America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, were one of the most dominant franchises in the 1970s. They appeared in five Super Bowls, winning two, over the course of the decade, and after an NFC Championship loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in 1980, the Cowboys were looking to get back to the Super Bowl the following season.

They were on track to do so, too. The Cowboys led the San Francisco 49ers, 27-21, with under a minute left in the NFC Championship game. They were one stop away from making it back to the Super Bowl for the sixth time in 11 years, but the 49ers, who to this point in time hadn’t won a Super Bowl, had other plans.

The Catch

Let me set the stage. The 49ers were hosting the Cowboys in the NFC Championship game with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. They found themselves trailing by six points with 58 seconds on the clock, and they were on the Cowboys’ six-yard line. It was 3rd-and-3, meaning if they didn’t pick up the first down or score in the next two plays, their season was over.

Joe Montana took the snap under center, immediately scrambled to the right, but couldn’t find anyone open. He looked back left, and with multiple defenders in his face, threw one up to his big tight end, Dwight Clark, who came down with the game-winning touchdown in the back of the end zone.

Clark was never supposed to catch the ball on this play. He was supposed to be a decoy to help his teammate, Freddie Solomon, get open and score the game-winning touchdown. But when the play broke down and Clark realized Solomon wasn’t getting the ball, he tried to find an open spot in the back of the end zone for his good friend Joe Montana to find him. Sometimes the best plays are improvised by two guys with an incredible connection. Just ask Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.

What makes this even better is that Clark was never supposed to amount to anything in the NFL. Heck, you could argue he was never even supposed to be in the NFL. Clark was a 10th-round pick (yes the NFL had more than seven rounds back then) who never amounted to much in college, totaling just 543 yards and three touchdowns in three seasons with Clemson. Bill Walsh, who drafted Clark in 1979, joked that if he were being drafted just off his college production, Clark would’ve been working at Wendy’s.

Clark wasn’t even supposed to be in the league, much less in the back of the end zone making the game-winning catch in the NFC Championship. But that’s how life goes sometimes. The most gifted people aren’t guaranteed anything. Those who work the hardest will almost always find a way to etch their names into the history books.

The Dynasty

Clark’s game-winning touchdown propelled the 49ers to their first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. Just a couple weeks later, Clark and Co. found themselves in a close battle with the Cincinnati Bengals, but ended up coming out on top, 26-21, to capture their first ever Lombardi Trophy.

But the 49ers were far from done.

With the help of guys like Joe Montana, Steve Young, Jerry Rice, Dwight Clark and Roger Craig, the 49ers would go on to win five Super Bowls from 1981 to 1994, including four in the 1980s alone. Without Clark, who knows what the 49ers’ history would look like right now?

Joe Montana himself admitted he knew the throw was high, but didn’t expect Clark to have to jump so high to catch it. “When I released the ball, I knew it was high,” Montana admitted. “But I didn’t know it was up that high, where he’d jump 3 feet off the ground for it.”

The throw may not have been Montana’s most accurate (though, given the conditions, it was a damn good throw), but it sure made for a fantastic photo.

Clark sadly passed away in 2018 after a battle with ALS, but before he passed, he said he loves that “The Catch” kept him connected with generations of 49ers fans for his whole life.

“What I love about it the most is that it’s connected me with 49ers fans for the rest of time,” Clark said. “I didn’t realize at the time that people would keep talking about it. But they not only talk about it, they pass it down through the generations.”

Without Clark’s catch, who knows if the 49ers go on to win their first Super Bowl in 1982 and kickstart a dynasty. The NFL is weird like that. All it takes is one play from a guy who was never supposed to be there to completely change the course of history.