A ‘Hail Mary’?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

A ‘Hail Mary’?

“For some reason, some way, somehow, we find a way to overcome those moments. We all catch a Hail Mary to do it.”

But Pearson caught the original one. It’s not as if teams didn’t attempt desperation passes before 1975; they did, but it was Staubach who introduced the term.

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But that’s the reality of the Hail Mary — everything, most of all the football, has to fall perfectly into place.

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. Flutie had to drop back so far, the ball traveled 65 yards.

The memories of that game, deemed the “Miracle in Miami,” remain strikingly crisp to Phelan, now a Boston-based salesman for a financial printer.

“The thing that’s most vivid to me is the instant with which the ball arrived,” Phelan said by phone. “Everybody jumped up in front of me to defend it. I was expecting it to get tipped. So I was getting in line to get a tip, and if it came free I was going to be in the way. I jumped up and an arm moved to the right, and a head moved to the left, and the ball came between the two.

“It really just hit me in the lower part of the facemask and neck. I sort of fell back as it hit me to absorb the shock, and the ball traveled down my body so fast. I tried to get my elbows together in my lap and my knees together. It was all in an instant.”