Kirk Herbstreit defends USC player after hit that knocked out Dante Moore

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Saturday night’s game between the USC Trojans and Oregon Ducks featured one of the scariest moments of the college football season, when USC linebacker Desman Stephens knocked out Oregon quarterback Dante Moore with an illegal hit.

With roughly 10 minutes remaining in the second quarter, Moore escaped the pocket and scrambled for a first down deep in USC territory. However, as he attempted to slide and protect himself from a hit, Stephens lowered his shoulder and delivered a massive hit directly to Moore’s head, immediately sending him into an involuntary fencing position.

Moore was eventually transported away from the game by ambulance to a hospital. After the play, Stephens faced intense backlash for smiling and celebrating after the hit while Moore remained down on the field, and he has since been suspended. However, ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit is extending some grace to the linebacker.

“It was really tough to see,” Herbstreit told college football analyst Joey Galloway on the Nonstop Podcast. “Anytime a player struggles like that, it’s always difficult to see, and automatically we assume dirty hit. But put yourself on the other side of it as a defensive player.”

Herbstreit added that he had “no problem at all” with Stephens II making the tackle, despite Stephens being ejected for targeting, putting him at odds with the greater college football world, which took a much harsher view of the collision.

Herbstreit continued, “If I’m a safety or a linebacker and I see a quarterback with the athletic ability and dual-threat ability of a Dante Moore, I see him taking off, and I’m coming up 100 miles an hour…I’m thinking I’m taking him down.”

“It’s almost impossible to ask a defender to not finish that play,” Herbstreit added. “But the quarterback’s sliding down, and it’s a bad situation. If I’m coaching a safety that’s coming up to make that play, I don’t know what I’m telling him differently than what that guy did.”

While he doesn’t think the hit was dirty on his own, Herbstreit did not defend Stephens’ actions after the play and made it clear he was still “terrified” for Moore’s health and that it remains his chief concern from the incident.

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