MINNEAPOLIS — Case Keenum was down to his last chance, a final, futile heave into the heart of the New Orleans Saints’ secondary, a last-gasp attempt to overcome the exquisitely clutch brilliance of his Hall of Fame counterpart on the opposing sideline. To 66,612 heartbroken fans at U.S. Bank Stadium, and tens of millions more watching on television sets, laptops and smartphones across the land, this was the closing act of a stirring but ultimately unfulfilling season, with the favored Minnesota Vikings and their ultimate underdog of a quarterback destined to come up one point short in their quest to advance to the NFC Championship Game.

It was third-and-10 from the Minnesota 39, and the Saints, having just been led out of a halftime abyss by Drew Brees in all his legendary splendor, held a 24-23 lead as everyone in the stadium held his or her breath. Well, almost everyone. The Vikings, who were out of timeouts, needed a 25-yard sideline completion to have a prayer of attempting a last-second field goal, and their quarterback’s pulse rate remained slow and steady.

While offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur sent in the play call designed to allow for that possibility — *Buffalo Right Seven Heaven — *Keenum, a man no one expected would be in this position at the start of the season, continued a lifelong pattern of blocking out the doubt around him.

As Keenum would tell me long after the end of Sunday’s surreal and spectacular divisional-playoff clash, “You’re just fighting at that point. You’re fighting for your life. You’d do anything to get the ball forward. I don’t know if you think about anything. You just react. I’m gonna want to go back and remember everything I can from this. … But right now, it’s all a blur.”

What happened next will go down in football history as one of the sport’s most fantastic finishes, a long-awaited answer to the original Hail Mary, with Roger Staubach’s rainbow to Drew Pearson dooming the Vikings to a playoff defeat to the Dallas Cowboys 42 years ago. It took a gorgeous touch pass from Keenum, delivered over the outstretched arms of defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins; it took a tremendous catch by wideout Stefon Diggs along the right sideline, and the guts he showed in keeping the play alive, rather than stepping out of bounds; and, as almost always happens in such circumstances, it took a healthy combination of weirdness and luck.