Maurice Jones-Drew

Lore & Background

Jones-Drew was selected by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the second round of the 2006 NFL draft. He was named to the Pro Bowl three times, and led the NFL in rushing yards in 2011. He played his first eight seasons with the Jaguars, through 2013. In his final season in 2014, he played for the Oakland Raiders. Following his retirement, Jones-Drew entered broadcasting, serving as a football color analyst for NFL Now and other shows on NFL Network, in addition to hosting for CBS Sports their Monday Night studio show for their UK networks. He is currently the color analyst for the Los Angeles Rams.

Reader's Guide

Born in Oakland, California, Jones-Drew was raised in Antioch and graduated from De La Salle High School in Concord. De La Salle owns the longest winning streak in high school football history at 151 games. The Spartan football teams that Jones-Drew played on never lost a single game during his three-year varsity career. He was an elusive, high-scoring running back and return specialist on offense and a punishing linebacker on defense.

Jones-Drew somersaulted into the national consciousness as a high school junior in 2001 when he scored all four of De La Salle's touchdowns in a 29-15 nationally televised victory over Long Beach Poly on October 6. It was the first game that ever matched up the nation's No. 1 and No. 2 ranked high school football teams. On the Spartans' opening drive, Jones-Drew received a short pass in the right flat on third-and-eight from the Poly 25-yard line.

He broke a tackle and then sprinted down the right sideline before launching a spectacular forward somersault into the end zone. Drew next scored on a 29-yard reception on fourth down in which he ran a circle route out of the backfield down the left sideline and hauled in an over-the-shoulder touch pass at the goal line from quarterback Matt Gutierrez. Drew's third touchdown came in the second quarter when he burst through the line, shook off two tacklers, before hitting paydirt 17 yards later.

Drew's final score salted away the historic De La Salle victory. It was a similar effort to his third touchdown and came on a 22-yard run with just under seven minutes remaining. Drew finished with nine carries for 86 yards and three catches for another 79 yards. During his junior season, Jones-Drew rushed for nearly 2,000 yards, averaged nearly 12 yards per carry, and scored 26 touchdowns.

He was rated as a four-star recruit and ranked as the No. 1 all-purpose back in the nation in 2003 by Rivals.com. He is pictured outrunning a slew of defenders on the cover of the book When the Game Stands Tall, which chronicles the De La Salle Spartans' all-time-record 151-game winning streak. Jones-Drew also ran track for the De La Salle track team and was a member of the Spartans' 4 x 100 metres relay state championship meet team of 2002, which posted a non-finals-qualifying time of 42.20 seconds during the meet's preliminaries.