Tennessee football’s Joey Aguilar had a strong Volunteer debut in a 45-26 victory over Syracuse in the Aflac Kickoff Game. Aguilar’s performance was good enough to win the Manning Award— given weekly to the top quarterback performance in college football.
Aguilar completed 16-of-28 passes for 247 yards and three touchdowns. He also added 34 rushing yards on six carries against Syracuse.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Aguilar’s performance was the command he had of Tennessee’s offense just a few months after arriving on campus. He worked through his progressions quickly, made good decisions and ran the Vols’ offense with tempo in parts of the game.
“What I really liked about him is he did everything we were working on through that brief offseason that we had together,” Tennessee offensive coordinator Joey 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.”
“I thought he handled the operation extremely well in the football game,” Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said postgame. “And just very steady. And that’s a testament to who he is, who he is as a person and he certainly handled that way today too. So it’s a really good start for him.”
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One of the biggest plays of the game came when Aguilar hit receiver Braylon Staley right in stride on deep post route for a 73-yard touchdown, giving Tennessee a 24-7 lead in the second quarter.
Despite a strong performance, Aguilar was not perfect in his debut. He was inaccurate on multiple throws, particularly on short, quick throws to the sideline which he had a tendency to sail. Tennessee needs Aguilar to clean up the quick stuff moving forward and the Vols’ week two matchup against ETSU gives him a chance to get into a rhythm.
“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,” Halzle said. “If we grow in that area, the completion percentage jumps up, the yards per attempt jumps up.”
Kickoff between Tennessee and ETSU is set for 3:30 p.m. ET Saturday afternoon. Matt Schumacker, Dustin Fox and Stephanie Otey are on the call as the SEC Network+ and ESPN+ stream the matchup.
