On the day the 2020 NFL Draft concluded, a virtual event that will be remembered for its perseverance while the rest of the country was shut down, Terry Battle spoke with his wife about his feeling of Déjà vu.

There was this running back from Arizona State, he told her, who left Tempe early, expecting to be picked in the third or fourth round, but instead slipped to the seventh and final round. Terry Battle was speaking about Eno Benjamin, though he may as well have been reliving his own draft day from 23 years prior.

“Your accolades don’t matter. Me being a first-team All-American or him being the all-time (ASU) single-season rushing leader,” Battle said, intertwining his experiences with Benjamin’s. “It just doesn’t matter … It just doesn’t make sense. And it never will.

“When you get drafted, you have an opportunity to go and put your best foot forward in order to make the team. And so, that’s what I did and as a seventh-round pick. I made the team. That’s the message I would share with Eno right now.”

Battle can’t be certain for the reasons behind Benjamin’s draft-day fall. In reality, like many of us, he’s still not even sure why he wasn’t a mid-round selection. After his junior season, a year where Battle helped lead the Sun Devils to a Rose Bowl appearance behind 1,043 yards on the ground and a (Pac10/12 era) school-record 18 touchdowns, he went to the NFL Advisory Committee seeking advice for his future.

“When I received that feedback, they said, ‘You’ll go anywhere between the third and fourth round,’” Battle remembers the advisory committee telling him. “I looked at that as an opportunity to provide for my family and so I entered the draft.”

Back then, the NFL Draft wasn’t quite the drawn-out spectacle it is now. Rounds one through three were held on Saturday. Rounds four through seven took place on Sunday. Battle went to bed that Saturday disappointed. Round three was his best possible scenario and it flew by with mention of his name. But the committee told him he would go in either round three or four, so he woke up early that Sunday expecting a short wait.

It lasted hours.

Shortly after the seventh and final round began, a Michigan area code rang Battle.

“They said, ‘Hey, this is such and such from the Detroit Lions. Did you get injured or do anything we need to know about in the last 48 hours?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely not,’” Battle said he told the Lions. “They said, ‘Well, we’re going to take you with our next pick. We’re surprised you slid down this far.’”

If the Lions were surprised, count Battle as shell-shocked. And not only was his signing bonus a fraction of what he anticipated, he was walking into a running backs room with Goliath. How was he going to see meaningful playing time when there’s a Hall of Famer taking all the carries? The Lions told him he could compete to be Barry Sanders’ backup and though it wasn’t the most glamorous role on the planet, it was an opportunity.

But his draft-day skid perhaps reaffirmed the views of those who thought it would be best if he stayed in Tempe for another season.

Then Arizona State’s offensive coordinator, Dan Cozzetto remembered long conversations he had with Battle about the draft. ‘Are you sure?’, he kept asking, as if to insert his own doubts about the situation.

“Terry talked to me before the Rose Bowl and I said, ‘It’s a tough decision. If that’s what you have to do, that’s what you have to do. But I would hope you come back,’” Cozzetto told Battle in early 1997. “If he would have stayed another year, I think his stock would have been tremendous, into a first-round draft pick.”

Aside from his impressive numbers as a ball carrier, Battle was named as a Sporting News 1st Team All American and All Pac-10 selection and was also recognized as the nation's top kick returner, averaging 31.1 yards. Yet, he was still apprehensive of what his senior year would have in-stored for him.

Battle’s hesitation was largely sparked by a fear that, if he came back to ASU, he would play second fiddle to running back Michael Martin, Cozzetto said. Without Martin suffering a serious neck injury in a week six win at UCLA, it would have been him, not Battle, he thought, leading the Sun Devils to their second Rose Bowl.

“I said, ‘Well, you don’t know that,’” Cozzetto said he told Battle. “And he said, I just need your support,’ and I said, ‘I support you in anything you want to do.’”

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Battle spent two seasons with the Lions and played in eight total games. But as he’s quick to point out, his voice growing with a hint of animosity, all eight were in the preseason. He went on to play in NFL Europe and the XFL, but he still thinks back to the accolade that eluded him.

He never took a snap in a regular season NFL game.

“Never,” Battle said. “It was very frustrating but these are things you can’t control … When I look back on my career, I can say I was drafted, played in some preseason games, had some great numbers. But it’s nothing like the validation when you can play in (regular season) games, be successful and contribute to the team.

