Texas Tech's Eli Howard On His Dangerous Hit: I'm Sorry To My Coach, My Athletic Director, Oh, And Also The Guy I Injured

With just over 10 minutes left in the third quarter of Oklahoma-Texas Tech, Red Raiders defensive lineman Eli Howard V delivered a dangerous low hit to Sooners running back Kennedy Brooks on a return. While the hit would have been considered to be dirty regardless of the context, it was made significantly worse by the fact that returner Douglas Coleman III had already stepped out of bounds when Howard started to dive at Brooks’s knees.

Howard was eventually flagged for unnecessary roughness, but was not ejected for the play. Brooks, meanwhile, remained down for a little bit, before eventually walking over to his sideline on his own power.

Texas Tech coach Matt Wells reportedly condemned the dirty hit, an action which Lincoln Riley commended after the game, and Howard decided to make amends himself through Twitter in the form of a Notes App apology.

It’s not usual that a player involved in such a hard collision takes responsibility for the actions he committed on a football field, which I guess is why this apology is a little messy to begin with. For starters, the first two people he apologizes to in the text of the tweet are his coach and Texas Tech’s athletic director. He then literally tacks on a “sorry” to Brooks at the end as if it were a slight afterthought.

The note itself isn’t a whole lot better. He starts out pretty defensive and then more or less blames armchair analysts for the type of scrutiny his horrendous attempt at a block has gotten online. Things briefly improve when he starts saying important things like “I take full responsibility,” but then he forgets to mention Brooks by name in the note, while remembering to apologize to his coach and program. The cherry on top, of course, is the “Wreck em” at the end. Time and place, man.