
Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel will enter the 2025 season with a true quarterback battle on his hands.
Following the departure of former starter Nico Iamaleava in the spring, Tennessee went out and signed quarterback Joey Aguilar from App State and UCLA. Aguilar is set to compete for the Vols’ starting position alongside redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger and true freshman George MacIntyre.
It’ll be just the second quarterback battle in Heupel’s five years on Rocky Top and the first since his inaugural season in 2021.
While the Iamaleava news is a long way in the rearview mirror, the Vols’ former signal caller was still indirectly brought up to Heupel in a question about losing his quarterback at a “unique” time during his appearance at SEC Media Days in Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon. As expected, Heupel’s response took the spotlight off of any individual player and put it on the team as a whole.
“Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s never about who’s not in your building but about who is in your building,” Heupel said. “For us, you can lose a quarterback at a lot of different times: December transfer portal, spring transfer portal. You can lose one week 1, first quarter of the ballgame in your opener, and now you’re on to number two through injury, right? You’ve got to have the next-man-up mentality. At the end of the day, having guys that want to compete along with their brothers inside of that locker room, building that connection, but also having the right guys in there.”
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No. 8 is long gone, and the Vols will be rolling with a new quarterback in the fifth year of the Heupel era. Aguilar brings a good load of experience from his two years starting for App State, but will need to pick up the Vols’ offense quickly without having been part of Tennessee’s spring training camp. Merklinger, on the other hand, has just 48 passing yards to his name, but he’s entering his second year in the Tennessee offense. He should be well-versed in all the terminology and details that go into Heupel and Joey Halzle’s scheme. These storylines will come together to present an intriguing quarterback battle in Knoxville this fall.
“At the end of the day, I’m really excited about who we have in there,” Heupel continued on to say. “The addition of Joey to who’s already inside of that group, highly competitive guys that are smart, that have the physical traits to be successful. Teammates have grown to have great trust in those guys through the course of this off-season during the summer, and now it’s about getting to training camp and going and competing. Somebody is going to earn the opportunity to be our starting quarterback through that process.”
Stay tuned to Rocky Top Insider for more on Tennessee’s quarterback battle once the Vols get rolling with training camp in August.
Check out Josh Heupel’s full SEC Media Days press conference below:
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