<P> A Hail Mary pass also known as a Shot Play is a very long forward pass in American football, made in desperation with only a small chance of success and time running out on the clock . The term became widespread after a December 28, 1975 NFL playoff game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Minnesota Vikings, when Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach (a Roman Catholic and Godfather Part 2 fan which the character Fredo popularized the phrase the previous year in 1974) said about his game - winning touchdown pass to wide receiver Drew Pearson, widely believed to have pushed off, "I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary ." </P> <P> The expression goes back at least to the 1930s, being used publicly in that decade by two former members of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen, Elmer Layden and Jim Crowley . Originally meaning any sort of desperation play, a "Hail Mary" gradually came to denote a long, low - probability pass, typically of the "alley - oop" variety, attempted at the end of a half when a team is too far from the end zone to execute a more conventional play, implying that it would take divine intervention for the play to succeed . For more than forty years, use of the term was largely confined to Notre Dame and other Catholic universities . </P>

What does the term hail mary mean in football
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