KNOXVILLE – Tennessee linebacker Nick Reveiz wasn’t sure when the red welts and pink discoloration would leave his forehead.
“I got a new helmet,” he said at the close of the Vols’ 32-29 overtime victory over UAB on Saturday. “The padding’s softer up there. With the other helmet, I’d get a little woozy sometimes. This one was supposed to stop that. But there were hard hits out there.”
Where UT was concerned, most of those hits came from Reveiz, who finished with eight solo tackles and six assists. His 14 total tackles, including two for lost yardage, were at least five in front of everyone else in orange.
“I kept trying to stay calm because I was getting so angry,” he said. “We came out flat. We were missing tackles. Screens were killing us. It was a combination of things.”
One thing kept the Vols from losing, a trait almost always associated with the senior Reveiz – heart.