"It was a routine play," Johnson recalled. "I was 163 pounds and so the way I approached a tackle was simple. It's either me or you and I'm not blinking."

After the hit, Johnson knew something was wrong.

"It seemed as if every breath in my body left and I fell to the ground and I blacked out," Johnson said. "It was one of the scariest moments of my life. The shock eventually left and it stayed in my right arm and hand. I was lying on the field and I looked over at the trainers and the doctors running over to me."

After leaving the field on a stretcher, Johnson was taken to the hospital and soon learned the severity of his injury.

"I had busted a subclavian artery in my chest and I was bleeding internally," Johnson said. "They had to take the main vein out of my left leg, plug it into my chest in order to save my life and that's when they discovered I had nerve damage in my right shoulder."

That nerve damage would lead to Johnson's right arm being paralyzed.

Coach Fulmer remembers being in the hospital that night and waiting for Johnson to wake up.

"My wife Vicki and I were sitting there when he woke up and we go in and see him and the first thing out of his mouth—I say 'Inky how you doing?'

'Coach, I'm blessed.'

"We both sit there and just balled it with each other," Fulmer recalled. "What a show of courage by a young man that had it all going for him and then all of a sudden he's looking at starting over again."

Johnson, who had already overcome so much just to get to Tennessee, had finally earned a starting position and was coming into his own as a playmaker for the Tennessee defense, but then he was dealt a different hand.

His path had changed.

Eventually, that path brought him back to the football field at the University of Tennessee, and he recalled the first time he came back to see his teammates.

"I had tears in my eyes," Johnson said. "Some of those guys had tears in their eyes. I told them, 'Just appreciate the game.' Don't disrespect the game and give it everything you got because you never know when it's going to be your last play.

"It's just like life. We take things for granted until we no longer have them."