It came during a 1987 wild-card game against the visiting Vikings, the first playoff game in Saints history.Ĭook, a rookie defensive back from Stanford, was sidelined because of a shoulder injury and watched in frustration as Minnesota’s Wade Wilson threw a 44-yard touchdown pass to Hassan Jones on the final play of the first half. Toi Cook remembers being in that position. Or, if you’re on the other end of a Hail Mary, it might turn out very, very bad. “You’ve got to do the best you can right up until the end, because it might turn out good.” “I guess I’m the poster child of never give up,” he said. He said everyone seems to remember where they were when they watched it unfold, and often - because it happened the day after Thanksgiving - those people were surrounded by family. To this day, Phelan said, he’s constantly asked about the play by people who recognize his name. I tried to get my elbows together in my lap and my knees together. I sort of fell back as it hit me to absorb the shock, and the ball traveled down my body so fast. “It really just hit me in the lower part of the facemask and neck. I jumped up and an arm moved to the right, and a head moved to the left, and the ball came between the two.
#Defending hail mary football free#
So I was getting in line to get a tip, and if it came free I was going to be in the way. “Everybody jumped up in front of me to defend it. “The thing that’s most vivid to me is the instant with which the ball arrived,” Phelan said by phone. The memories of that game, deemed the “Miracle in Miami,” remain strikingly crisp to Phelan, now a Boston-based salesman for a financial printer. Flutie had to drop back so far, the ball traveled 65 yards. That’s what happened 30 years ago on the most famous Hail Mary in history, when Doug Flutie of Boston College scrambled back and away from University of Miami defenders and, with no time on the clock, heaved a 48-yard touchdown pass to Gerard Phelan for a 47-45 victory. That’s why I left basketball, so I could stop being penalized for hitting people.”īut that’s the reality of the Hail Mary - everything, most of all the football, has to fall perfectly into place. “It’s interesting, you know, how guys grab me everywhere on the field and I put literally two fingers on somebody and you make that kind of call,” he said. The would-be, 47-yard touchdown play was waved off, and the 49ers won in overtime, 27-24.Īfterward, a dejected Graham talked about the play that might have been. New Orleans almost pulled one off at the end of regulation against San Francisco this season, but Saints tight end Jimmy Graham was flagged for offensive pass interference. Hail Marys in the NFL are infrequent, and sometimes years go by without a successful one. It’s not as if teams didn’t attempt desperation passes before 1975 they did, but it was Staubach who introduced the term. We all catch a Hail Mary to do it.”īut Pearson caught the original one. “For some reason, some way, somehow, we find a way to overcome those moments. We all have them, when our backs are against the wall and you don’t know where that rent’s going to come from, or the kid needs braces, or the car needs fixing. What it is is there are Hail Mary moments in people’s lives. “You hear it in church, you hear it in business, you hear it in sports, community life, charity life. “It’s crossed over into all parts of life,” Pearson said.
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