The Pittsburgh Steelers were at their 40-yard line, facing a 4th-and-10 with just 22 seconds remaining, trailing 7-6 in the soon-to-become legendary 1972 playoff game against the visiting Oakland Raiders.

Roy Gerela stood on the Steelers’ sideline, hoping for some big-time luck that would give him a shot to make a historic field goal.

That luck came, all right. Just far too much to make Gerela relevant.

Instead of rushing onto the field, Gerela rushed down the sideline and had a front-row view as history unfolded.

“Coach (Chuck) Noll had called a timeout to get a play ready, and he called the field goal team over,” Gerela, the head football coach at Gadsden High, says of that 1972 playoff game. “He said, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ He told the field goal team to be ready, because we didn’t have any timeouts left. We were going to try and pass the ball downfield, then run the field goal team on the field and try to kick it before time ran out.”

As anyone who has watched a football game in the past 40 years well knows, Pittsburgh quarterback Terry Bradshaw and running back Franco Harris then hooked up – after a pair of others came into play – for the Immaculate Reception, the most famous play in NFL history.

“I went down to about the 25-yard line, so I could get on the field quickly,” says Gerela, 64. “Bradshaw threw it down the middle, and the next thing I knew, Franco was coming down field to follow the ball. I just happened to be standing right on the yard marker where he made the catch, and I could see it; there is no doubt there was daylight between the ball and the ground.”

Bradshaw’s pass was intended for Pittsburgh’s Frenchy Fuqua, who collided with Oakland’s Jack Tatum. The ball caromed straight back, where Harris scooped it up and stumbled, then raced into the end zone for the miraculous game-winner.

“I thought he was going to fall down,” says Gerela, who played and later coached at New Mexico State. “I was yelling, ‘Stay up, man! Hurry up, man!’

“We were all going crazy on the sidelines. The whole place was.”

Various reports said the officials met for 10 to 15 minutes before coming up with a decision. Did Harris catch the ball before it hit the ground? Did Tatum touch the ball? If not, NFL rules at the time did not allow two offensive players to touch a pass without it hitting a defender in between.

“We were all confident,” Gerela says of the wait. “We were sure it was a touchdown.”

It was, and in one of the most insignificant moments in playoff history, Gerela and the Steelers eventually trotted back onto the field to kick a meaningless extra point. It was good, and Pittsburgh won 13-7.

“It was like a circus going back out for that extra point,” Gerela, who had field goals of 18 and 29 yards in the game, says with a laugh. “Everyone was screaming and running all over the field. There were people and confetti everywhere. It was just nuts.”

As for being denied a possible place in history by making a game-winning kick that day, Gerela says: “I think about that sometimes. I was mentally ready if it would have came down to that. But the way we won? How do you beat that?”
— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal