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azcentral sports Fri Sep 6, 2013 1:11 AM

If there are degrees of obscurity in the NFL, tight end Jim Dray is barely above invisible.

He’s entering his fourth season, all with the Cardinals, and because of injuries at his position, is expected to start on Sunday against the Rams. Yet, hardly anyone knows him because he’s labored as quietly as a QT clerk.

A seventh-round pick out of Stanford in 2010, Dray has played 39 games in three years, doing the dirty stuff that no one notices unless it doesn’t get done.

Playing special teams. Blocking. Whatever coaches tell him. Exactly what coaches tell him.

“As steady as you can get,” coach Bruce Arians said.

But steady doesn’t get you headlines, and it’s hard to imagine an NFL player in his fourth year who has been interviewed fewer times than Dray.

Oh, there was the story written his rookie year, when a beat writer (me) sent an intern to ask Dray about teammates teasing him for looking like singer Dave Matthews.

Dray’s clip file in the team’s media-relations department is about .000000012th the size of the one in front of it, Darnell Dockett’s.

It’s a running joke between Dray and those in the team’s media-relations department. They complain that he’s high maintenance. He asks them to cut off all interviews.

Really, though, Dray doesn’t mind the anonymity.

“Executing your job in the NFL is hard enough,” Dray said. “If you start thinking about stuff like that, outside influences, you’ll never get it done.”

For a guy who hasn’t received much (any) media attention, Dray is an interesting story. As a sophomore at Stanford, he suffered a devastating knee injury that could have ended his career.

It required two surgeries to repair damage to three knee ligaments, the hamstring, lateral band, posterior capsule and popliteal.

Dray returned to play in eight games the following year, though he doesn’t take credit for it.

“That was more the training, medical and rehab staff at Stanford,” Dray said. “They had more to do with that than anything, their techniques for rehab, surgery and the whole protocol. If I had gotten the same injury at a different place or under a different staff, I don’t think I’d still be playing.”

Dray graduated from Stanford with a degree in science technology and society with a focus in management science and engineering.

“Just a fancy-sounding business degree, I guess,” he said, “because they don’t have a business degree.”

Dray’s family background is interesting, too. He’s from Paramus, N.J., and his father, Peter, is the chief innovation officer for Smart Balance, which makes a variety of food products that fill coolers and deli cases across the country.

“All of those kinds of creations, his company came up with and he’s spearheaded it the past couple of years,” Dray said. “We had a pretty healthy childhood growing up.”

That’s a reference to the family diet, which didn’t include much fast food.

“No hydrogenated oils or whatever it is,” Dray said. “He brings over peanut butter and oil every time he comes.”

Dray’s fianceé, Kelly Shanahan, competes in equestrian, and together the two of them own a horse, dog, cats, birds, “you name it,” said Dray.

That’s one reason he gives for driving the same Toyota Tundra pickup he’s owned since high school.

“Just doesn’t seem like a wise investment at this point,” said Dray, who is making $630,000 in salary this year, the final year of his contract. “It still runs. I don’t need a new one. We got a bunch of animals, so a new car doesn’t seem really practical.”

There can’t be many other NFL players driving cars with almost 100,000 miles.

When Arians recently warned his players not to buy new cars just because they made the initial 53-man roster, he wasn’t talking about Dray.

“Four years later, Jim still hasn’t bought a new car,” Shanahan tweeted. “Maybe next year.”

Reach Somers at kent.somers@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8335. Follow him at twitter.com/kentsomers.