Although Detroit's defense couldn't stop Aaron Rodgers from completing a miracle Hail Mary on Thursday night, the roof of Detroit's stadium almost did.
On his game-winning 61-yard pass to Richard Rodgers, Aaron Rodgers threw the ball as high as he could. As a matter of fact, the ball went so high, that if you were watching the game at home, it actually disappeared from the screen.
As Packers coach Mike McCarthy explained after the game, the high throw was by design. Aaron Rodgers was supposed to throw the ball as high as he could to give his receivers a better chance to catch it.
"When you throw it with that arch you have a chance, because it gives guys a chance to fight for position," McCarthy said, via the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "That's the whole design of it."
The only flaw in McCarthy's design is that if a team is playing indoors, there's a small chance the high pass could hit the rafters in the stadium, and that almost happened with Rodgers' pass at Ford Field.
Although TV cameras didn't get a great shot of how high the ball went, a fan at the game, who filmed the play on his phone, got a great angle, and here's how close the ball came to hitting the rafters (The red arrow is where the ball is).
If the ball had hit the rafters, the play would've been immediately stopped and the Packers would've got to run one more play from the same spot, their own 39-yard line. The ball fell about 20 feet short of the rafters though, and the Packers got to go home with a miraculous 27-23 win.
