Former NFL wide receiver Michael Westbrook has changed his mailing address several times since his senior year at Colorado in 1994, moving from the Washington Redskins to the Cincinnati Bengals and eventually to his retirement now in Arizona, where he’s raising two sons outside Phoenix.

But he still gets mail from perfect strangers who send him envelopes containing a certain Sports Illustrated cover photo from 1994. That photo shows him making one of the greatest plays in college football history – a diving touchdown catch on a deflected Hail Mary pass as time expired to help Colorado beat Michigan, 27-26.

“People still mail them,” Westbrook told USA TODAY Sports. “I get them every year. I sign them and send them (back) in a self-addressed stamped envelope. I move, and they find the address.”

The photo comes from Sept. 24, 1994, 25 years ago, on a play officially known as Rocket Left, but better known colloquially as the Miracle at Michigan. Seventh-ranked Colorado was down by five points with six seconds left and 64 yards away from the end zone against the fourth-ranked Wolverines. Quarterback Kordell Stewart chucked the ball about 72 yards in the air before it bounced into the hands of Westbrook and later became frozen in time on YouTube, where it’s been viewed more than 700,000 times.

“Every year it’s a big deal,” Westbrook, 47, says of the anniversary. And yet it all came so close to never happening. A series of little decisions had lined up perfectly to create this giant fleeting sequence that still ranks as one of the highest – or lowest – moments of their careers.

And then came the rest of their lives, some of it marked by tragedy. To shed new light on it and catch up on what’s happened since, USA TODAY Sports revisited the play with several involved, including the play’s architect, who took it from the playbook of Bill Belichick in the early 1990s.

Fame and tragedy

Besides Westbrook, two other players are shown on that Sports Illustrated cover. Michigan defensive back Ty Law is clutching at Westbrook in the photo while Westbrook’s teammate, receiver Rae Carruth, is looking up at him.

Law was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year, the only player on the field that day to earn that distinction even though he was on the wrong end of that eternal snapshot. Carruth was released from prison last year after nearly 19 years behind bars for conspiring to murder the mother of his unborn child.

Two other players involved in that play are now dead, both from Colorado. The player who snapped the ball to Stewart, center Bryan Stoltenberg, died in Texas in 2013 at age 40 after suffering injuries in a car accident. Running back Rashaan Salaam threw a key block to protect Stewart and keep the play alive. He won the Heisman Trophy less than three months later before fatally shooting himself in Boulder in 2016.

“That stuff hurts you; it really does, because you go back to those memories,” said Colorado’s offensive coordinator that year, Elliot Uzelac.

The architect

Uzelac, now 78, called the plays for Buffaloes in that game from the press box at Michigan Stadium. He joined the Colorado coaching staff in 1993 after working one season as a volunteer coach with the Cleveland Browns, where Bill Belichick was head coach and Nick Saban was defensive coordinator.

That’s also where he said he learned that version of the Hail Mary before bringing it with him to Colorado. What made it different than just chucking the ball up, Uzelac said, was that it’s part of a two-play sequence, with the first play designed to move the ball within throwing distance of the end zone, if necessary. It also was designed to have one receiver tip the pass back to another near the end zone on the final play.

“You’ve got to get proper people in proper spacing and you need an athlete who is athletic enough to tip that ball,” said Uzelac, who now lives near Benton Harbor, Michigan, after coaching the high school team there.

The Miracle indeed was part of a two-play strike. After Colorado received the ball on a punt at its own 15-yard line with 14 seconds left, Stewart completed a pass to Westbrook over the middle of the field to move the ball to the 36. Stewart then stopped the clock and had one more play.

“We practiced that play every week,” Westbrook recalled recently.

The unintentional dress rehearsal

Colorado also “practiced” that play on the last play of the first half in the same game against Michigan. This time, the Buffaloes were 56 yards away from the end zone with two seconds left before halftime. Stewart heaved it to the same area in the end zone.

“Stewart steps up, lets it go,” legendary broadcaster Keith Jackson said on that first-half call for ABC television. “He threw it just as far as he could.”

Like Jackson, Stewart seemed to be warming up for the game’s grand finale. He overthrew his receivers on that first-half Hail Mary, allowing Michigan safety Chuck Winters to intercept it in the end zone and hold the Buffaloes to a 14-9 halftime lead.

But Colorado learned from this failed attempt and adjusted and anticipated accordingly. On that first-half Hail Mary attempt, the Buffaloes noticed Michigan only rushed three defenders against Stewart. If they needed to run that play again, they believed Michigan would probably do so again. They did. Uzelac also said the spacing on that first-half play wasn’t good enough between receivers for the planned deflection to work. They needed to correct that if they needed that play again. They did.

