KNOXVILLE – Having just played for the first time since September, Tennessee senior kicker Daniel Lincoln pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket late Saturday afternoon and somehow dialed up an MRI of his torn right quad muscle.
“I just found out recently that everyone just thought I had a pull or something,” he said after kicking a field goal and seven extra points during the Volunteers’ 52-14 victory over Ole Miss.
“Does that look like a pull to you?” he added, passing around the scary medical photo for all to see. “It’s a tear the size of a cellphone. They told me there was no way I’d see the field again until the Kentucky game, if then.”
The Kentucky game – UT’s regular-season finale – arrives two days after Thanksgiving at Neyland Stadium. Between now and then comes Saturday night’s 7:30 kickoff at Vanderbilt.
“This is probably the first time I’ve smiled whole-heartedly since the injury happened,” Lincoln said. “It’s been torture.”
The injury occurred during practice on the Thursday before the LSU game on Oct. 2. Lincoln felt a slight pain in his thigh while booting a long field goal. He traveled with the team to Baton Rouge but decided during warm-ups that he would hurt the team if he tried to kick.
“For a while, I thought my career at Tennessee might be over,” he said Saturday. “For the first three weeks after it happened, I couldn’t even walk. I had to do some crazy stuff to get my mind off my football career. I went to the mountains one weekend. I traveled on my own to the Georgia game. I became our biggest fan.”
New UT coach Derek Dooley has quickly become a big fan of Lincoln, saying, “He hasn’t missed [a field goal] all year.”
To be exact, Lincoln has hit all eight of his field-goal attempts, including four from 40 yards or more.
But those came early. Over the past five weeks, “I’ve had one day of practice,” he explained. “When I went out for warm-ups today, I felt like a freshman.”
But he didn’t kick like one. He kicked like he almost always does, the ball sailing perfectly between the uprights.
“Daniel’s not just a kicker, he’s a football player,” said running back Tauren Poole. “He’s really tough. He competes with everybody on this team in everything. Sprints, weightlifting, everything. I don’t know that he beats us in anything, but he thinks he can beat us in everything.”
Lincoln isn’t sure if he could beat anybody in much of anything these days. The leg still hurts. His physical fitness is far from 100 percent. He still spends four hours a day in rehab. He was so nervous Friday night about the Ole Miss game that he didn’t get three hours sleep.
“I must have kicked 300 field goals in my mind from every spot in the stadium,” Lincoln said. “I was trying to prepare for every possibility.”
But the possibility of his career ending prematurely is behind him.
“I’m good enough to help us win,” Lincoln said, his whole-hearted smile back on his face. “And right now that’s all that matters.”