AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -It was the kind of play No. 2 Texas had been waiting for.
Early in the fourth quarter against Texas Tech, Longhorns defensive end Sergio Kindle sped around his blocker, zeroed in on quarterback Taylor Potts and delivered a huge hit – one that Red Raiders coach Mike Leach says may have been illegal – knocking the ball loose.
Texas (3-0) recovered the fumble and six plays later scored the decisive touchdown in a 34-24 win.
Kindle, who has been hyped as Texas’ best pass rusher, didn’t have a sack this season until the play that turned the game in Texas’ favor. It prompted a long-awaited congratulations from his father, who had been after him to get to the quarterback.
“He liked that,” Kindle said. “Getting to the quarterback is the ideal thing to do and to get a perfect shot like that I guess is a defensive end’s dream.”
ndall was penalized for roughing the passer.
No flag was thrown on Kindle’s hit. All plays that involve similar helmet-to-helmet contact are reviewed by Big 12 officials and the league has taken no action against Kindle.
“It’s about as helmet to helmet as you could get,” Leach said Monday. “There’s a lot of blind people that can tell by hearing that it was helmet to helmet.”
Kindle said his face mask hit Potts in the chest and he didn’t intend to make contact with his helmet, which was jarred loose. Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp has defended the play as legal and a “great hit.”
“It’s a very physical game. It’s a vicious game,” Texas coach Mack Brown said. “There are hard hits and you can’t take hard hits out of the game.”
The sack was a breakthrough for Kindle, who had 10 last season as a linebacker. He is playing a lot at defensive end this season after the departure of Brian Orakpo, last season’s Nagurski, Lombardi and Hendricks awards winner and a first-round draft pick of the Washington Redskins.
Kindle thought about leaving for the NFL after last season, but chose to return for his senior year. He leads the team in quarterback pressures with 11 but big sack numbers were the expectation and they weren’t coming for a player who once called himself “a predator” on the field.
That led to a lot of questions about what was wrong.
biggest question mark coming into this season. The Longhorns lost three starters who are now in the NFL.
Texas led the nation with 47 sacks last season and now has nine after three games. With teams concentrating on blocking Kindle, defensive tackle Lamarr Houston and defensive end Sam Acho have more room to rush the quarterback.
Acho has two sacks and Houston is first among down linemen with four tackles for losses. Houston is also right behind Kindle with nine quarterback pressures.
The Longhorns punished Potts last week with 23 hits on the quarterback – including Kindle’s.
“I finally got one,” Kindle said.
Brown said Kindle was given the team’s hard hit award “about six times” for his play against Texas Tech. “He hit everybody and was just was knocking them out all over the place,” Brown said.
Next up is Texas-El Paso (1-2) on Saturday. The Miners have given up nine sacks this season, including six against Kansas in a 34-7 loss two weeks ago.
“Last week we got a lot of pressure on the quarterback,” Acho said. “Hopefully week in and week out it will grow.”
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