Tennessee football: QB controversies a staple of series with Florida

When Tennessee football takes on the Florida Gators Saturday, there will be one controversy that has been a staple of this series ever since the two teams began playing annually in 1990. Neither team has a starter set in stone yet.

The Vols started the season with Joe Milton III, but he got hurt in the first half against the Pittsburgh Panthers. Hendon Hooker came in and has been the main guy since. Florida has mostly started Emory Jones, but Anthony Richardson has more rushing yards and no interceptions. Richardson was hurt last week, though, so Jones played the whole game.

Both Milton and Richardson could be back Saturday, so we don’t know how Josh Heupel or Dan Mullen will go. Tennessee football is at least unlikely to use two quarterbacks. Mullen, on the other hand, all but confirmed he will use both.

While it’s unusual for this many quarterback questions to face both teams, controversies involving them aren’t new. Dating back to 1998, at least one of the two teams alternated quarterbacks for a significant portion of the game nine times. Eight of those nine times, one team alternated quarterbacks willingly.

There are four times in which at least one of the teams went into the game planning to alternate quarterbacks. In 2013, both the Vols and the Gators played two quarterbacks. Butch Jones benched Nathan Peterman in favor of Justin Worley, and Jeff Driskel got hurt, which brought in Tyler Murphy.

Some of the most notable games in series history saw this happen, and they have benefitted and worked against both teams. In 1998, Steve Spurrier tried to recreate the magic he had with his huge win over the Florida State Seminoles in 1997 by using the same strategy: alternating quarterbacks every play.

It didn’t work. Jesse Palmer and Doug Johnson were the ones to alternate, and Florida had five turnovers that game while losing 20-17 in overtime off a missed field goal. While Palmer had two touchdown passes and got the yards, he also had a key fourth quarter interception.

Six years later, though, Tennessee football alternated two true freshman quarterbacks and won. Phillip Fulmer hadn’t found a full-time starter yet between dual-threat Brent Schaeffer and drop-back passer Erik Ainge, and both put up huge numbers in their opener.

Schaeffer started the game, but after being the catalyst for two fumbles in the first half, Ainge saw the bulk of the action in the second half. He was in on the game-winning drive that ended with the memorable James Wilhoit 50-yard field goal to win 30-28.

A year later, however, the Vols alternated two quarterbacks again, Ainge and Rick Clausen, and it worked against them. They only scored seven points and lost to Urban Meyer’s team 16-7, although that was due to three miscues on special teams, to be fair.

One game we didn’t even count in this group was 2006, as Chris Leak was the full-time starter. However, that was Tim Tebow’s breakout game. Tebow came in for seven plays, ran it all seven times and got a first down on five of them. His most notable one was a 4th and 1 run late on Florida’s game-winning touchdown drive to win 21-20.

Vol fans also remember the heartbreak of 2014. They were shutting out Florida 9-0. Will Muschamp then benched Jeff Driskel and brought in Treon Harris, who led a TD drive and then a field goal drive. That resulted in an ugly 10-9 win for the Gators.

Of course, there are less memorable games that involved them, including Leak taking over full-time for Ingle Martin in 2003, Brian Maurer and Emory Jones coming in for Jarrett Guarantano and Kyle Trask respectively in 2019 and Harrison Bailey and J.T. Shrout alternating last year. What’s clear, though is this is a common occurrence in this series.

Perhaps it’s because this is often such an early game in the season that many times neither coach has settled on his quarterback yet. Either way, it’s likely to happen again tomorrow. The question is whether it will benefit Tennessee football or Florida.