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Every fan of the game of football today knows what a “Hail Mary” pass is – a desperation heave at the end of a half or a game, with time expiring, in an attempt to steal an out-of-reach game from an opponent.  It’s the ultimate “steal victory from the jaws of defeat” play. Perhaps the most famous one took place in a college game, when Doug Flutie hit Gerard Phelan on the final play of the game for Boston College, in 1984, to upset Jimmy Johnson’s University of Miami squad. The Hail Mary pass is now a regular strategy employed by teams when the situation warrants it. With the Dallas Cowboys and Minnesota Vikings scheduled to play this weekend on the NFL’s week 9 slate, it’s only fitting for this week’s Throwback Thursday post to feature a game played between those two franchises, on December 28, 1975, that marked the unofficial “birth” of the Hail Mary pass, at least as far as the NFL is concerned. In actuality, the term had been used as far back as the 1930s in college football, to describe a deep, low probability pass, mostly by Notre Dame’s famed Four Horsemen, or other Catholic universities.

The term was revived in that December playoff game in Minnesota, when the Cowboys, led by quarterback Roger Staubach, took the field on their own 15 yard line with a little under two minutes left to play, trailing the Vikings 14-10. “Roger the Dodger”, whose trademark throughout his entire career was leading late-game comebacks (earning him the nickname “Captain Comeback”), drove his team to midfield. He completed a pass to wide receiver Drew Pearson for a first down on 4th and 17 to reach that point. With 32 seconds left, Staubach unleashed his desperation heave, again for Pearson, who was covered by All Pro Viking cornerback Nate Wright. Wright slipped and fell, and Pearson pinned the ball against his hip, turned and scampered into the end zone for the winning score as Dallas triumphed 17-14. When asked about the play afterwards, Staubach, who is Catholic, said, ” I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary, it was a very lucky play”. And the Hail Mary in the NFL was officially born. There were some strange circumstances surrounding the game that day, also. Incensed Viking fans pummeled referee Armen Terzian with objects after the play, feeling that Pearson had pushed Wright and that offensive interference should have been called. Terzian was hit by a whiskey bottle, opening a gash that required 11 stitches. Also, Viking QB Fran Tarkenton, shortly after the game concluded, was informed that his father had passed away of a heart attack while watching the game at his home in Georgia.

Drew Pearson celebrates his winning “Hail Mary” touchdown against the Vikings.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Oakland Raiders match up on this week’s NFL schedule, and although in 2013 both teams have struggled to start the season, a game played between them that is known as one of the most famous in NFL history was an easy choice as this week’s edition of the Thursday Throwback. It took place on December 23, 1972 at Pittsburgh’s old Three Rivers Stadium, and was that season’s AFC Divisional playoff game. The game itself was a defensive struggle between the Raiders, who had been a league regular season powerhouse going back to their days in the old AFL, and the young Steelers, who were rebuilding under coach Chuck Noll and looking for their first playoff win ever, a fact that’s hard to believe considering the franchise’s success since then. At the time, the Steelers were only a couple of years removed from being one of the worst teams in the NFL over a period of at least two decades. When owner Art Rooney hired Noll, it was the first move in a total transformation of the team, as they brought in future star players like Franco Harris, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Jack Ham and Mel Blount and had become a team clearly on the rise. The Raiders had been one of the AFL’s strongest teams, even making an appearance in the second Super Bowl, and their success continued after the leagues merged and they became part of the American Conference. However, they were in a period when they were starting to gain a reputation for not being able to “win the big one”, as they suffered continual playoff failures. With 5 seconds left in this particular game, it looked like the Raiders were on their way to the AFC Championship game, as they held a razor-thin 7-6 lead with only a last ditch Terry Bradshaw Hail Mary pass left for the young Steelers to attempt. The play didn’t start out particularly well for Pittsburgh, and Bradshaw wound up flinging a wounded duck pass into the middle of the field. The pass headed toward John “Frenchy” Fuqua just as Raider safety Jack “The Assassin” Tatum arrived on the scene and delivered a hard blow to the Steeler running back in an attempt to break up the play. Tatum’s hit succeeded, but the ball popped out and flew directly to Harris, who barely plucked it out of the air before it hit the ground and continued untouched to the end zone to give his team a nearly impossible to believe 13-7 win. At the time, league rules stated that if a pass caromed off an offensive player, only that player was eligible to catch it. The Raiders argued vehemently that the ball had bounced off Fuqua, therefore making Franco an ineligible receiver on the play, but the game officials ruled the ball had hit Tatum. John Madden, Raider head coach at the time, to this day has never accepted the official’s ruling on the play. NFL Films chose the game’s final play as the greatest of all time, and also its’ most controversial.

The win helped catapult the Steelers into their golden age in the decade of the 1970s, when they won four Super Bowls, but in ’72 they weren’t quite ready for prime time, as they went on to lose the following week in the AFC Championship game to the year’s eventual Super Bowl champions, Don Shula’s undefeated Miami Dolphins. The Raiders would hang on to the “can’t win the big one” stigma for a few more years until they finally broke through with a Super Bowl win over the Vikings following the 1976 season.

 Franco Harris completes the Immaculate Reception TD to the delight of Pittsburgh fans….

Raider coach John Madden had a different reaction.