Tennessee football returns to the Haslam Practice Field Tuesday morning as the Vols begin their second week of fall camp after having Monday off.
The Vols have held four practices so far this camp and the media has been able to watch limited portions of all four. We’ve watched some amount of routes on air each day and have compiled completion numbers for Joey Aguilar and Jake Merklinger all four days and completion numbers from George MacIntyre three days.
Let’s set the stage for routes on air before I dive into the numbers. Practice begins in the indoor facility and then the team moves outside. The media has to wait for the whole team to get out to the practice field before making our way out there ourselves. By the time we get outside, routes on air is usually already getting going on the far field. So we miss the very beginning of routes on air and watch the first bit from afar as we walk over there.
That was the case for the third and fourth practices. The first two practices the media was already outside when routes on air began. But even then we’ve missed a rep here and there as multiple quarterbacks are usually throwing the ball at once.
But with that in mind, here are the numbers for Tennessee’s quarterbacks during routes on air over the first week:
Jake Merklinger has completed 41-of-49 attempts while Joey Aguilar has completed 38-of-51 attempt and George MacIntyre has completed 29-of-31 attempts.
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MacIntyre’s worst day was the first day and that is the same day we did not record his results so his numbers are skewed a bit to the positive side. He has thrown to the third team receivers pretty consistently and has not repped with the first team receivers while we’ve been on the practice field.
Merklinger and Aguilar have alternated reps with the starters to this point. Drops have hurt Aguilar’s numbers badly to this point. In fact, we categorized eight of his 13 incompletions as drops. Now, some of those drops weren’t on great throws. There’s been balls he’s thrown high and behind receivers but the pass catchers got two hands on all of them so we categorized them as drops.
Tennessee pass catchers have dropped only two of Merklinger’s nine incompletions to this point.
It’s also of note that Tennessee has mostly been throwing passes from behind the line of scrimmage to 10-15 yards down the field. Aguilar has the reputation of a good deep ball passer and there’s a question mark around Merklinger’s arm strength.
The throws we’ve seen Tennessee’s quarterbacks work on have mostly played to Merklinger’s perceived strength as opposed to Aguilar. Some of that was notable during reps throwing deep routes on roll outs during the second practice. Merklinger struggled in those reps while Aguilar threw a good ball.
Most importantly, these are just the numbers from routes on air reps in a small portion of practice. What the quarterbacks do in 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 reps is much more important than this and will decide who starts for the Vols against Syracuse later this month.
