Tennessee football Smokey Points: Top five Vols in 28-10 Vanderbilt win

He’s been coming through down the stretch of the season for Tennessee football on a consistent basis, and on Senior Night, he did it again. It seems like a pretty safe bet now that if the Vols had Daniel Bituli to start the season, they would be 9-3 right now instead of 7-5, despite all the other issues that were in play for their 0-2 start.

Bituli has been the best defensive player for Rocky Top consistently throughout the last month and during this winning streak, and he showed it again in his final home game. The inside linebacker was all over the field, even as the defense struggled in many other ways, he once again made sure he did his job.

For the game, Bituli didn’t have any tackles for a loss, pass deflections or forced or recovered fumbles. But he led the team with eight tackles, and four of them were solo. That gave him 80 total tackles on the year, 46 of which were solo, despite missing the first two games.

By Bituli’s standards, this was actually a below average performance. However, within the context of how everybody played on the day, he was still one of the top players. So he managed to make this list as the anchor for the defense, which he has been all year. UT is going to miss this guy, as he has been critical to Jeremy Pruitt’s defensive schemes.