JUST TRY ME - Erik Ainge

Being a football player at Tennessee means playing in the shadows of some of the game's greatest players.

And if you’re a quarterback for the Volunteers, you live in the shadow of Tee Martin, who led Tennessee to the national championship in 1998, and of course, you’ll always be compared to Peyton Manning—the Super Bowl winning quarterback who holds or held almost every major statistical category for Tennessee.

That’s the legacy that current Vols quarterback Erik Ainge has to live up to.

“Obviously, he was the best and he played here and he is the best living right now,” says Ainge of Manning.

It’s because of this legacy that Ainge knows he’s always being looked at by fans and critics alike through the lens of one of the most powerful microscopes you can find.

“At any big-time school, especially at a place like Tennessee with the quarterbacks we’ve had in the past and the success we’ve had, there are a lot of comparisons and a lot of expectations,” says Ainge. “When we win, we probably get a little more credit than we deserve and when we lose, we probably get a little bit more of the blame.”

That’s probably why there was a collective sigh of relief coming from Knoxville, Tenn., when then-No. 23 Tennessee defeated then-No. 9 Cal last year at Neyland Stadium.

Ainge threw for 291 yards and four touchdowns.

That propelled the Volunteers to what many fans considered a “normal” year for Tennessee while it left the Bears' 10-win season in relative obscurity.

The game also lifted Ainge’s confidence.

It was the first game in his collegiate career in which he did not have to look behind his shoulder at a capable second-string gunslinger. It was also the first game he played after a subpar sophomore year.

In 2005, Ainge threw five touchdowns and was picked off seven times. He was benched after the team’s third game at LSU.

This came after Ainge’s most infamous play. With his team already trailing the Tigers, Ainge, trying to avoid a sack and a safety, flung the ball into the air. The errant pass was intercepted and returned for a three-yard touchdown by Kenneth Hollis to give LSU a 21-0 lead.

Ainge admits that he had a lot of growing up to do. Enter David Cutcliffe, the offensive coordinator that shaped Manning 10 years earlier and the same man who made Manning’s brother, Eli, into an NFL quarterback while at Ole Miss.

“Anytime you go 5-6 at Tennessee it’s not going to be easy,” says Ainge of that fateful 2005 season. “What I took out of that is how you have to be either 100 percent committed and be the best that you can or you’re not. When Coach Cutcliffe came in, he said you can be good or you can be great and I took that.”

What Cutcliffe did was transform the raw talent that Ainge had into the fierce leader that he is today. If you were to ask any of his teammates, Ainge isn’t the wide-eyed, inconsistent sophomore he was two years ago.

Last year, the Oregon-native showed the same flashes of brilliance that he had when he was a first-year and broke Manning’s freshman record for touchdown passes thrown. Ainge’s 67 percent completion percentage last year broke a school record that was held by Manning.

He is so matured that reports are coming out of Knoxville claiming that Ainge may be ready to run the no-huddle offense—like his predecessor Manning did so well 10 years ago.

“We have all the confidence in the world in Erik because we know what he’s done in the offseason to prepare and the leaps and bounds he’s made to improve from his sophomore year to his junior year,” says tailback Arian Foster. “He’s slowed the game down. He knows what he’s doing over there.”

But even with the confidence of his teammates behind him, Ainge is still scrutinized as if he were a lab experiment. After all, Ainge, the oft-injured quarterback, has never played a full season for the Volunteers.

In his freshman campaign, Ainge missed the last four games with a separated shoulder, and last year he missed starts against LSU and Arkansas.

And what may bring even more worry to Tennessee fans is that Ainge broke the pinky finger in his throwing hand Monday—five days before the Vols play Cal in the season opener.

He said that he doesn't expect the injury to affect him at all today.

“If something hurts, you’ve still got to play,” says Ainge. “The issue is whether or not I’ll be effective to still win football games, and I believe that answer is yes.”

It’s that kind of toughness and that kind of leadership that has Tennessee coach Phillip Fulmer excited for Ainge’s senior campaign.

After what Ainge has been through in his three years with the Vols, he seems poised to add his name to the streets surrounding Neyland Stadium. There could one day be a street named after Ainge—quite possibly alongside Tee Martin Drive and Peyton Manning Pass, and all the other quarterbacks who have raised the bar for anyone who steps under center for the Volunteers.

“Erik has become a complete quarterback,” says Fulmer. “He understands defenses. He can get you out of bad plays. Off and on the field he’s just become such an exceptional leader for our guys.”

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