

Jonas Gray did this a lot Sunday night. (Joe Robbins / Getty Images)

On Sunday Jonas Gray ran over, around and through the Indianapolis Colts defense, setting a New England Patriots record with four touchdowns in a 42-20 victory.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft expected big things from him in Indy, but he couldn’t have foreseen a day on which Gray would end up with as many rushing touchdowns as the rest of the teams in the league combined.

Not bad for a player who spent most of the season on the practice squad, once opened for Screech as a stand-up comedian, and was on the verge of being cut in training camp.

“It’s kind of funny because on Saturday I walked into the building and Mr. Kraft pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re going to have a big game this week, so be ready,'” Gray said said Gray, who played college football three hours away from Lucas Oil Stadium at Notre Dame. “Just hearing that from the owner and hearing that from the head coach, hearing that from the leader of the team, definitely gives you a positive outlook and definitely gives you the mindset to go out and do your best.”

Gray, an undrafted bowling-ball of a player out of Notre Dame, had hurt his knee in college. He missed his first season with the Miami Dolphins while rehabbing from the injury. He was cut a year later and spent last season on the Baltimore Ravens’ scout team. For the first six weeks of the season, he occupied the same scout-team spot in New England, impressing Vince Wilfork with the way he kept churning his legs in practice runs.

When Stevan Ridley went down with an injury, Bill Belichick turned to Gray, and he finished with 38 carries for 199 yards (after carrying the ball 32 times for 131 yards and no touchdowns in his first three NFL games). Kraft wasn’t the only one thinking Gray’s time was about to come.

“We really talked about bringing him up on the roster [and off the practice squad] several weeks before,” Belichick said. “…I had several conversations with him in previous weeks telling him ‘You know that you’re close. We want to try and get you on the roster right now, but we have a couple of other issues that we have to deal with.’ I think we all felt as a coaching staff that he would be playing for us at some point this season.”

After his big game, Gray said he was headed home to bed, where he would lie awake, looking at the ceiling and marveling. He might be the only one in the NFL, though. Everyone else is going to be losing sleep wondering how to stop Belichick’s monstrous new team. The defense batters opponents, as the Denver Broncos and Colts have learned in successive games, and the running game is brutally effective as well. It’s a combination that should strike terror in the hearts of NFL coaches, as Lindsay H. Jones of USA Today puts it.

The NFL remains a quarterback’s league, but, on Sunday night, everyone was Googling a running back named Jonas Gray.