Joey Aguilar looked sharp in his first test as Tennessee football’s starting quarterback. The spring transfer didn’t have much time to entrench himself in the playbook and the offense, but did plenty in the Vols’ 45-26 win over Syracuse to open the 2025 season.
The result for Aguilar personally was completing 16-of-28 passes for 247 yards and three touchdowns without throwing an interception. He added 34 yards on six carries on the ground, as well, but did fumble the mesh of a handoff in the first quarter.
Overall, head coach Josh Heupel and offensive coordinator Joey Halzle seem to be pleased with what the Appalachian State/UCLA transfer did in game one. There is room to grow, but what he was able to do, particularly with the short turnaround, was impressive.
“Fundamentally, in the pass game, what I really liked about him is he did everything we were working on through that brief offseason that we had together,” Halzle said. “Tracking his targets, getting out to his throws, especially to his right. It didn’t revert back to old habits now that it’s live fire, now it’s live bullets. He just was the same guy. He’s got that same calm heartbeat throughout. That’s what I love about this guy. When he takes the field on game day, no different than what he takes to the field in practice. And we’ll just keep pushing to keep cleaning up all of our footwork in the run game, just accelerating all that. Keep bringing that to an even higher level. But really, really happy with the way he took the field Saturday.”
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The next step for Aguilar is developing in RPO situations, according to Halzle. He thought the decision-making on Tuesday was good, but when things started to heat up, the accuracy started to go down. If he can handle this portion of the offense, that’s when the 57% completion percentage could start to rise.
This could also lead to additional yardage with better accuracy on some throws. There were times when Aguilar completed a pass, but the chance to gain more was negated by the ball being a bit off target. Sometimes, he had balls sail on him for incompletions, as well.
“I think it goes back his decision-making was really, really good,” Halzle said. “Just felt like a couple of them got a little accelerated on the run-pass stuff, where we’re reading conflict players and all that type, where we got a little accelerated and we weren’t as accurate as we could be in those situations. If we grow in that area, the completion percentage jumps up, the yards per attempt jumps up. So quarterbacks know, we always talk about that type of game. We create the runs after catch with the accuracy of the throw. If you’re a little bit off, even subtle, it shows with how much the receivers can stretch them on the back end. So we’ll just keep growing in that and just defining our eyes, defining our feet. That’s something that every quarterback has to continually improve on because it happens so fast. There are so many different looks, especially when we’re pushing the tempo. It’s just a more difficult thing than I think people realize. So he handled it at a high level, but again, love to see it even grow more.”
His next test should be a bit easier. Tennessee will face ETSU on Saturday in its home-opening matchup. Kickoff is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET and will air on SECN+/ESPN+.
