Last week, college sports insider Trey Wallace of OutKick made unintentional waves on social media. During an appearance on 104.5 The Zone’s The Buck Reising Show, he gave his updated thoughts about Tennessee football’s ongoing quarterback battle.
During the appearance, which touched on a variety of topics, he said that from what he’s heard, he’s leaning toward true freshman Faizon Brandon winning the job over redshirt-freshman George MacIntyre.
“I had a conversation the other day. What’s Tennessee doing with their quarterback position? Is this going to be the Faizon thing or the MacIntyre thing? From what I’m hearing, it’s probably going to be the Faizon thing,” Wallace said. “The term ‘Hail Mary’ was thrown out to me the other day in regards to MacIntyre getting the job, and meaning, he’s had a year and a half head start on the freshman to get in and win over the locker room and learn the playbook.
“You know, I’m not going to sit here and talk about someone’s weight, but he could have used 15 to 20 more pounds. But again, everybody’s body is different. My biggest thing for him is knowing the offense.”
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Wallace circled back to clarify his comments during a recent appearance on That SEC Podcast. He reinforced his belief that Brandon has surpassed early expectations, while he is skeptical that MacIntyre hasn’t grabbed the job yet, despite being on campus longer.
“I made the point that’s like, look, George MacIntyre had a year, year and a half to jump out and essentially go into this spring practice and take the ball and run with it, no pun intended, and he didn’t,” Wallace said.
“Then you have somebody like Faizon that comes in that had about a year with the playbook anyway. I know he was in high school, but he was still having conversations with Halzle and Heupel and whatnot, and they knew he was coming. He comes into spring practice, and sure, he has his freshman moments, what 18-year-old wouldn’t? But there was a lot of upside, and they saw it and were like, whoa, wait a minute. We were expecting good, but I don’t know if we were expecting fantastic at times.
“That kind of changed the narrative around Tennessee. And at the same time, MacIntyre did not separate himself. When you’re in a system for that long before an 18-year-old, 17-year-old arrives on campus, you would think the guy that has been in the system for a while would take the lead on things.
“The question got brought up, who do I think the starting quarterback would be? Really, what it was when I said ‘Hail Mary’, it was more or less ‘Hail Mary’ because I don’t think MacIntyre is going to be the bona fide starter going into week one, even week four. That’s where that came from…”
Vol Twitter went wild after @TreyWallace‘s comments on Tennessee QB race were taken out of context.
Trey shares what he’s heard about freshman Faizon Brandon:
“We were expecting good, I don’t know if we were expecting fantastic at times.”
Full chat: https://t.co/eu55XUfz7Z pic.twitter.com/3YjB5j14n5
— SEC Mike (@MichaelWBratton) May 18, 2026
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Both MacIntyre and Brandon were very highly recruited prospects out of high school. MacIntyre served as the third-string quarterback this past year behind Joey Aguilar and Jake Merklinger. However, Aguilar ran out of eligibility, and Merklinger transferred to UConn.
Brandon enters as a five-star recruit and the No. 2 overall player in the class, via 247. Josh Heupel has not started a true frshman at quarterback in his Tennessee tenure yet, but did give the keys to a freshman Dillon Gabriel during his time at UCF.
The Vols open the season on Sept. 5 against Furman at home. Then, things get a bit tougher with a road trip to play Georgia Tech the following Saturday.
