Wolverine Watch: Targeting The Black Knight
The Big Ten season has arrived, with all its intrigue, exultation, misery and schadenfreude. For some, it’s as welcome as the ice cream truck coming down the street.
For the unprepared, it’s like an indefatigable vacuum cleaner salesman dumping dirt on your carpet and hunkering down for a long stay.
Scott Frost ushers Nebraska into town, 0-2 in actual play, 0-1 against the weatherman. He’s getting a humbling in the early going, but he could have the Cornhuskers detasseling foes in the near future — especially when quarterback Adrian Martinez returns.
Michigan isn’t any stranger to the new head ‘Husker. Frost made the My Pillow guy look introverted when lobbying for half a national championship in 1997. He defiantly declared his Central Florida squad “outhit” Michigan in a 51-14 cliffhanger two years ago in The Big House.
He fired a shot across Jim Harbaugh’s recruiting bow upon arriving in beautiful, balmy Nebraska, pondering aloud why recruits would choose the chill of Ann Arbor over lovely Lincoln. He stopped just shy of hailing his state’s stunning mountain overlooks and breathtaking ocean beaches, demonstrating laudable restraint.
It’s Michigan’s job to send Frost away muttering once again about how a better, tougher team lost. The Wolverines can turn him once more into Monty Python’s The Black Knight, responding to having an arm cut off with “’Tis but a scratch,” and to subsequently losing the other arm and both legs with “All right, we’ll call it a draw.”
Junior quarterback Shea Patterson and his improving crew can wield the sword, in the form of an increasingly effective passing game. Don Brown’s defenders, to a man, can relentlessly pressure Martinez or any ersatz substitute.
Check that, as they say in the booth. One man can’t, at least for a half.
Junior viper Khaleke Hudson will be sitting out the opening 30 minutes of the opening Big Ten game. He’s free to wander to the other sideline and peek into Cornhuskers time-out huddles, talk with Nebraska fans about how mind-numbing it is to drive across their state or wear a “Woodson Would Have Chilled Frost” T-shirt.
All because Hudson’s helmet made contact with that of an SMU player in the middle of the 150-mile-per-hour hurricane in the trenches last Saturday.
Harbaugh doesn’t think that’s right. He doesn’t lack company, when it comes to iffy targeting calls. Across the country, coaches are trying to grapple with getting players tossed from games for what used to be hard-hitting football.
“If you go back and watch a game from 15, 20 years ago, you’ll find yourself going, ‘Well, that’s targeting. That’s targeting. That’s targeting. That’s an illegal hit,’" Michigan radio sideline reporter Doug Karsch observed.
“They’re moving targets. They’re targets that are moving at a high rate of speed, and the helmet is changing levels, and the defender comes in and there’s contact.”
It’s one thing for the old-style headhunter safety to nearly decapitate a defenseless wide receiver crossing the middle of the field. It’s another when a running back is churning through the line, head moving, firing directly into the free-for-all.
Hudson’s hit involved the latter, and Harbaugh isn’t convinced yet it should have been disqualifying.
"I don't think Khaleke's was with the crown of his helmet," Harbaugh said. "And I thought he led with his shoulder. So, that'll be interesting to follow — how that's called going forward.
"When you're talking about the crown of the helmet, ball carrier leading with the crown of their helmet — the target moves. As someone who's coming through a targeted hole, running through a hole, that ball carrier is moving.”
Former Wolverine defender Ryan Van Bergen understands the need for safety, but hates the targeting rule as presently applied.
“If we’re going to call it defensively, I guarantee you, in the next year or two, we’re going to be talking about running backs coming through the hole and dipping their head down, leading with their head,” Van Bergen said. “If he’s leading with his head, what do you want us to hit?
“Guys that are bracing for impact, they’re tucking their shoulders, they’re putting their head down, and that’s the surface they’re providing for contact.”
U-M junior linebacker and captain Devin Bush Jr. can relate.
“It’s hard,” he insisted. “They’re moving so fast, and the decision is almost instant. He ducks his head, and I have nothing else left to hit, but maybe lower my head lower than his and hurt my neck,. Nah.”
Frost can talk all he wants about who outhit who. A Michigan team that lost two players in three games to targeting hopes it hits just the right spots and goes lights out on The Black Knight.
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