Dan Orlovsky on controversial Texas targeting review: 'This is a miss'

‘Get Up’ had a lot to say about the targeting call, or lack thereof, on Texas DB Michael Taaffe in the final moments of the Peach Bowl.

A panel on ESPN with Mike Greenberg along with Dan Orlovsky, EJ Manuel, and Harry Douglas spent much of their discussion of this quarterfinal in the College Football Playoff on the hit by Taaffe on Arizona State WR Melquan Stovall. For Orlovsky, he considered how the officials in the game reviewed and what they were looking for.

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“Well, there’s only one of two things that could justify or change the outcome of what we saw,” explained Orlovsky. “One – that the officiating crew deemed that receiver wasn’t defenseless and I think it would be hard to sit there and envision that being the case. Or, two, does the ball getting tipped change if he’s a defenseless player or not?”

However, with some explanation by Greenberg, Orlovsky couldn’t understand how it wasn’t targeting based on those criteria.

“It’s hard for me to sit there and watch that and think that that player is not defenseless because he’s just making the catch and just turning his head and there’s absolute forceable contact to the head or neck area,” Orlovsky said. “This is a miss for this officiating crew. If that is the case, to your point about the ball getting tipped not changing it, there’s no way that you can view that receiver that he’s defending himself.”

Douglas and Manuel both agreed as well that, by definition, the call should have been targeting. Manuel, though, did make the case for Taaffe as a player just trying to make a stop on defense.

“I thought it was the wrong call by the officials,” said Douglas. “They’re out there trying to do the best job out there, I’d say, that they can, but when you have a job to make a call that’s clear and obvious as this one is, you have to make the right call and do the right thing.

“Without a doubt, it’s targeting,” Manuel continued. “But the other part that’s tough about it is I don’t like the rule, to be honest with you, because, as a (defensive back), you’re trying to make a play. That’s such a bang-bang pass, action…I understand it is a rule. Yes, that is targeting but, if I’m a safety right there, I’m just trying to make a play.”

Greenberg was then the most bothered of them all by the lack of call. He knows that it was a game-deciding decision by the referees considering where the Sun Devils would have had the football. It’s then even worse for him considering they went to review it and still chose to call it as they did.

“It absolutely decides the game because, if that is called? Then it is 1st & 10 Arizona State at the Texas 37 with 1:08 remaining,” Greenberg said. “Does this game wind up in overtime anyway? We’ll never know. But, to me, it is such a shame that a game that was this great where the players just left it all out there…that a call like this winds up playing this significant of a role.”

“This is something that they review in the moment. It’s not a bang-bang decision. It’s a bang-bang play but it’s not a bang-bang decision,” added Greenberg. “They go off, they look at it again, and they make the decision. They have to come to the conclusion that this was not targeting and I for the life of me will never understand how they arrived at that.”

There’s no more to question about the call considering the game still went to double overtime with Texas advancing to the semifinals of the CFP in the Cotton Bowl. Still, it was worth wondering about with the impact it had on the final seconds of this quarterfinal game yesterday in Atlanta.