The way Georgia linebacker Jake Ganus saw it, safety Dominick Sanders had two options when he zeroed in on Missouri receiver Emanuel Hall in the third quarter of the Bulldogs’ 9-6 Southeastern Conference victory on Saturday.
The options facing Sanders — who was ejected for targeting with about seven minutes remaining in the third — were to hit Hall high and risk a major penalty or hit him low and possibly cause a serious injury.
“I hope the referees and offensive players realize that Dom couldn’t make a play on the ball, but he’s got to make a tackle,” Ganus said. “He could go for the guy’s knee and have a serious injury, and he was obviously aiming for his shoulder.
“Things like that happen. I’m not going to blame the refs — the rule is (not to hit him in the head) and he did and got thrown out. There’s some gray area there — he wasn’t trying to hit him in the head; he was trying to make a play. It’s a rule we’ve got to try to live by.”
Since the infraction came in the second half, Sanders will have to sit out the first half of Georgia’s Oct. 31 game against No. 8 Florida in Jacksonville.
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“Oh, I forgot that part — it happened in the second half,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said during his postgame remarks. “It stinks.”
Richt — and several others who were asked after the game — didn’t dispute that Sanders hit Hall (who could not hold on to the pass from quarterback Drew Lock) in the head and they took the high road when considering the ramifications of Sanders’ first-half absence from the Florida game.
“We saw it in the replay and it was a helmet-to-helmet hit. … I think the officials were right,” Richt said. “We had other guys come in and play well the rest of the game, so we’ll have to have guys come in and play well in the first half and I’m sure Dom will get in there in the second half and he’ll be hungry.”
“There’s nothing we can do, but we’ve got a bunch of young guys who we can plug into the secondary and they did a good job,” Ganus added.
Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity did not dispute the officials’ decision, but pointed out that the decision was made with little deliberation.
“It was a pretty quick decision,” McGarity said. “They didn’t wait long. And they’re always going to give the benefit of the doubt to the player on the receiving end of those hits. It’s just one of those things, and the speed of the game has a lot to do with it. ... I’m sure if there’s an issue there, the rules committee will look at it at the right time, but it’s hard to argue. I think we all saw that there was head-to-head contact.”
Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, seeing players get cited and ejected for targeting is a semi-regular occurrence. In the second game of the season, inside linebacker Lorenzo Carter was flagged for a second-quarter hit on Vanderbilt quarterback Johnny McCrary and had to sit out the second half.
In 2013, again at Vanderbilt, both defensive end Ray Drew and linebacker Ramik Wilson were cited for targeting in the Bulldogs’ 31-27 loss to the Commodores. Drew was ejected in the first half, and while Wilson’s expulsion was overturned, the 15-yard penalty remained in effect.
Not surprisingly, Sanders — a sophomore from Tucker — declined to comment about the play or the decision, but Carter said there was nothing Georgia could do but move forward.
“We’ve got to respect the rues of the game and move on to the next game,” he said. “It’s all right. We’ll play ball and make the changes we need to make.”
Defensive end Sterling Bailey said the team remained focused after the call — which of course was met with derision from most of the 92,000 in attendance — and chalked the situation up to the ups and downs of a violent pastime.
“I don’t think (the ejection) changed anything for us because you know it’s the next man up,” Bailey said. “And that’s what we do. Whenever someone goes down, the next person comes in and continues where the other guy left off. That’s how the game is. It’s football – anything can happen.”