Joey Aguilar is officially Tennessee football’s starting quarterback to begin the 2025 season. Possibly the biggest question surrounding his previous production is whether he can limit the turnovers he was prone to a year ago. In his final year at App State, he threw 14 interceptions in 11 games. In 14 games in 2023, he turned it over 10 times.
That doesn’t fly in Josh Heupel’s offense. Nico Iamaleava and Joe Milton III both threw five picks in 2024 and 2023, respectively, which is the most since he got the head job at UT. There are seemingly multiple factors that lead to this, though.
On one hand, Heupel is hesitant to give the keys to his offense to a quarterback who is inaccurate and consistently makes poor decisions. On the other hand, he also doesn’t put his signal callers in many positions to throw interceptions.
Now, Aguilar is plenty aware of the turnover problems he ran into a year ago. He knew he was doing a little too much at times and is now plenty okay with taking the easy yards to move the offense when needed. He’s still planning on letting it fly at times, but doesn’t want to force it.
“Just being smarter. Taking check downs when I know the deep ball would be a little more 50/50,” Aguilar said prior to fall camp. “At the end of the day, I gotta give my receivers a chance and have the trust that my receivers, no matter what ball I throw to them, will come down with it. I would just say that, just check the ball down when needed.
“I saw this thing about Cam Ward I think it was. It was like, you can make the play, but it’s not always right if you do so. Kind of saying like, I can make a play happen, but if I know I have an easy five yards here, just dish it down and that play will present itself later on. Just being more, I don’t even want to say cautious because that makes it seem like I don’t really want to throw the ball. I’m gonna throw the ball. I’m not gonna change that. Just take the easy yards when they give it to you.”
More From RTI: Tennessee Names Starting QB, UT Stat Leader Predictions, & More! | RTI: Press Pass (Ep. 239)
When offensive coordinator Joey Halzle met with the media to kick off fall camp, this was the first thing he was asked. Halzle looked at it from the perspective of what the coaching staff can do to help out Aguilar in this department.
This starts with the quarterback’s eyes and knowing where the pressure is coming from. Heading into fall camp, and clearly since then, Aguilar has done a great job of learning the offense.
“I think a lot of that comes from what we can do here scheme-wise, getting him ready to go as far as fundamentals, eye placement,” Halzle said prior to fall camp. “Getting involved in our scheme because it’s never just a plug and play with an older guy like that. A lot of people think you just drop a guy in, he’s played, so he knows how to do it. It’s all going to be how does he go through this offense? How does he adjust to our fundamentals?
“The way we teach it, the way we use our eyes, the way we know our protections and his ability to dive into that and his want-to to dive into that has been awesome. So don’t foresee any issues there. But you know, obviously, that’s why we’re going into fall camp and we got to go see the actual proof of concept there.”
The season will begin on Aug. 30 when Tennessee heads to Atlanta to play Syracuse. Kick off is scheduled for noon ET and will air on ABC from Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
