There is that sense of the blind heave, the pregnant anxiety as the projectile traces its parabola, the scrum as hopefuls jostle for position, the euphoria of having snared the prize and the anguish of having not. "There have to be players from both teams scraping and clawing one another to get in position to catch the ball."Ī mosh pit is a fine description, but the Hail Mary more closely resembles a bride tossing her wedding bouquet over her shoulder to a klatch of distaff guests.
"I like to think of it as a mosh pit, the area where the ball is thrown," says Huard, a Seattle native who played at the University of Washington in the 1990s, in the age of grunge. While the term has come to be associated with any unlikely game-winning toss as the clock expires, the genuine Hail Mary has these defining features: (1) The pass must be thrown from at least 40 yards outside the end zone (2) the team attempting the pass must be trailing (3) the game must be in its waning seconds-ideally, the clock expires during the play and (4) the pass must be directed not so much to a particular receiver as to an area near the goal line. The Hail Mary, for those of you familiar only with the prayer ("full of grace/The lord is with thee.…"), is a pass thrown in desperation at the end of a football game. … It's caught! It is caught! Jauan Jennings! Jauan Jennings!" Now that was a Hail Mary. "They're bunched up in the end zone.… It's tipped up.
"Dobbs heaves it," intoned CBS announcer Verne Lundquist. One play later, following a kickoff and two penalties on the Bulldogs, Eason's counterpart for the Vols, Josh Dobbs, took the snap with 4 seconds and unleashed a 43-yard invocation toward the end zone. "Eason knew exactly who his intended receiver was, and he hit him in stride." Georgia quarterback Jacob Eason took the snap near midfield, drifted right in the pocket and fired a 47-yard pass to Riley Ridley, who caught it in stride along the left sideline as he crossed into the end zone. On a recent Saturday, in the gloaming of Athens, Georgia, the University of Georgia Bulldogs trailed the Volunteers of Tennessee 28-24 with 19 seconds remaining. For those who feel its awful sting, the Hail Mary is sport's answer to inexorable fate: knowing what is coming yet being powerless to stop it. The Hail Mary pass redeems lost souls while tormenting, if not sinners, then defenses who rush three players while dropping eight. In an instant, it flips the entire story upside down."Īgony to ecstasy. "That's what makes the Hail Mary special. How did Mother Mary, the most renowned female figure in history, a paragon of virtue and pacifism, become so inextricably linked to the violent game of American football? How is it that on almost any autumn weekend her name is invoked not only in prayer but by broadcasters? How did the most spectacular play in America's most popular sport come to be known as the Hail Mary pass, and why do we love it so? "The greatest stories have the largest arcs," says ESPN analyst Brock Huard, a former NFL quarterback. When Lou Holtz, the Fighting Irish coach at the time, heard that, he said, "I don't think God cares who wins either," adding with a sly grin, "but his mother does." "God doesn't care who wins football games," the cleric huffed. Before a University of Miami–Notre Dame football game in the late 1980s, a team chaplain for the Hurricanes dismissed the notion that the Catholics from South Bend, Indiana, had the Almighty on their side.