HOOVER, Ala. – It took around eight months, but Tennessee cornerback Emmanuel Moseley, who was ejected from UT’s 2015 matchup against Kentucky for targeting, got some vindication by SEC Head of Officiating Steve Shaw on Tuesday at SEC Media Days.
The Moseley hit was used as a video clip example by Shaw
How is this targeting? https://t.co/bWa90E5Xht
— Rocky Top Insider (@rockytopinsider) November 1, 2015
Shaw indicated that the updated collaborative instant replay system in the SEC would have overturned Moseley’s hit this season.
Here was his full comment on the situation as he played the video:
“The other – and I want to talk about this. Now, they’ve allowed replay to look at all aspects of a targeting foul. Before we were just looking for that contact to the head, but now the official in the booth, his broadened authority, he can look at is the player defenseless? Where was the contact? Was there a launch? What was the action of the defender?
“So I want to put up one more play. Here’s a play that, based on this expanded broadened authority, would have a different outcome in the upcoming 2016 season. Now, here’s a play in a game. So what you’re going to see is the receiver and strong contact. It’s high. And we get a flag from our officials on the field. Absolutely you would expect that. We would expect it this year.
“But here you’re going to see that, you know, last year — and you’re going to watch. It is subtle, but right here you watch the receiver’s head and you can tell there’s helmet contact there. So this would have been a stand last year. But if you really look at the action of the defender, he’s not launching, he’s going with his shoulder. He’s trying to lower his target. There’s really not targeting action by that defender.
“So here would have been a play with broadened authority, and replay that we would have actually overturned this in the new rule and not made this a targeting foul. So these are all very difficult plays, and that’s where the collaborative part of replay I think is really going to help us.”
“There are only so many things I can say,” Butch Jones said after that game in Lexington last November. “All I can say is we have a young man who is trying to play exceptionally hard, and you know, there isn’t a better person than Emmanuel Moseley. We’ll do everything we can to state our case.”
Obviously Moseley was ejected from that game and sat out the first half of the next game for the Vols, but Jones and Tennessee had to be happy to hear the director of officials says that there wasn’t “targeting action” in that play and that would not have led to the same outcome this year.