“But injuries and, you know, playing behind Barry Sanders -- the chips kind of are what they are … I was at least thankful and blessed to have a successful career at Arizona State.”

After 1996, Battle’s football career veered away from what he pictured in his dreams. The star role, the long NFL career, the memories of game-winning drives and improbable Sunday touchdowns weren’t to be.

But, still, he has 1996.

The pinnacle of his football career converged perfectly with, arguably, the pinnacle of the Arizona State football program -- and that ensures it won’t be forgotten.

“I’ve always been a huge Terry Battle fan,” Cozzetto said. “He brought a different type of running style. To step in and do what Terry did, to step in in a short season and score (a combined) 20 touchdowns and start in the Rose Bowl as a junior was unbelievable.”

Speaking from his home in Oregon, Cozzetto can still envision Battle against the University of Arizona taking the handoff from Jake Plummer, running past offensive lineman Grey Ruegamer on the right side of the line then shaking defenders with a sharp cut to an open-patch of real estate.

And because it was 1996, Battle always seemed to break loose. He ran for 1,077 yards on 160 attempts. That’s 6.5 yards per carry. For reference, 6.5 yards a carry would have been good for sixth in the country amongst running backs last season.

Years later, he doesn’t dwindle on the numbers or the exact stats. He thinks back to Camp Tontozona when that 1996 team began to truly mesh. To the 19-0 shutout upset of No. 1 Nebraska, when they jumped into the national spotlight and came into the Rose Bowl against Ohio State with a perfect 11-0 record. And how none of it could have been possible without Martin’s injury.

“What clicked for me was just getting the opportunities,” Battle said. “Dan Cozzetto told me, ‘We’re turning the keys over to you, this is your deal the rest of the year. I don’t want you to come out unless you need a break and then your ass is going right back in.’”

The summer before his 1996 season, Battle was on a flight and read an article where Dallas Cowboys’ running back Emmitt Smith admitted to writing down his goals. Battle thought to do the same. Soon after, he got a piece of paper and physically wrote down his goals.

His first aspiration was to help his team get to and win the Rose Bowl. He wanted to earn postseason accolades. He wanted to notch 16 touchdowns. He wanted to average a certain amount of yards per carry. He hung that piece of paper in his locker. Every day, he saw and visualized those goals.

Twenty-three years later, Battle these days the head coach at Walled Lake Northern High School in Michigan. In his first team meeting, he spoke to his new team about his expectations and accountability and goals. After a seemingly non-existent strength and conditioning program at Northern, Battle’s first objective was to change his players physically.

But, first, he told them to map out their goals.

There were nearly 40 regulars who came in for his three-week strength program. They had all written down goals -- weights they wanted to hit, amounts they wanted to lift -- and intended on superseding their expectations. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down nearly every school in the country, the school’s booster club president approached Battle with admiration for the quick momentum he had already built in the program.

“Being a head coach, I try to find videos to present,” Battle said. “And I was watching a video by (Alabama coach) Nick Saban talking about leadership and discipline and how it’s easy to do things when the circumstance lends itself to being what you perceive is easy. The difficult thing is going the opposite way when there’s a tough decision to make and going the right way.”

Before moving to Michigan, Battle began his coaching journey in Arizona. He coached at Sunrise Mountain High in Peoria and later became an assistant at Phoenix College, working under his former offensive coordinator, Dan Cozzetto.

“At the time, I wasn’t paying him. He was coming on his own time and doing the things that are extraordinary,” Cozzetto said. “Shoot, you do a background check on Terry Battle on the internet and you’re going, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy knows what he’s talking about.”

There was a time when Battle never would have pictured a career in coaching. As a player, he used to have conversations with Cozzetto where he left utterly shocked and almost sad when his offensive coordinator would tell the truth about his early mornings and late nights and all the time he spent at the offices.

There didn’t seem to be any time for family.

And, so, right when Battle stopped playing football, he became a full-time dad. It was only later, when his children were dabbling in their own extracurriculars, that the itch for football brought him back to the sidelines. This time with a whistle instead of a helmet,

“I took valuable lessons from my mom being a single parent and those empty promises that your dad would have for you. I knew from that experience that I did not want to go through that experience,” Battle reflected. “As my kids grew older, then that’s when I said, ‘You know, this is my time to branch out.’”