Jake Dickert calls out Arizona State, Kenny Dillingham for fake injury to stop clock
Jake Dickert is calling on rule-makers in college football to look into instances of teams faking injuries to gain strategic advantages. He said Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham instructed his team to fake an injury at the end of the first half Saturday night against Washington State in order to save time and kick a last-second field goal before the break, and he said Dillingham did the same thing last year when he was at Oregon.
With the game tied 21-21 late in the first half, Arizona State tight end Jalin Conyers caught a 13-yard pass to move the sticks and get ASU close to field goal range.
Arizona State had no timeouts remaining and after Conyers handed the ball to the official, he dropped down to the field holding his leg.
It never feels right to accuse a kid of faking an injury, but man… pic.twitter.com/7nqEu7bSON
— Greg Woods (@GregWWoods) October 29, 2023
Officials stopped the clock with a second remaining and Arizona State was afforded a field goal try from 51 yards. Dario Longhetto knocked it through and ASU took a 24-21 lead into the locker room.
“There’s no doubt that’s a feigned injury,” Dickert said after the game. “(Dillingham) did it last year, Oregon against Washington, it was a big deal. They execute it again. Credit to them, there’s a loophole in the rule. They know it, everyone knows it, everyone situationally practices it.
“The same situation happened at Oregon vs. UW last year and it’s a big deal, and it should be a big deal again that we have to look at that as far as the rules. We all know what happened.”
Dickert defended the officiating crew and said the onus needs to be on leaders to make a rule change, not on officials in-game to make determinations about injuries.
“The referees are at the mercy of the injury. It’s not their job to decide whether (a player is hurt or not),” Dickert said. “As a league, we’ve got to look into it. This is now the second time. Period. It was easy to see. And I’d love to check the sideline on some of the other tempo ones.
“We have to have a better deal. If you go down on an injury, you can’t come back in that series. In general, I think it would solve a lot of this. There’s no question there’s a loophole in the rule, they took advantage of it, and they got their field goal off.”