Tom Herman Breaks Silence on Overturned Targeting Call in FAU’s Loss to Michigan State

The Florida Atlantic Owls were very close to taking the lead against the Michigan State Spartans on Friday night at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing.

Trailing 16-3 after the first half, FAU cut the deficit down to single digits with their only touchdown of the game scored by wide receiver Jayshon Platt. With the score at 16-10, all that was needed for the Owls to take the lead was one more touchdown, as long as the defense continued getting stops, which they did for the most part.

During FAU's second-to-last drive with 3:27 left on the game clock, the Owls had an opportunity to enter Michigan State territory when a Michigan State defender appeared to target quarterback Cam Fancher on 4th and 1, prompting the officials to throw out flags for penalty calls.

Following video review, the targeting call was overturned, and the Spartans got possession as FAU failed to get first down during their drive. The only penalty that stood was an unsportsmanlike conduct call that only impacted Michigan State's possession, not the other way around in favor of Florida Atlantic as some would have anticipated.

Following the game, ending in a 16-10 defeat, head coach Tom Herman revealed his thoughts on what happened during that moment in the postgame press conference.

"To the guys on the field, he made the right call. So how that gets overturned with clear video evidence that wasn't targeting? I haven't seen the replay. A lot of stuff is going on. So as they do, they review every targeting, and somebody in New York or Dallas or wherever they do these things said that that wasn't targeting, but that it was a late hit, but a late hit, by definition, occurs after the play is dead, and the play then was dead prior to him making no line of gain. So how that wasn't targeting? I'm a little confused," Herman said.

"I thought, I was under the assumption when we had them jump offsides, we drew them offsides, and we threw a go ball in one of our wideouts early in the game, and their corner ran right through our guy on their sideline, and no flag. So I told our guys, hey, it's prison rules, right? Apparently, when they jump, when you jump offsides, you can do whatever you want, and then our guys get called, so I screwed them up on that, I guess. When I saw that happen, I was like, Okay, guys, all bets are off. We're not calling PIs on offside, so that was my fault."

It was a tough loss to swallow for the Owls, knowing they had many opportunities to take the lead against the Spartans but didn't. Regardless, their defensive success against Michigan State showed that they are capable of making a huge leap forward, moving on from the disappointing 4-8 finish they had last year.

Despite the loss, FAU learned a lot of positives about themselves as they'll look to build off it heading into their home opener and conference opener against new AAC opponent Army on Sept. 7 at noon ET.

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