Seward has made strides en route to record book

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2003 | 10:29 a.m.

Sometime during the first half of Saturday's game against Colorado State, Adam Seward will likely move past Randy Black into first place on UNLV's career tackle chart.

A 6-foot-2, 250-pound junior from Bonanza High School, Seward ranks third in the Mountain West Conference with an average of 9.8 tackles per game after leading the MWC in that category as a sophomore. He needs just four tackles to eclipse Black's mark of 294.

It seems only natural that Seward, son of former UNLV offensive and defensive line coach Tom Seward (1986-89), would be the one to break the record. After all, he was born to be a football player, right?

Well, not exactly.

"My first year of playing football in pads was in the seventh grade," said Seward, who was a Nevada state prep heavyweight wrestling champion at Bonanza. "I didn't really know where I wanted to play. It was weird. I wanted to run the ball."

Instead, he ended up on the offensive line.

"I couldn't tackle worth a lick," Seward said. "I had no real ability. My dad could hardly watch.

"My body was growing so fast that my skeletal frame couldn't take it. I had shin splints real bad. I got stuck on the offensive line. I remember trying to block. It's a tough position. I remember the running backs yelling, 'You've got to block somebody.' "

Football was not very fun back then.

"I wanted to give up and quit," Seward said. "But my dad hung by me. I really thank him for that. I'm sure he was thinking, 'Oh my gosh, I'm a football coach and my son can't tackle and he can't run.' It was really bad."

But a year later Seward got his big break playing for a Pop Warner Midget team called the Chiefs.

"I told myself that when we had a hitting drill I was going to hit somebody as hard as I could, that I wasn't going to get stuck on the line again," Seward said. "I remember in our first drill stepping up there and giving a guy a good lick. That got the coaches all fired up. They stuck me at linebacker, gave me number 51, and I've played there ever since."

And played it very well.

Seward was a first team all-state pick his senior year at Bonanza when he had 138 tackles and eight sacks and was a highly regarded national recruit who had Pac-10 schools like Arizona State and UCLA hot on his trail. But impressed with the vision of then new UNLV head coach John Robinson, he decided to stay and play for the hometown Rebels.

After redshirting in 2000, he worked his way into the starting lineup midway through his freshman season and finished with 60 tackles, including six for losses, two forced fumbles and two pass breakups.

He followed that up last season by earning first team all-Mountain West Conference honors after averaging 11.1 tackles per game to lead the Mountain West Conference. He had 16 tackles in one game against Utah.

This year Seward is having another all-conference caliber of season with 98 tackles, including nine for loss, and two interceptions, including one that sealed UNLV's 16-12 Fremont Cannon victory at Nevada-Reno. He was named to the Butkus Award Watch List and was ranked the 23rd best player in the MWC regardless of position by College Football News.

"He came in here as a very physical player," UNLV coach John Robinson said. "He's becoming a very smart player now, too. He's much more flexible in the passing game and the experience has also helped him. He really can adjust to a variety of things now."

Seward admits its been hard not to think of breaking Black's tackle mark during the last two weeks. But says he's more focused on trying to help the Rebels (5-5, 1-4) win their final two games against Colorado State and Wyoming so that they can get into a bowl game.

"It's exciting to be so close to the tackle record," he said. "Everybody keeps asking me about it and everything. But team-wise the most important thing is to win these next two games. We definitely want to get to a bowl game. That's first and foremost. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about breaking the tackle record."

Still, he said he'd trade all his tackles for two more wins this year.

"I've never played on a winning team in my career going back to that first year in the seventh grade," Seward said. "I've never played on a team that won more than five games which happened here last year. So that's why I'd trade those tackles right now to get those two wins and finish 7-5. If we could do that, it would be awesome. You could say we had a pretty good season."

Robinson skipped his weekly Rebel Football Foundation luncheon on Monday after undergoing dental surgery earlier in the morning. Offensive coordinator Rob Boras and defensive coordinator Mike Bradeson were last minute replacements.