2024-10-15 12:40:03
The Hail Mary King struck again Monday night.
Aaron Rodgers, who’s spent much of his 20-year career with an uncanny way about completing the Hail Mary, delivered his first one as Jets quarterback at the end of the first half against the Bills.
It was the fourth of his remarkable career. In two of the previous three, his team won the game. On Monday night, Rodgers’ Jets lost to the Bills, 23-20.
This time, the Jets had the ball on their own 48-yard line with eight seconds remaining in the first half and trailed the Bills, 20-10, just 13 seconds after Buffalo had just scored a TD to take the 10-point lead.
After dancing around in the pocket for several seconds, Rodgers let the ball fly into the MetLife Stadium north end zone. Allen Lazard, Rodgers’ former receiver in Green Bay, outleaped three Buffalo defenders and came down with the ball amidst a heap of bodies.
After he landed, the ball was jarred out of Lazard’s hands by one of the Bills defensive players, which made the fans packing the stadium hold their collective breath for moments thinking it was incomplete.
But Lazard had secured the ball and landed on the ground and then had the ball knocked out of his hands, and the call from the officials was “touchdown.’’
Three players surrounded Lazard as he made his jump — Buffalo cornerbacks Taron Johnson and Christian Benford and safety Taylor Rapp. Lazard beat them all to the ball.
Asked when he knew he’d secured the ball, Lazard said, “When I saw the ball calling my name.’’
“We practice that at least once a week,’’ Lazard went on. “And, being with Aaron at [Green Bay] with six years of doing that, I had a pretty good anticipation of where the ball is going to be. I was very fortunate to be able to come and come down with it.
“Once it hit my hands, I had a pretty good grasp of the ball, and I knew how to secure it to the ground.’’
The unlikely touchdown gave the Jets a new life entering the halftime locker room, trailing just 20-17.
Here are Rodgers’ three previous Hail Marys:
- On Dec. 15, 2015, he threw a 63-yard TD to Richard Rodgers with six seconds remaining to beat the Lions, 27-23.
- On Jan. 10, 2016, he threw a 41-yard TD to Jeff Janis on the final play of regulation to tie the NFC wild-card playoff game in Arizona that the Cardinals would go on to win in OT.
- And on Jan. 8, 2017, he threw a 42-yard TD to Randall Cobb just before halftime of a wild-card playoff game against the Giants, giving Green Bay a 14-6 halftime lead in a game it would go on to win, 38-13.
So, before Monday night, Rodgers had won two of the three games in which he converted a Hail Mary.
Asked what is it about Rodgers that gives him the knack to complete the Hail Mary, Lazard said, “It’s just the arc of the ball. It’s hard for me to track and that’s what I do for my career. So, I know it’s hard for the defenders to be able to judge where the ball is going to land.’’
