I was too young to watch him play myself but until he took his last breath, my dad remained furious about the lack of a pass interference call on the Raiders in the 1976 playoff game. According to my dad the patriots just needed a first down to seal the game and run out the clock. Grogan threw a pass to Frances and the DB “pinned both of his arms to his sides” (my dad’s words) but no call was made. This may have been one play before Sam “Bam” Cunningham inexplicably ran out of bounds 1 yard short of the first down marker. Those are two of the three plays that he never could get over, the third, of course, being the terrible roughing the passer call, which may have been the correct call in 2019 but it sure as sh’*t was not in 1976.
Now my dad was at times prone to hyperbole when it came to the patriots (for instance, he was convinced that Irving Fryar was betting on games and dropping passes intentionally), so I would be interested to hear what one of the more mature posters here has to say about that play involving Frances.
Actually, given his imprisonment for mortgage fraud, my dad may have been correct about Fryar after all. Ironically, he was the first hand surgeon called when Fryar cut his fingers fighting with his wife before the AFC championship Game in 1985 but he was busy in the operating room at another hospital, so one of his colleagues sewed up Fryar.
