{"id":87173,"date":"2025-12-14T00:15:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T00:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/87173\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T00:15:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T00:15:13","slug":"50-years-ago-this-month-dmn-photographer-john-rhodes-shot-the-famous-hail-mary-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/87173\/","title":{"rendered":"50 years ago this month, DMN photographer John Rhodes shot the famous \u2018Hail Mary\u2019 play"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Rhodes\u2019 favorite memory of the Cowboys-Vikings playoff game<\/a> that he shot for The Dallas Morning News in 1975 wasn\u2019t the \u201cHail Mary\u201d play<\/a> or the unfettered access or the image of a whiskey bottle somersaulting through the air before plunking a referee on the head. And it certainly wasn\u2019t near-freezing temps.<\/p>\n

His favorite takeaway?<\/p>\n

The picture he broke a rule to take.<\/p>\n

On the team plane in those days, photographers were generally barred from shooting players in such a vulnerable element. No telling what you might expose. But Rhodes, then in his third year with The News, had been a classmate of Harvey Martin\u2019s at East Texas State, and he couldn\u2019t resist.<\/p>\n

Cowboys<\/p>\n

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\u201cI had to shoot Harvey with a Viking hat and one of the horns ripped off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHim and Too Tall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Cowboys\"Harvey<\/p>\n

Harvey Martin, left, and Ed \u201cToo Tall\u201d Jones happily ham it up with a one-horned Vikings helmet, on the team\u2019s charter flight back to Dallas, after the playoff football game win in the \u201cHail Mary Pass\u201d game on December 28, 1975.<\/p>\n

John F. Rhodes<\/p>\n

Once the plane arrived at DFW, Rhodes was stunned by the reception.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would have thought they\u2019d already won the Super Bowl,\u201d he said. \u201cWe walked down this long corridor of fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive thousand drunk people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dallas<\/p>\n

Dallas Cowboy tight end Jackie Smith (81) reacts after dropping a pass in the end zone during Super Bowl XIII at the Orange Bowl in Miami on January 21, 1979. This photo won the Hall of Fame Photo Contest in 1979.<\/p>\n

John F. Rhodes<\/p>\n

Rhodes shot many big-time sporting events in his long tenure at The News, including five Super Bowls and multiple Texas-OU games. He became Bobby Knight\u2019s photographer of choice after an introduction by the Cowboys\u2019 Gil Brandt, a close friend of the then-Texas Tech coach. Rhodes\u2019 shot of a prostrate, rigid Jackie Smith just after he dropped what would have been a touchdown pass from Roger Staubach in the Cowboys\u2019 35-31 loss to the Steelers in Super Bowl XIII won a Pro Football Hall of Fame contest.<\/p>\n

By the way: Staubach hated it, according to Rhodes. Fortunately, Captain America didn\u2019t have a vote.<\/p>\n

But the \u201cHail Mary\u201d game ranks No. 1 on Rhodes\u2019 all-time list of assignments. On the field, he captured Staubach as he released the game-winning throw, then turned and shot just as Drew Pearson caught it. Only it didn\u2019t look right in the negatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrew had caught it on his hip and rolled his right hand over it,\u201d Rhodes said. \u201cPart of that was why he got into the thing that he pushed off. Nate Wright fell down, Drew took it into the end zone and threw it out of the stadium<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody was in shock, because we\u2019d never seen anything like it before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rhodes, 75, still shoots high school football games for The News when not babysitting his grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

Former Dallas Morning News photographer John F. Rhodes \u2018feasts\u2019 on a turkey leg after the Thanksgiving Day game between the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Commanders at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Nov. 23, 2023. This was Rhodes’ last Cowboys game after photographing the team for 50 consecutive years. <\/p>\n

Tom Fox \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n

‘Throw it up and pray’: Celebrating 50 years of the Cowboys’ ‘Hail Mary’ play<\/p>\n

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The Cowboys cornerback is in the late stages of his 21-day practice window, which expires next week.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>5 final thoughts about Cowboys-Vikings: Dak vs. the blitz; where\u2019s Justin Jefferson?<\/a><\/p>\n

Dallas begins the win-or-go-home portion of its schedule against Minnesota on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Twitter\/X: @KSherringtonDMN <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Rhodes\u2019 favorite memory of the Cowboys-Vikings playoff game that he shot for The Dallas Morning News in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1044,102,113,104,103,80,824],"class_list":{"0":"post-87173","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-cowboys","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-cowboys","11":"tag-dallas-headlines","12":"tag-dallas-news","13":"tag-nfl","14":"tag-photos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}