The Tennessee Volunteers football program has had a very eventful last nine months.
It started with a crushing blowout loss in the College Football Playoff, leading to numerous transfer sagas, spearheaded by the Nico Iamaleava transfer fiasco in the spring. Iamaleava’s exit led to the presumed Tennessee starting QB taking snaps this fall as a member of the UCLA Bruins.
During SEC media days last week, Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel was asked about the quarterback position this fall and said this:
“We’ve found a way to win with a lot of different quarterbacks throughout my career on the offensive side of the ball, and we’re going to find a way to win with the guy that earns a starting spot as we go through training camp here in August.”
There are likely three candidates to be Tennessee’s starting quarterback for the Vols’ Week 1 contest against Syracuse in Atlanta: Appalachian State/UCLA transfer Joey Aguilar, redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger, and true freshman George MacIntyre.
Aguilar is the presumed favorite for the starting job. Aguilar is a six-foot-three, 225-pound fifth-year senior who was initially enrolled at UCLA before Iamaleava arrived in L.A.
The upperclassman spent the 2023 and 2024 seasons at Appalachian State, where he threw for over 6,000 yards and 50 touchdowns. The Antioch, California native is a true gunslinger, having averaged 35 pass attempts and 273 yards per game with 13.7 yards-per-completion. He also had only a 55.9% completion percentage and 14 interceptions in 11 games in 2024.
Josh Heupel’s offense has only had one true gunslinger start games in the system in Dallas Cowboys quarterback Joe Milton. After transferring to Tennessee, Milton was able to raise his completion percentage from 56.7 at Michigan to 64.7 at Tennessee in 2023.
Unlike Aguilar,…
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Publish date : 2025-07-21 23:42:00
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