“We had to make sure we had enough depth between the tipper and Westbrook,” Uzelac said. “We didn’t have that the first time (in the first half). It wasn’t quite clean, because we knew we had to tip it. We knew that if we didn’t tip it, it would do like so many of them. It would fail.”

The block

If Michigan had rushed four defenders against Stewart instead of three, it’s arguable that the play would have died in a sack, and Michigan would have won, 26-21. That’s because the play almost died even with Colorado blockers double-teaming each of those three Michigan defenders – six vs. three. Michigan defender Trevor Pryce, a future standout for the Denver Broncos, had made a monster push and nearly slipped past Colorado left tackle Tony Berti, who said he flubbed his footing.

Fortunately for Colorado, Salaam was right there to pick up Berti’s slack and block Pryce from Stewart, keeping the play alive.

“I didn’t take a very good step, and luckily Rashaan did what he was supposed to do and helped me out,” said Berti, who later played with the San Diego Chargers and now lives in Las Vegas running a nonprofit that provides new shoes and socks to disadvantaged youth. “Kordell moved aside and was able to throw the ball like he did.”

The deflection

What happened next might have been incorrectly reported for the past 25 years. Buffaloes receiver Blake Anderson always believed he tipped Stewart’s pass near the 2-yard line, knocking it back to Westbrook for the touchdown. Winters was right behind him on the play and said afterward that he believed that, too.

Replays from back then also supported that narrative: As Anderson reached for the descending pass, the ball jerked up and back to Westbrook. But a closer look on better replays seem to show Stewart’s pass falling past Anderson’s outstretched hand and taking a hard bounce behind him. After looking at the replays more closely, Winters told USA TODAY Sports earlier this month that he now believes the ball bounced off his own shoulder pad, as well as the arm or shoulder pad of Michigan teammate Ty Law, who bumped into Winters from the other side.

The video evidence still isn’t conclusive. Either way, Anderson was instrumental. If he wasn’t where he was, Winters could have intercepted it. Besides that, Anderson said it didn’t really matter who caused the deflection. The most important part of the play, he said, was in the huddle before it. There was a swagger to the Colorado players and an excited confidence in the eyes of Stewart.

“The belief that we had, that was better than anything,” said Anderson, who now works at a trucking company in Colorado.

The aftermath

Right before the final play, Colorado head coach Bill McCartney, a Michigan native, folded his arms on the sideline and wore a worried look. This was his homecoming to Michigan, after all, and it looked like his team would run out of time.

Twenty-five years later, McCartney is 79 and battling dementia in Colorado. Despite that, McCartney still has solid recall of the moment and calls it “one in a thousand.” He also said it was deeply personal for him and Westbrook, who both are from the Detroit area.

“To leave there and come back there and win like that is just way beyond anything you can orchestrate or prescribe,” McCartney said earlier this month.

Before his hiring at Colorado in 1982, McCartney had coached at Michigan under legendary head coach Bo Schembechler, who retired after the 1989 season and died in 2006. Likewise, Uzelac also had served as assistant coach under Schembechler and remembers Schembechler attending that game as a spectator in the press box.

After Westbrook caught the ball, Uzelac said, “I was almost in tears.” Colorado players went into a frenzy in the end zone, a stark contrast to the stunned silence of the Michigan Stadium crowd of 106,000.

“I immediately went out of our press box area and went down to Bo’s box and jumped in there and gave him a big hug,” Uzelac recalled. “And he goes, `You blankety blank.’”

Berti and Anderson still keep photos of the moment in their offices. “It’s always fun to talk about it,” Anderson said.

For Westbrook and Stewart, the reminders are more constant. They will be forever remembered for it, much like quarterback Doug Flutie was for another famous Hail Mary touchdown pass 10 years earlier. By comparison, Flutie’s pass was shorter by air (about 64 yards vs. 72 for Stewart) and involved two lower-ranked teams: victorious Boston College at No. 10 vs. No. 12 Miami (Fla.)

Stewart, 46, couldn’t be reached for comment. He returned to earn his degree at Colorado in 2016 after playing 11 seasons in the NFL, mostly with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“Every time the 24th comes around, I get these phone calls as a reminder that something special happened on that day,” Westbrook said. “It’s pretty awesome.”

Even Winters, the Michigan safety, has embraced it, even though it initially caused him stress and regret. After the game, he remembers his position coach, Billy Harris, confronting him in the locker room and saying `You lost this damn game for me.’”

Winters went on to play in the Canadian Football League and now lives in Ontario, Canada, where he runs a fitness training business named after that play: Last Play Training.

“I use that as motivation to train my kids at my gym, a conversation piece, to show that it’s not about what happens to you; it’s about how you respond to what happened to you,” Winters said. “That was a valuable lesson.”

Follow reporter Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com