The Joey Aguilar Era of Tennessee football is off to a strong start. The Appalachian State/UCLA spring transfer is 2-0 as the starting quarterback, including a 72-17 destruction of ETSU on Saturday. In the game, he only played in the first half, completing 23-of-31 passes for 288 yards and two touchdowns.
Afterward, ETSU head coach Will Healy met with the media to give his thoughts on what transpired. When asked about Tennessee’s tempo on the offensive end, he went into a spiel about the play of Aguilar. In this train of thoughts, he dubbed Aguilar as someone UT was ‘craving.’
“I thought their quarterback (Joey Aguilar) made great decisions, was really accurate,” Healy said. “He’s a really impressive leader and I think that’s kind of what this place was craving was a guy that they could relate to and they respected and that was going to work really hard for them. And it seems to be what they got with him. Obviously, he’s talented.”
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While Healy didn’t say it directly, it seems he was at least partially referencing Tennessee’s loss of returning quarterback Nico Iamaleava. He entered the portal after the spring stretch of practices, which brought up some questions about his status in the locker room.
Now, the Vols grabbed Aguilar from UCLA after Iamaleava picked the Bruins in the portal. Healy went on to discuss the impact he had in the game. Under the transfer’s watch, Tennessee put up 48 first-half points.
“He was difficult to defend, no doubt about it,” Healy said. “I’m sure there will be plenty that we can work on. Our goal was that we made him throw the ball short and we kind of rally to go tackle it and to try to shorten the game on defense, as well. Try to give them a couple different looks. They hit us with a couple double moves. Were able to hit some hole shots. He had his way. He had a great day. I think credit to them for their scheme and how they handled it. We showed them something we hadn’t shown before and they handled it really well.”
Tennessee’s next test will be against Georgia at 3:30 p.m. ET next Saturday. College GameDay will be in town, airing on ESPN, before the game broadcasts on ABC.
