John Grigas: Difference between revisions

'''John Joseph Grigas''' (August 19, 1920{{spaced ndash}}May 19, 2000) was an [[American football]] player. A native of [[Chelsea, Massachusetts]], he played [[college football]] for the [[College of the Holy Cross]] [[Holy Cross Crusaders football|Crusaders football]] team and was later inducted into the Holy Cross Varsity Club Hall of Fame.<ref>{{cite web|title=John J. Grigas Bio|publisher=Holy Cross|accessdate=February 18, 2016|url=http://www.goholycross.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=33100&ATCLID=210240270}}</ref> He also played five seasons from 1943 to 1947 as a fullback and halfback in the [[National Football League]] (NFL).

During the 1944 season, he appeared in nine games for the [[Card-Pitt]] (a temporary wartime merger of the [[Pittsburgh Steelers]] and [[Chicago Cardinals]]) and ranked first in the NFL with 1,154 all-purpose yards, first with 471 kickoff return yards, second with 610 rushing yards and eighth with 690 passing yards.<ref>{{cite news|title=1944 NFL Leaders and Leaderboards|publisher=Sports Reference LLC|work=Pro-Football-Reference.com|accessdate=February 19, 2016|url=http://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/1944/leaders.htm}}</ref> Grigas would have accumulated even more impressive statistics, but he quit the team before the final game, leaving the team with a letter citing his mental exhaustion at playing with a team that had gone 0-9 in the first nine games.<ref>{{cite news|title=Pro Gridders Draw Checks, Go Home|newspaper=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette|date=December 5, 1944|page=14|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/4362670/pro_gridders_draws_checks_go_home/}}</ref>