How Did the “Hail Mary Pass” Get Its Name?

It was a cold winter’s day in Minnesota: December 28, 1975. The event was an NFL playoff game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys. The winning team would advance to the NFC championship. In the fourth quarter, with about 32 seconds to go, the Cowboys were trailing 14–10. Then, in a desperate, last-ditch play, Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach threw a 50-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Drew Pearson, winning the game for Dallas. The victory put the Cowboys one game closer to playing in the Super Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Though they would ultimately lose the Super Bowl title, the Cowboys still made history.

After the game Staubach, a wholesome Roman Catholic kid from Cincinnati, Ohio, told reporters what he was thinking when he threw that incredible long forward pass: “I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.”

From then on, that game became known as the Hail Mary game, and American football fans began using the expression “Hail Mary pass” (or even just “Hail Mary”) to describe similar late-in-the-game long-shot efforts. More often than not, a “Hail Mary pass” specifically means a long throw into or near the end zone in the fourth quarter of a game. (Even better if there are mere seconds left.)

Discover the fascinating events that shaped the world, straight from our editors.

SIGN UP

By clicking “Sign Up”, you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Today many people use the term “Hail Mary pass” or “Hail Mary” to refer to any go-for-broke effort, even outside of sports. A famous example in pop culture is Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir’s 2021 science-fiction novel about a galactic scramble to save humanity after a mysterious microorganism threatens to blot out light from the Sun and wipe out all life on Earth.

But what do last-ditch efforts have to do with a prayer to the mother of Jesus?

One of the central prayers in Catholicism, the Hail Mary is an invocation in which Catholics express their devotion to the Virgin Mary and ask her to intercede on their behalf. The prayer is often assigned as penance when Catholics perform the sacrament of confession, and it is one of three principal prayers recited during the rosary, a Marian devotional practice involving a string of counting beads.

Given the prayer’s meaning (and the fact that this was a playoff game), it makes sense that Staubach resorted to saying it when he made his soon-to-be-famous pass—although it’s likely he wasn’t the first Catholic football player to call upon Mary for help in a game.

Explore Britannica Premium!

The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners.

SUBSCRIBE

Many sports historians trace the prayer’s earliest usage in football to four legendary players on the University of Notre Dame football team in the 1920s. Known collectively as “the Four Horsemen,” the Catholic university’s Fighting Irish teammates Jim Crowley, Elmer Layden, Don Miller, and Harry Stuhldreher had a ritual of saying a Hail Mary during a huddle before any big play. Allegedly, the tradition began during a game against Georgia Tech in 1922, when Notre Dame lineman Noble Kizer told his teammates, “Boys, let’s have a Hail Mary,” before a crucial play in the second quarter. Layden promptly scored a touchdown, leading the team to repeat the prayer in the fourth quarter. This time Stuhldreher scored, and the Fighting Irish won the game. Kizer later remarked, “Say, that Hail Mary is the best play we’ve got.”

For decades, however, “that Hail Mary” was largely a Catholic college football secret—that is, until that cold post-Christmas game in Minnesota in 1975.