Meanwhile, the image of DeAndre Hopkins, who rises from the middle of A Buffalo Bills herd to slip Kyler Murray’s final pass, has been etched into our sporting collective memory. There are many sporting moments on which we can orient ourselves. Some are effective, others are beautiful, others are convincing. But few people combine all three in such a bright color.
There’s the effect. All Hail Maries are important; somehow they end the game. Usually it is for defense, but not always. That’s where Hopkins ‘ leap-and-grab turned a 30-26 Bills win into a 32-30 victory for the Arizona Cardinals. The outcome of the game is of course more important for the Cardinals (and other) fans than for the rest of us. If a room is generally recognized as a room, it must be more.
Now aesthetics come into play. There is Murray’s scramble and boom downfield, a remarkably observable quarterback who is effortless. He dodges a Mario Addison tackle with the smallest hip-shimmy, proof of his awareness, efficiency and concentration. And then, with two bills closing in, he turns his arm into a kind of medieval siege weapon. It’s pure roughness, condensed into his right arm and delivered downfield: Murray throws that ball so hard that I’m pretty sure both feet left the ground on release.
But Murray, however brilliant, serves only as a backdrop to the true beauty of DeAndre Hopkins ‘ play. The throw was impressive, A boom perfectly placed, but the air defense was also perfectly placed to deal with it. With perhaps another receiver in the game, the Cardinals lose.
With Hopkins? You win, and you do it in style. Look at this catch!
It’s iconic. You could replace the Vince Lombardi Trophy with a sculpture of this catch and immediately have the best trophy in professional sport. The trio of Bills defenders frame him perfectly, a metaphorical pedestal on which Hopkins can catch the ball from the sky. The Sport is usually chaotic, but not here. Hopkins not only made and secured the catch, but he did it in a way that made the whole process inevitable. Dexterity, power and style blend in a moment of filme purity.
And then there is Hail Mary herself. Not this Hail Mary, but the crowd of them, rolled up and considered as a whole. There’s something deeply human about the gambit of putting everything-strength, skill, happiness-into one last roll of dice. The ball is catapulted into the sky, exposed to disbelief as long as it inflates downward. A hail of Mary is an act of despair, of course, but it also builds and maintains hope as long as the game develops.
It is impossible to ignore the spiritual connotations invited by the name and amplified by the act. Faith is perhaps not something that weighs heavily on most people’s daily lives, and perhaps one prefers to make Marian hail an act of raw hope. But for the quarterback, throwing is and should be an act of faith, regardless of form. The Hail Mary is a diluted and footballing version of Pascal’s great bet. We are committed to believing and throwing the ball; what should we lose?
However, “faith” is a complex word, and this hook evokes one of its secondary meanings: trust. With the ball in the air, DeAndre Hopkins is a man who creates confidence, a receiver a quarterback can put their confidence in. The catch wasn’t inevitable, even for Hopkins, but the magic here is that he’s the kind of player who can make him look like that after the act, and it’s that aura that Murray has left alone on the field looking for him and him.
Here, abstract faith and abstract hope conflict with real, everyday trust between teammates and crystallize into a game that acts both beautifully and brutally on The Shape of the NFL season. Murray at Hopkins is Hail Mary’s first success in five years, but now that it has arrived, there is a sense of relentless destiny on the whole issue.
