Tennessee football is rolling with Appalachian State and UCLA transfer Joey Aguilar as its starter to begin the 2025 season. When he joined the Vols, his job wasn’t promised. However, after a stretch of fall camp practices, he grabbed the position on the depth chart.
When asked about what he did to win the job, Aguilar didn’t have a direct answer. He instead opted to reference how well all three options, including Jake Merklinger and George MacIntyre, did during the battle. This was the same sentiment that Josh Heupel echoed when breaking the news to the team. He sat the quarterback room down as a whole, and named Aguilar as the guy.
“He just told (talked about) the way we competed with each other,” Aguilar said. “There’s two ways you compete with somebody. You can compete and just be solo and not really try to help that other person, or you can compete together and work —iron sharpens iron — and work together to build whoever goes out there to be a starter, even if it was me or somebody else, that we are working together and be as one. So, I mean, I think just the way he told us how he liked how we went out there every day to support each other. And going into practice not trying to be bad to the other person.”
Aguilar was rightfully excited for the opportunity to start for UT. He shot a text to his family after the news broke, but with it being late on Sunday, he said he fell asleep shortly after and didn’t have much time to celebrate.
More From RTI: Charges Dropped Against Tennessee Football Receiver After Driving Arrest
Coming back to practice the following week, he didn’t let it change how he operated. While he was the unquestioned No. 1 guy on the offense now, he knows if he takes his foot off the gas at all, his job could be taken from him. This has happened not only at Tennessee in 2021 when Hendon Hooker grabbed Joe Milton III’s job, but also to Aguilar himself while at Appalachian State after he didn’t start his first outing.
“I got to go out there and attack every day like if I’m not because those guys are competitors themselves, so they’re coming in here to work, and you never know, something can happen that those guys go in,” Aguilar said. “It happened to me at App State, so I’m going in there to compete still every day.”
Kickoff is now just 10 days away as Tennessee will meet Syracuse in Atlanta on Aug. 30 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Aguilar will work to put the final touches on his preparation, which will largely be just continuing to get comfortable in the offense.
He’s already felt some of this between the first and second scrimmages that UT held during fall camp. That’s partially why he was named the starter; he showed improvement in this time. Being able to go at full speed in a somewhat game format helped him get a firmer grasp on the concepts and show the coaches that he can handle it.
Early mornings and long nights at the facility helped him get to this point so fast, with little time to get it all down.
“It was a lot coming in such a short amount of time,” Aguilar said. “But I grinded out the days being in here early morning, late nights, and would just go out there, watch film, talk to the coaches and just try to get the game plans going and get the concept of the offense down. It took a while, but I got it down. I was able to go out there and perform in the scrimmages and stuff like that.”
