The targeting rule in the NCAA is important to legislate safety into the game, but there needs to be an adjustment to the rule that can mitigate the incidental collisions that come with football and not be overbearing in punishing such moments.
Pat Narduzzi wasn't happy with the two ejections of Pitt's SirVocea Dennis and Brandon Hill in the Panthers' win over Virginia Saturday at Heinz Field. Both were ejected for targeting penalties where they hit a defenseless receiver in the head/neck area shortly after the ball arrived on a pass.
He didn't make a direct comment to indicate his dismay over the call after the game, but you could tell by his demeanor when answering about the impact of losing Dennis just three plays into such a crucial game.
"Changes a lot" Narduzzi said Saturday when asked the impact of the game. "SirVocea is one of our best players on defense. That was a game changer. That was critical on some of the coverages we were doing. We knew he could match up with those guys athletically. We needed him in there. To not have him, that hurt us. He's become the leader of our defense and runs the show."
Roughly 40 hours later in his Monday press conference, Narduzzi was ready to be a little more direct about how displeased he was with he ACC officials' decision to eject both Dennis and Hill. The first question of the conference to Narduzzi was how he coaches a player to avoid a targeting call, and the seven-year head coach answered the question with a question of his own.
"Are you trying to get me mad today or what," Narduzzi said. "We haven't had one all year. Ten games and there's been zero. Then all of a sudden, we have two. Just a mysterious targeting call. We coach good. That's what we do. It's disappointing."
When Narduzzi was then asked whether the calls that he disagreed with would force coaching adjustments for his staff, he was stern in his answer.
"No," Narduzzi said. "No adjustments. Someone else has got to make adjustments. We need to play football."
Before that comment gets taken out of context, it's important to look back at the plays that caused the ejections Narduzzi expressed his displeasure over. Narduzzi isn't against the need for targeting calls to protect players, as he's not always defended targeting calls against players on his team like Paris Ford, who in years' past was ejected for multiple targeting penalties.
In the NFL, targeting mostly results in a 15-yard penalty, but that's all. In college football, a targeting call costs a 15-yard penalty and an automatic ejection from the game.
The idea of the rule is important to discourage dangerously violent shots defensive players might take on defenseless offensive players and cause serious head injuries. The NCAA has to do everything it can protect against such penalties, which is why the rule leads to a stiff, automatic punishment in the first place. There have been plenty of headhunters in football who have played the game recklessly, endangering themselves and others with poor tackling form while trying to injure instead of trying to make a football play.
Those instances are what the NCAA wants to legislate out of the game. But it's still happening, as Sports Illustrated's Ross Dellenger pointed out back in Sept. when he cited that 60 players were ejected for targeting penalties over the fist 243 games (three weeks) of college football. That's a rate of 0.25 targeting penalties per game, which is lower than the 0.27 rate of 2020, but still higher than 206's rate of 0.17 calls per game. That same piece by Dellenger also included a quote from SEC commissioner Greg Sankey on the possibility of a change to the NCAA targeting rule.
“I have not seen a sophisticated plan and structure,” Sankey said. “I will be the first to say I’m open to alternative approaches, but they have to be grounded in eliminating these hits. The ejection and suspension from the next half of a game is a fairly blunt instrument, but it makes the point to change behavior.”
As you can tell from Narduzzi's comment, Pitt isn't changing its coaching technique despite both players being ejected. But Narduzzi also brought up a good point that targeting had not been an issue for his team all season, which lends itself to the notion that Pitt's behavior on defense should be satisfactory to what Sankey and the NCAA wants.
But the bottom line is still the "blunt" punishment of the ejection and suspension. It's possible to legislate the game to punish dangerous and dirty hits, while also not removing a player who might've had intentions of making a clean football play and instead made incidental contact to an offensive players' head or neck area.
The NCAA did add replay as an option for the rule in 2016, but it still needs to differentiate contact that's incidental or closer to the spirit of the game from the hits that are obviously malicious and have no place in football. Both can still be penalized with the former still coming with a 15-yard penalty, while the latter still results in an ejection.
Looking at Pitt's two plays that led to ejections for Dennis and Hill could be a guide to this. Dennis did put his hands up in a play where he did appear to attack the hands of the receiver to force an incomplete pass on third down and eventually made contact to the receiver's helmet. You can see the receiver drop the ball right before Dennis attempted to make a play to break up the pass with not enough time for him to stop his movement on the play:
That's part of the fast-paced nature of the game where the rules become difficult to prevent.
Dennis has to attempt to make a play on a third down pass against one of the best quarterbacks in the country in Virginia's Brennan Armstrong. This is a play that should be flagged as a penalty to protect the receiver, but it's also more incidental as Dennis was trying to make a football play. This was the first time Dennis had been ejected all year, so he's not some repeat offending headhunter linebacker that the ejection eliminated.
Making a play like that a simple flag that extends a drive is still plenty enough of a punishment to discourage it from happening, as that penalty extended Virginia's opening drive that eventually led to the Cavaliers scoring a touchdown.
But Hill's ejection offers a glimpse into the other kind of hit that strikes at the spirit of the rule. Watch as Hill came across the field and led only with his shoulder into the head of the receiver. He is trying to make a play, but there's considerably less effort on his end to make a play on the ball with his hands than when Dennis was ejected:
This isn't the dirtiest of hits, but it's much closer to the behavior that Sankey wants to eliminate from the game than Dennis' hit.
Both hits can still be penalized while still giving referees across college football a middle ground to punish a player for incidental contact to a defenseless player's head or neck without the outright ejection and suspension that would be saved to penalize more reckless hits.
There would still be some controversy over the distinctions between which hits should lead to a flag or a an ejection, just as there is between running into the kicker and roughing the kicker penalties. But it would still offer a better structure for officials to enforce rules that promote safety without punishing players for accidents that stemmed from fundamental play.
