American Football · 1972 · Pittsburgh, USA
The Immaculate Reception
With four seconds left and his team about to be eliminated, a Pittsburgh Steelers rookie scoops a deflected pass off his shoe tops and runs it in for the most disputed touchdown in NFL history.
Steelers 13-7 Raiders
Result
4 seconds
Time remaining at play
60
Yards returned
The Pittsburgh Steelers had never won a playoff game in their 40-year history when they hosted the Oakland Raiders in an AFC divisional playoff on 23 December 1972. Trailing 7-6 with just 22 seconds left and facing fourth-and-10 from their own 40-yard line, quarterback Terry Bradshaw scrambled away from pressure and threw downfield toward running back John Fuqua.
The ball, Fuqua, and Raiders safety Jack Tatum all arrived at the same spot at once. It cannoned backward, and under the rules of the time a pass could not be legally caught by an offensive player if it had been touched only by a teammate, only officials could rule whether it had grazed Tatum first. As the ball dropped toward the turf, rookie fullback Franco Harris, trailing the play, scooped it inches off the ground and sprinted 60 yards the other way for the winning touchdown.
Officials conferred for several minutes before confirming the score, since replay technology did not yet exist to settle it definitively, and the deflection has been argued over for decades since. The play, immediately nicknamed the Immaculate Reception, gave the Steelers their first playoff win and is widely voted the greatest play in NFL history.
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