Davis says he won't let last year's heartbreak ruin his senior year

One way or the other, Reggie Davis said he’s not going to let the heartbreak of last year’s drop at Tennessee ruin what he hopes will be a memorable senior campaign.

It’s a topic the native of Tallahassee, Florida actually doesn’t mind addressing although one couldn’t blame him if he did.

With less than four minutes left and the Bulldogs trailing 38-31, Davis dropped what would have been an easy 56-yard touchdown pass from Greyson Lambert. As a result, Georgia was forced to punt on the very next play and 38-31 ended up being the final score.

The miscue also ruined what was otherwise a memorable day for Davis, who finished with 240 total yards, including a 70-yard punt return and a 48-yard touchdown catch. But all that was forgotten as the perfectly thrown ball bounced off his chest before falling harmlessly to the ground.

“It motivates me a lot. I still get those tweets and pictures,” Davis said after practice Tuesday. “At first it’s heartbreaking but you can’t let your past carry you down too far, you’ve got to let the past be the past.”

But Davis – who finished with 12 catches for 187 yards and the one touchdown – admits that’s not necessarily easy to do.

“Oh yeah it killed me last year. You want to make that type of play, especially in the type of game that I was having,” Davis said. “I really should just have caught it with my hands instead of trying to catch it with my body. That’s what I learned as a player, so now I just try to catch everything with my hands.”

With Social Media being the way it is, Davis smiled that’s a fact he’s constantly reminded of.

“When you get all the kind of tweets you receive from (Georgia) fans, Tennessee fans, you read it, watch the play and wonder how you could have done it differently,” he said. “So when you attack practice you always keep that in back of your mind. If you ever drop something, you brush it off but you also discipline yourself with pushups, with the JUGGS machine, or try to re-run that play so you don’t leave plays out there on the field.”

He does feel the experience has helped him grow.

“I feel like I’ve grown a lot, especially since I’ve taken it on my own to grow more mature mentally and handle things more than I did in the past,” Davis said. “I always had a mindset of I’ll do it later, and later caught up to me.”

But thanks to the play – and the memories of it that remain – he claims lessons have been learned.

“It played with my confidence, but that was a mental thing that I had to work on,” he said. “I should have never let it get to that point.”