Tennessee football’s top 25 single-game performances in history

Peyton Manning #16, Quarterback for the University of Tennessee Volunteers during the NCAA Pac 10 college football game against the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA Bruins on 6th September 1997 at the Rose Bowl Stadium, Pasadena, California, United States. The Tennessee Volunteers won the game 30 - 24. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Allsport/Getty Images)
Peyton Manning #16, Quarterback for the University of Tennessee Volunteers during the NCAA Pac 10 college football game against the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA Bruins on 6th September 1997 at the Rose Bowl Stadium, Pasadena, California, United States. The Tennessee Volunteers won the game 30 - 24. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Allsport/Getty Images)
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Photo by Donald Page/Getty Image
Photo by Donald Page/Getty Image

Here are the Tennessee football Volunteers’ 25 greatest individual games of all time.

Whether it be a record-setting day or a massive overachievement against elite competition, Tennessee football has seen players put on amazing Saturday shows. Although it’s a team game, there have been plenty of days in which individual heroes were made on Rocky Top.

Individual performances are always among the most exciting parts of the game. Players get a chance to etch their names in history, and many times it comes the minute they simply get the opportunity to prove themselves.

Honestly, it seems like every year there is at least one game where a Tennessee football player has a historic performance. For instance, Jarrett Guarantano throwing for over 400 yards last year at the Missouri Tigers and Eric Gray running for over 240 yards against the Vanderbilt Commodores were memorable in their own way.

Historically, though, how great have some of these performances been? Well, that’s what we’re going to look at here. In this post, we’ll be ranking the greatest single games ever by any Vol in the history of Rocky Top.

We’ll take into account the stats a particular player racked up, but we’ll also include the level of competition they faced. These aren’t moments, though. They are an analysis of how a player performed throughout the whole day. One Hail Mary or game-winning touchdown won’t suffice.

Sometimes, to be fair, a stat line is so impressive that it doesn’t matter who the person played. However, there are times when you have to tip your cap because of who a player had a great performance against. Both things have to be analyzed.

So whose performances were so great that they made this list? What was great about those games? Let’s go ahead and break them all down here. These are Tennessee football’s 25 best individual single-game performances in school history.