Tennessee football suffered the most obvious blow in the spring transfer portal window when quarterback Nico Iamaleava entered the transfer portal ahead of his redshirt sophomore season.
Losing a returning starting quarterback is almost always a big deal and all the more so when said player was the starting quarterback on a College Football Playoff team.
Athlon Sports released its annual preview magazines this week and per usual it includes anonymous quotes from coaches about all the teams in the SEC. The anonymous coaches quote on Tennessee didn’t sugarcoat the importance of the loss while also defending Josh Heupel for the way he handled the situation.
“Losing Nico isn’t good,” the coach told Athlon. “They’re not replacing him with a more talented quarterback, and they’re losing the QB who ran their system in a playoff game. But because of the way everything went down, I don’t think anyone blames the program or Josh.”
Tennessee was unable to coax a proven power five starting quarterback out of the transfer portal, eventually landing Joey Aguilar. Agular played at Appalachian State last season before transferring to UCLA in the winter portal period.
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After Iamaleava announced his intentions to transfer to UCLA, Aguilar entered the portal himself. A short meeting with Tennessee later, Aguilar committed to the Vols for his final season of college eligibility.
Now at Tennessee, Aguilar is competing for the starting quarterback job with redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger. While neither are overly exciting options, the anonymous SEC coach has confidence that the Vols’ offense won’t collapse next season.
“The offense won’t fall off a cliff; That system is effective at adjusting for personnel, even the quarterback.”
Tennessee’s running game has been strong all four seasons under head coach Josh Heupel. The passing game has struggled each of the last two years with Joe Milton III and Nico Iamaleava starting at quarterback. Despite that, the Vols have still posted a 19-7 (10-6 SEC) record with just one loss at Neyland Stadium.
With reasons to be optimistic about Tennessee’s defense and another manageable schedule, there’s reasons to believe the Vols can field a solid team again in 2025. But as the anonymous coach stated, Tennessee’s ceiling is undoubtedly lower without Iamaleava behind center.
