NFL one-hit wonders: Olandis Gary was Broncos' glorious outlier

USA Today

21-07-2025

NFL stardom is fleeting, even for some of the world's best players. A sport based on contact forces its talent to burn bright while it can. Aging, injuries and off-field issues can strike down a player at his peak.
Sometimes, those players are the most interesting.
Let's look into the Pro Bowlers and All-Pros who scraped the face of immortality only to come crashing back to earth after making a name for themselves. Franchises penciled these players in as answers, only to wind up asking the same question a few years, or even months, later. And, in many cases, they're the guys who derailed your otherwise infallible fantasy football roster.
It's the offseason, which is a wonderful time to remember some guys. Let's take a look at The Outliers -- the players who rose to prominence for one or two seasons, then crashed back to earth. And let's start at the position that is gonna show up here so often it may as well have its own theme song; tailback.
Olandis Gary: Denver Broncos, 1999
The Denver Broncos had won back-to-back Super Bowls before drafting Gary. They were also making the swap from a future Hall of Fame quarterback (John Elway) to second-year passer Brian Griese. What followed was mostly underwhelming.
Despite starting the season as a +500 pick to three-peat, Denver struck out to an 0-4 start. After throwing three touchdowns in a Week 1 loss to the Miami Dolphins, Griese had one in the three defeats that followed -- games in which the Bronco offense scored three total touchdowns.
Two of those touchdowns belonged to another Hall of Famer. Terrell Davis wasn't yet 27 years old and coming off a 2,000-yard campaign in the previous season's Super Bowl defense. But a heavy workload (1,310 carries the prior three seasons) was beginning to catch up to him. His yards per carry (YPC) dropped from 5.1 to 3.1 before a torn ACL and MCL -- suffered chasing down a Griese interception -- ended his 1999 and, frustratingly, portended the end of his career as an elite tailback.
This was Gary's opportunity. The fourth-round pick was Denver's seventh selection of that year's draft and was inactive for the first four weeks of the season. Suddenly, he was competing for snaps with 31-year-old Derek Loville. Loville was a useful platoon mate who averaged a career-best 5.1 YPC that fall, but was best deployed as a guest star rather than as a member of the featured cast.
Gary was a bit of a lottery ticket. He had transferred up from then Division I-AA Marshall to Georgia after playing sparingly for the Thundering Herd. He platooned with fellow outlier candidate Robert Edwards (a 1998 first round selection of the New England Patriots) and led the Bulldogs in rushing yards (699) the following year despite underwhelming NFL speed (a 4.71-second 40 at the 1999 NFL Scouting Combine). Gary had potential and confidence; Davis' injury gave him opportunity.
Gary, to use a technical term, ruled. The Broncos offense was messy around him. Griese threw 14 touchdowns and 14 interceptions in 14 games even with Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey in the lineup. But even with limited threat of the pass the rookie found room to thrive. He had 150 total yards (124 rushing) in his second game as a pro, toppling the Green Bay Packers 31-10. He was an engine head coach Mike Shanahan could trust to grind clock; Gary had at least 20 carries in eight of his 12 games that season. Denver went 6-2 in those games and 0-8 the rest of the season.
That included a 185-yard rushing performance against the Detroit Lions and a 183-yard showcase against the Seattle Seahawks where he broke free for a 71-yard run to set up the Broncos' eventual overtime win.
Gary finished his rookie season with 1,159 rushing yards in 12 games. He missed a quarter of the season and still finished the year as a top-15 fantasy football back. Spaced over a full season, his 229-point non-PPR pace painted him as a potential top five RB around the time fake football became an indelible part of the gridiron landscape. That all depended heavily on Davis' return. Even so, the hype was enough that the Broncos put a first round price tag in trade talks for a player they thought could be the league's top tailback in the near future.
He'd finish 2000 with nine total fantasy points.
What happened?
Gary made it 13 carries into 2000 before Denver's devastated tailback corps gave way to another Broncos outlier. Davis suffered a foot/ankle sprain in the season opener that returned the onus to the second year back. Gary ran for 80 yards and added three catches out of the backfield before a torn ACL ended his season. This wasn't his choice mind you -- he still wanted to play despite missing the ligament that lets you go side-to-side -- but his encore performance had to wait.
In his stead -- and with Davis still working back toward 80 percent of his peak -- sixth round rookie Mike Anderson kept Denver's tradition of mid-draft running back studs alive. The former Utah star ran for 131 yards and two touchdowns in his NFL running back debut, helping the Broncos crush the Atlanta Falcons 42-14. He finished the season with nearly 1,500 yards and, whoops, Denver suddenly had three running backs capable of averaging almost 100 yards per game in its lineup.
Gary returned for nine weeks in 2001, but his attempts per game dropped from about 23 in his rookie campaign to 6.3 in his third season. His YPC dropped to 3.7 post-ACL, which wasn't catastrophic in the early 2000s NFL (that's what Eddie George averaged en route to 1,500 rushing yards in 2000) but portended the end of his career. By 2003 he was facing a roster crunch in Colorado and was traded to the Detroit Lions for a seventh round draft pick. His usage picked up a bit, but his platoon with Shawn Bryson was utterly forgettable for a bad Detroit team.
Five years after his breakout rookie season, Gary was out of the NFL. Now he's coaching high school football at his alma mater in the Washington D.C. area and appears to be thriving.
Was he as good as you remember?
Yes, but with an asterisk. Gary thrived in Shanahan's run-heavy approach. He did the work, but the success of Davis before him and Anderson after points to an offense that wanted to relieve the pressure from both an aging quarterback (Elway) and a new starter (Griese). Gary made the most of his opportunity, but he may not have had his near-1,200 yard breakthrough had he been drafted by, say, the San Diego Chargers.
Still, the man had the vision and power to emerge as a proud link in that chain of Shanahan running backs. His 2000, with Davis battling injury and the RB1 role lined up for him again, is one of the more interesting but overlooked "what if"s of the last 25 years.