I would be interested to hear what one of the more mature posters here has to say about that play involving Francis.
Nothing without some serious expletives. My brother and I were going ballistic. The original broadcast slow motion replay (which remains missing to this day) revealed what makes the play in the Saints-Rams NFCCG look legitimately questionable. (Yes.) It was
right in front of the ref. And, the worst was yet to come. This was the quintessential home job. All the hyperbole attached to supposed ripoffs is and always will only be applicable to this game.
A TIGHT END WHO HANGS REAL LOOSE
Sorry, but Gronk's got nothing on Russ on being the most colorful Pats tight end ever.
"...Francis is off in the wild blue again, musing on the time he was flying Phil Villapiano, the linebacker Oakland recently traded to Buffalo, in his plane. Francis says he turned the plane upside down, remarking to Villapiano, 'Now, about that interference call last year...'"
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.
John Madden is a good man, and an extremely nice person, an ambassador for the game and showed heroic compassion for Darryl Stingley for which I'm grateful.
However, for Patriots fans, like myself, John Madden will always be nothing more than a fat tub of lard celebrating moronically in the Rose Bowl in 1977 with a cheap shot-driven, criminal, fraud, crybaby bunch of losers who were handed a fake title which they did not earn, and do not deserve.
1976–77 NFL playoffs - Wikipedia
"That was one of the worst-called games I have ever seen in my life," said an angry Patriots DE Julius Adams.
"That's what you say," said Raiders Coach John Madden when the Pats' complaints were brought to his attention by a writer. "If you could sit there for 60 minutes and say the officials turned that game around with penalties at the end, you were wasting your time. You were eating a hot dog somewhere instead of watching what was going on. There was some great football out there."
Madden is the one who was stuffing hot dogs in his face. Fairbanks wasn't and saw the entire debacle up close, three and one half years of work to bring a championship home to Foxborough being flushed down the toilet by collection of corrupt excuses for officials who spent more time listening to Raiders crybabying about five Super Bowls being stolen from them instead of paying some attention to their job.
