FRISCO, Texas -- In 2015, Randy Gregory happily walked onto the stage at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago to be greeted by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell as the Dallas Cowboys’ second-round pick.
Projected to be a first-round pick, Gregory slipped to No. 60 overall because of off-field issues, but on this spring night, Gregory was ecstatic just the same.
Three years later, Gregory had another audience with Goodell. This time, it was at 345 Park Avenue at the NFL offices in New York, where he sought his reinstatement to a league that had suspended him for 30 of 32 regular-season games over the 2016 and 2017 seasons because of multiple violations of the substance-abuse policy.