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A player who receives a blindside hit is considered defenseless but in the NFHS rule book that only matters if there is illegal helmet contact and you deem it to be flagrant. There is no helmet contact here so you don't have targeting either.
I feel this is a PF for a late hit and also UNR. It's not exactly a pile-picker but pretty close. The runner was being tackled and this player was not involved in that. #31 was looking for someone to hit and found someone who wouldn't see it coming. I flag these types of plays every time I see them.
The coach may not be directly telling his players to play dirty, but he probably tells them to play hard and to the whistle on every play which many players interpret to this kind of hit. They get attaboys for hard hits and the whistle hasn't blown yet so they find someone to hit. This is the result. All we can do is flag it consistently so they hopefully stop doing it. I've been flagging it for 14 years though and it still hasn't gone away.
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