Another weekend of NFL football and another punch between the eyes that the Dallas Cowboys are not playing beyond the season.  It will be another unhappy Christmas Day for Jerry Jones, because Santa ain’t bringing a trip to the NFC championship game; Santa hasn’t in a long time, since 1996 when the late Senator Dole and Secretary Kemp were the GOP nominees.

What do you do when you are watching your home team lose and another season is lost?  Well, you let your mind wander and recall when the NFL was a little different.  I mean when they threw a “Hail Mary” pass or caught immaculate receptions.  Wonder who’d be offended these days if they described plays that way?  I’d bet someone would complain that atheists watch games too.

The Staubach to Pearson catch happened in 1974 when Dallas was playing Minnesota in the playoffs.  This is how Roger Staubach remembers it:

‘It was in the locker room. It was an Associated Press writer I believe who picked it up,’ Staubach said. ‘I was a Catholic kid from Cincinnati, and they asked me what were you thinking about when you threw the ball, and I said, ‘When I closed my eyes I said a Hail Mary. I could have said Our Father, Glory Be, The Apostles Creed.

‘So he picked it up and gradually, instead of the bomb or the alley-oop, those were kind of the big plays winning games back then, he coined the phrase and, of course, I said it, the NFL recognizes I said it, and slowly but surely it took off. Now it’s used for everything.’

Thus the Hail Mary, once again these Cowboys influencing the NFL in yet another way.

Now it’s been 45 seasons since the 50-yard erstwhile bomb gave birth to the term Hail Mary, this off-the-cuff remark from Staubach sending it forever more into football vernacular when heaving a desperation pass against all odds while hoping – praying – for the very best.

‘I have always been proud of that because I figure The Blessed Virgin will not allow me to go to hell … bring her into it,’ Staubach said with a smile. ‘Now it’s really used for everything. If you’ve got a problem or something, you need a Hail Mary.’

My late mom, a devout Catholic, used to say the same thing:  If you need something or have an insurmountable problem, say an “Ave Maria”, or Hail Mary in Spanish.  To be honest I said a few over the years.

Then we remember the immaculate reception or another reference to Mother Mary.  This one goes back to 1972:

On its final possession, Pittsburgh faced a fourth and 10 from its 40-yard line with 22 seconds left and no timeouts. Pittsburgh radio play-by-play man Jack Fleming described what happened next:

‘Bradshaw’s running out of the pocket, looking for somebody to throw to ... He fires it downfield, and there's a collision! It’s caught out of the air! The ball is pulled in by Franco Harris! Harris is going for a touchdown for Pittsburgh!’

At Oakland’s 35-yard line, Raiders defensive back Jack Tatum had crashed into Steelers running back Frenchy Fuqua, apparently hitting the football, which ricocheted toward Harris, who caught it inches off the turf and ran down the sideline for a 60-yard touchdown. Pittsburgh won, 13-7.

The miraculous score touched off the most raucous celebration by Pittsburgh fans since 1960 when a ninth-inning home run by the Pirates’ Bill Mazeroski won the World Series. After a call to the press box—the NFL did not adopt instant replay until more than a decade later—officials kept the original touchdown call. The play remains controversial—if the ball had hit Fuqua last, the touchdown would have been declared an incomplete pass according to NFL rules at the time.

I was watching this game on TV and could not believe how the ball came back to Franco.  It seemed like an optical illusion, but the replay answered my doubts.

A couple of plays from a time when the game was more magical or you could say “Hail Mary” and everyone understood the reference.

Merry Christmas everybody.  Thank you for reading my posts.

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Image: Jonathan D. Parshall, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, unaltered.