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Gerry Ellis

American football player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ5552729
Source-derived summary

Gerry Ellis (born November 12, 1957) is an American former professional football player who was a running back for seven seasons with the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Missouri Tigers and was selected by the Los Angeles Rams in the 1980 NFL draft. He was inducted into the Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame in 1994.

College career

After playing high school football at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, Ellis spent his first year post-high school at Fort Scott Junior College. He later played at Missouri, where he started at fullback but was injured midway through his senior year. He returned in time for the 1979 Hall of Fame Classic against South Carolina, where he scored a touchdown.

Professional career

Ellis was drafted 192nd overall by the Los Angeles Rams in the seventh round of the 1980 NFL draft, but was cut by the team in his first preseason and was claimed by the Green Bay Packers in free agency during the opening stages of the 1980 season. After rising to starting fullback in the middle of September 1980, Ellis scored his first career NFL touchdown against the Rams. He set Packers single-season team records for total offense by a running back and receiving yards by a running back in 1981, accumulating more than a quarter of Green Bay's total offensive yards. On September 30, 1984, Ellis caught a lateral from James Lofton as time expired against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, scoring a touchdown and sending the game into overtime.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Gerry Ellis” as american football player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gerry, Ellis and American.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1957, 1980, 1994, 1979—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1957-11-12. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Gerry, Ellis and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Gerry Ellis”, the useful work is to connect “american football player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5552729. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1980, 1994 and 1979.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

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  • Building a first chronology
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gerry Ellis”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gerry Ellis primary sources, Gerry Ellis archive and Gerry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Gerry Ellis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.