Naturally, the Packers were involved, and they thought (quite reasonably) they had defended a miracle touchdown only for the referee to rule that Seahawks receiver Golden Tate had simultaneous possession, which meant he scored the winning points. There was even a so-called Fail Mary in Seattle in 2012. Or Kordell Stewart’s late chuck to Michael Westbrook to devastate Michigan ten years later. Like Doug Flutie’s desperation hurl for Boston College to beat Miami in the 1984 Orange Bowl. And Rule 4: there must be little time remaining preferably in the game, or, less so, in the half.Īll truly famous Hail Marys fit within those guidelines. Rule 3: the game must be close ideally the pass would tie or win. Rule 2: the throwing team must be behind. Rule 1: the throw must be long ideally tossed from around midfield, definitely more than 40 yards.
Informal rules mandate certain qualifications. He laughs and says, “Aaron Rodgers is Mr. “I think it’s time to pass the mantle, anyway,” says Staubach, who will be at AT&T Stadium on Sunday for a potential Hail Mary Handoff. Just last week, Staubach had a meeting at his commercial real estate company, JLL, and one of his employees said that to land a New York real estate deal would “probably take a Hail Mary to pull off.” Staubach just looked at him thinking, dude? Now, the Hail Mary is the football version of so you’re saying there’s a chance, the play that changes everything, the ultimate flipped script. Maybe, he suggests, we’d call those glorious passes “bombs” or “alley-oops.” Perhaps the phrase “Hail Mary” would only be said in church, rather than by thrown around by football pundits, and it wouldn’t be used by long shots everywhere for everything from business dealings to first dates. Sometimes, Staubach wonders how history would be different if he hadn’t looked off the safety, or thrown the perfect pass, or if he had told the reporter he said Our Father or Glory Be.
Hail mary football packers full#
He meant the prayer, as in, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” Staubach, then the Cowboys’ quarterback, did connect with Pearson for a game-winning score in the 1975 playoffs, and he did tell a reporter afterward that he had closed his eyes and “said a Hail Mary” before he launched. Rodgers, a football historian and Celebrity Jeopardy! champion, is right, of course.
I used to watch highlights like that on old VHS tapes.” The striking thing was that Rodgers and the Packers had pulled that play off again.Īfter the crowd dispersed, Rodgers leaned back in his locker, and I asked him if he knew how the football term “Hail Mary” came to be. The most outrageous thing wasn’t that the play worked as Green Bay had intended, even if the odds involved there fall somewhere between winning the lottery and dating a swimsuit model. Rodgers last made the impossible look easy the previous weekend, with a 42-yard Hail Mary he snuck beyond a pack of Giants defenders to wideout Randall Cobb in the final seconds of the first half. The topic du jour is the Hail Mary, and how the Packers have completed three of them under Rodgers in a span of 402 days-a rate (60%) that is higher than overall completion percentage for some NFL quarterbacks. Instead, the questions revolve around a play that ranks among the most thrilling in sports and the most unlikely in football: A last-gasp, desperation heave thrown into a crowded end zone where the chance of conversion is so improbable the successful version is named after a prayer.
It’s not the Dallas Cowboys, who host Green Bay in a divisional playoff game this Sunday, their rookie quarterback sensation Dak Prescott, or even the Packers’ seven-game win streak. Most settle around the locker of Aaron Rodgers, the Packers’ cerebral quarterback, and while the questions vary slightly, one topic dominates all others. A crowd of reporters marches into the Packers locker room on Wednesday, armed with notepads, microphones and recorders.
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