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.
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