The Packers’ Hail Mary play is so effective when defenses know it’s coming that the Packers should use it when defenses aren’t expecting it. The Cowboys for now are focused on stopping it when they know they need to.
“It’s a jump ball,” cornerback Brandon Carr said, via Charean Williams of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “It’s a free for all. It’s a do-whatever-you-can to not let those guys catch the ball.”
The Giants failed to do that on Sunday, allowing receiver Randall Cobb to get behind them when they knew a Hail Mary was coming.
“Got to box out,” Carr said. “Got to put a body on a body. Just comes to discipline on that play. One jumper. Everybody else is boxing their man out.”
“Believe it or not, we work on it pretty much every day,” cornerback Morris Claiborne said. “Pretty much every day is not too much that goes by in the NFL that we don’t work on. We don’t even have to . . . learn by mistake or something like that because coach [Jason] Garrett does a good job of when it happens to one team, he brings it back up to us the next week, and we’re already working on it.”
Plenty of teams work on it. That makes Green Bay’s ability to pull off Hail Mary touchdowns even more impressive. And that makes me even more convinced it should be part of the base offense, with the play periodically coming when the Packers have the ball near the 50.