A minute later, Dreith made his call.
Watch the play. Hamilton absolutely hits Stabler on the side of the helmet and in the facemask as he delivers the ball. But, as noted, the rules on hits to the head on the quarterback in 1976 were a lot looser.
''That should have never been a penalty,'' Stabler once told the Boston Globe’s Will McDonough. ''I got hit a lot worse than that in my career and it was never called. Hamilton just went for the ball and landed on me. That's all that happened.''
Either way, with the blown Villapiano call earlier, the ugly reputation of the Raiders as a band of renegades and their detestable young coach John Madden storming the sidelines (he didn’t become lovable until he got behind a microphone), the Patriots felt they’d been robbed.