Former Tennessee Vols Who Stood Out During NFL Week 1 Games

5. player. 31. <p>The veteran defensive lineman is in his second year with the New York Giants trying to bring back the winning culture, and nothing that happened Sunday night was his fault. Sure, the defense as a whole should not have collapsed at the end, but when they put the offense in position to run out the clock, and then the offense fails to do that, how many times can you ask this unit to stop the best offensive line in football, an elite quarterback, and his elite arsenal of weapons?</p> <p>Robert Ayers did everything he possibly could to get the Giants a win going against that incredible line on Sunday. He came away with three tackles, two of which were solo, and he forced a fumble. Ayers was the big play guy he was brought in to be for the Giants, and you cannot put anything that happened in the game on him.</p> <p>With Ayers’s help, the running game never got going, and he had led a defense that managed to hold the Cowboys to 13 points midway through the fourth quarter.</p> <p>Even that Dallas touchdown to cut it to 23-20 should not have mattered, as it was the offense with the ball and the chance to put the game away. They failed to do that with terrible decision making by Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin that has already been documented.</p> <p>After that, it is simply too much to ask the defense to bail you out again. But Ayers is still a former Vol who came out and performed on Sunday.</p>. Defensive End. New York Giants. Robert Ayers