Swinney commends officials' work in plays like 'severe' FSU targeting hit |
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney commended the ACC officiating crew Monday for going back, reviewing and making the call to eject FSU linebacker Emmett Rice for his targeting hit on Tigers defensive back Ryan Carter Saturday.
"It was definitely a bad play," Swinney said on his call-in show Monday. "Just disappointing all the way around. Those are the type of things we got to get out of football. I'm really appreciative of the crew for identifying it, viewing it and handling it properly. At the end of the day, guys want to play. "You take those things out of the game and you enforce it like that. Kick people out. You're going to see it less and less and less. You already do. You have some of these calls where they aren't blatant or intentional, kinda unintended and you can have a targeting and I think that's why they review all that. That one was about as bad as you're going to see. "By every sense of the word and definition, that was a severe level of targeting. They handled it properly. The young men was carrying on and really not handling it the right way. That's for Jimbo (Fisher) to handle and his team and I'm sure he will." Rice took the shot at Carter while he was on punt coverage, and Carter did not return to the game after being helped off the field: Just dirty! pic.twitter.com/sS2G52EfKH After the ejection, the sophomore defender was seen making light of Carter being knocked out of the game on Rice's way to the locker room: Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher addressed Rice's hit in his press conference Monday. "We will discuss it with him (targeting)," Fisher said. "Emmett had a hit that was, unfortunately, a targeting call. He hit the guy square. He hit him high. I don't think there was any intent or anything bad. He made a bad hit in a situation where we got to aim a little lower. We will talk to Emmett about things and how we do things."
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