02/10 at 10:27 PM

The three defensive backs came to Auburn together, all redshirted their first seasons together and spent the bulk of their respective careers living under the same roof — together.

All three have left, or will leave, at separate times.

Jerraud Powers exited after the 2008 season, a year early, to enter the NFL Draft. Walt McFadden played his final game at this year’s Outback Bowl.

Aairon Savage, at 23, is still here.

He’s OK with that. In fact, he considers it a “blessing.”

“That’s the beauty about it,” Savage said. “It’s kind of like music. It’s something that can bring anybody together and it’s something that everybody enjoys. It’s just a love and a passion that won’t go away.”

Savage, who hasn’t seen the field since 2007 after tearing his ACL before the 2008 season, only to miss out on 2009 with a torn Achilles, will be “full go” when spring practice kicks off in late March. A sixth year of eligibility courtesy of the NCAA and an overwhelmingly optimistic and spiritual outlook has the lone 23-year-old on Auburn’s roster feeling anything but snakebit.

“Oh man. How can you let it go? I’ve been doing it since I was 5. It’s just something in me,” Savage said. “When you’re out there, you’ve got 10 other guys with you, you’re going to war. You’ve got 10 other guys ready to go to war with you, why not go?”

Savage’s measurements of time don’t go by hours, weeks or months anymore.

They go by “injuries.”

When he reflects on the time he spent living with Powers and McFadden, that’s “a whole injury ago.”

Yet with Powers in Indianapolis with the Colts and McFadden in Florida training for the upcoming NFL Draft, Savage still has two of his biggest supporters just a few keypunches on his cell phone away.

“They just kept uplifting me through the injury,” Savage said. “I’ve done the same thing for Jerraud not too long ago with his injury, and it’s just been good.”

Powers, who underwent foot surgery three weeks before Sunday’s Super Bowl, said Savage’s positivity didn’t waver after the ACL injury and only grew stronger after the Achilles.

“I knew he would bounce back right from it,” Powers said.

Savage had been on the path to bounce back nicely from his torn ACL when he was working out with teammate T’Sharvan Bell last summer. The injury happened all of a sudden, Savage said, as he was trying to change directions with Bell behind him.

“I thought he had kicked me, and I looked over and he wasn’t there,” Savage said. “I kind of knew what it was. We had just talked about it a week or so before in class, so I knew what it was.”

Two months after the injury, Savage joined an on-campus fraternity and appeared destined to call it quits.

McFadden and Savage moved into different apartments before the 2009 season, but remained just as close. In August, McFadden said he wasn’t sure if Savage would make a comeback, but echoed the same sentiments about Savage’s optimism and even hinted that Savage might not be done just yet.

Savage was playing a lot of college football video games, as Auburn of course, but he was also reading the Bible, McFadden said.

Savage said faith, along with meetings with team chaplain Chette Williams, is what got him through the long fall months when the rest of his friends were playing football while he was standing on the sidelines with a boot on his foot.

“I had a lot of long nights, a lot of long nights,” Savage said. “I tried not to think it was over. It’s kind of hard to let it go.”

Savage’s support system went beyond the confines of Auburn’s Athletic Complex and the borders of Alabama.

Savage credited the people closest to him, such as his girlfriend, Shannon, his mother and people from his church. But he also tapped into the minds of current NFL players Kendall Simmons and Willis McGahee, both of whom have dealt with major injuries.

Simmons is an Auburn graduate and still lives here. McGahee, meanwhile, is a Baltimore Raven, but was able to get in contact with Savage through Ben Grubbs, McGahee’s teammate and a former teammate of Savage’s at Auburn.

“(McGahee) just told me to keep working at it because it will come back,” Savage said. “Don’t give up.”

Savage doesn’t know whether he’ll be a cornerback or safety when he returns to the field in March. And, frankly, he doesn’t really care.

“There have been some good times and some bad times,” Savage said. “It’s been up and down. Just looking back on it, I don’t know, man. I’ve come to know a lot of people — a lot about myself.”

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