

And he took advantage of it.

In the first game of 2014, Jones-Grigsby got the start against UNLV, and man did he make the wait worth it. He racked up 124 yards rushing in his first career game as a running back.

"I couldn't even get sleep last night thinking about it," Terris said after that game. I'm pretty sure all of us would be that way if we had been in the program for four years before finally getting our chance.

Unfortunately, he only picked up 443 more yards throughout the season, as injuries derailed his playing time, as well as the emergence of Nick Wilson. He did have two more 100+ yard games though, getting 115 yards against Oregon and 107 yards against Washington State.

Prior to the Fiesta Bowl, Terris said he was going to try to get into veterinary school after graduating with a degree in animal science, or possibly go into law enforcement or work as a park ranger. As someone who's about to go to school for vet things, I hope he chose the vet school route. He said he wanted to focus on domestic animals, but working at a zoo with tigers was definitely on his radar.

Terris is a really good guy, and it would have been awesome to see him be the primary back last year. Hopefully things are going well for him in post-football life, and it was really something to see someone spend that much time on the program finally get his shot last year.

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