Tennessee football tight end Miles Kitselman returns for his second and final season with the Vols this year, but it won’t be with the same quarterback throwing him the ball. With Nico Iamaleava departing, UT will now host a quarterback battle with incoming transfer Joey Aguilar and freshmen Jake Merklinger and George MacIntyre.
This has meant that Kitselman has had to quickly adjust to the potential new signal callers. While he’s had previous experiences playing alongside the freshmen, he’s had to completely get to know Aguilar from scratch.
It hasn’t been a tough task, though.
“Joey is one of those guys who has a very outgoing personality,” Kitselman said. “He walks into a room and is automatically friends with everybody. Whenever he first committed, I hit him up on Instagram and said, man, love to have you. Let’s go out and get a bite to eat and let’s get to know each other. We were just off since then. We get along super well. He gets along with everybody. Him and Jake and George, they all thrive together. They all compete with each other. And I don’t think we could have asked for a better dude.”
In terms of what Aguilar brings to the field, Kitselman is still learning. When Aguilar committed to Tennessee from UCLA after two years at Appalachian State, Kitselman didn’t take a deep dive into his previous highlights. Instead, he waited to find out what Aguilar is as a quarterback in person.
When asked what his first impression of him was as a quarterback, it was again how easy the transition was. There wasn’t friction in trying to get him in the mix; there was an instant connection.
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“I would say just how well he meshed with everybody,” Kitselman said. “Being a new guy, getting here June 1, whatever it was. A month into it, he’s best friends with almost everybody on the team. That’s very hard to do. I don’t have that outgoing personality like he does and so just how well he has been able to build connections. Just how well him and Jake have been able to push each other, I just love how vocal those two are.”
The overwhelming feeling in the locker room, whether it’s Aguilar, Merklinger or MacIntyre getting the job, is they’re just glad someone who wants to be there is the one leading the charge.
Kitselman is ready to turn the page from the Iamaleava drama and get going at full speed with a group that’s determined to win as a team. This has led to a motto of not needing anyone outside the locker room. All that they need to succeed, they feel like they have.
“We had a group text with a couple of the guys. Whenever some stuff was going around, we all came together and said, hey, man, we want somebody who wants to be here,” Kitselman said. “I talked about it earlier, it’s the next snap, next play, don’t worry about what happened before. I think that can translate over into life, can translate over to the situation, if you don’t want to be here, that’s fine, we’re going to go find somebody who does and he’s going to come in here and compete and want to be here. We didn’t skip a beat and I love it.”
Tennessee’s 2025 season gets underway back in Atlanta, the site of this year’s SEC Media Days. The Vols will take on Syracuse on August 30 at noon ET. The game will air on ABC inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
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