With 5:21 left in the fourth quarter on Saturday night against the Arkansas Razorbacks, KJ Jefferson and the Hogs faced a 3rd and 18 from the LSU 22-yard-line down 31-24.
Jefferson rolled to his right looking for Luke Hasz in the endzone, but LSU had perfect coverage so Jefferson was forced to throw it away. But wait, there was a flag on the play. LSU linebacker [autotag]Harold Perkins[/autotag] was hit with a roughing the passer penalty, giving the Razorbacks a free first down. On the next play, the Hogs scored to tie the game.
[autotag]Brian Kelly[/autotag] was asked about the controversial call after the game.
“Well, however I answer this question I put myself in a very difficult situation,” Kelly said. “All I can tell you is that there was no blow to the head. There was no blow to the neck area. He thought it was unnecessary. My response was, ‘he’s 252 pounds, you try to tackle him,’ we couldn’t get him down on the ground. You can’t bring a rope out there. And he was not trying to do anything else but try to get him on the ground. So our supervisor of officials will look at it, we’ll send it in and we’ll get some kind of response from them.”
As Kelly said, Jefferson is a big guy. He is listed on the official roster as being 6-foot-3 and 247 pounds. He is a hard guy to tackle in open space and he is always a threat to run. Perkins hit on him was not malicious in the slightest and that call could have easily flipped the game in the Razorbacks’ favor.
Here's the roughing the passer call on Harold Perkins. pic.twitter.com/0LjRtjTgD4
— Matthew Brune (@MatthewBrune_) September 24, 2023
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