Tennessee football fills big void by adding Heath Shuler’s son at QB

On Friday, we wrote this post about some of the biggest needs for Tennessee football to address before National Signing Day with the early signing period over. One of those needs was finding another quarterback to make sure there’s depth for the long-term future.

It didn’t take long for Josh Heupel to address that issue. Two days later, he secured a legacy commitment from the guy who may have been the greatest quarterback in UT history until his direct successor, Peyton Manning, came along.

Navy Shuler, the son of Tennessee football quarterback Heath Shuler, has transferred from the Appalachian State Mountaineers to the Vols. He announced his decision to transfer Sunday afternoon on Twitter.

Once a three-star out of North Carolina in the 2020 recruiting class, Shuler has four years of eligibility left. He hasn’t seen any action in two years, and with the 2020 COVID eligibility rules allowing players to use a free year, he could count 2021 as his redshirt year.

That’s a huge deal for Rocky Top. Next year, Hendon Hooker will start again, and all the hype is behind Tayven Jackson, the dual-threat four-star commitment in the Vols’ 2021 class. Heupel appears to be grooming him to be Jackson’s direct successor.

However, as any Vol fan who has followed this program over a period of time can attest to, you should never have just one handpicked successor at quarterback. It’s always better to open up the competition after that in case your handpicked successor doesn’t perform well under the lights.

Before this point, Jackson seemed like the only guy Tennessee football was banking on after Hooker. Joe Milton III will still be in the program, to be fair, but the Vols needed somebody even more long-term than him since he only has two years of eligibility left.

Taking all this into account, after Hooker, Heupel could have open competition in 2023, and Milton could win that job. Then Milton would be gone, and in 2024, Jackson could be the guy, but Jackson with no competition was a huge concern.

Standing at 6’0″ 200 pounds, Shuler provides that competition. The graduate of Christ School in Arden, N.C., which is in Buncombe County just outside of Asheville, Shuler was listed as a dual-threat quarterback on Rivals but a pocket-passer on ESPN.

Such a mixture suggests generally a hybrid type of guy who is mostly a pocket passer but can run when necessary. That’s exactly how Jackson has been labeled too coming out of college. As a result, the Vols now have two quarterbacks with similar styles of play who can compete for the starting job past 2023. You can’t overestimate the importance of that.

The fact that Shuler is a legacy player is just a bonus. Hey, the Vols are targeting another legacy player for its 2023 class, when Hooker will be gone, in Arch Manning, the nephew of Peyton Manning. It can’t hurt to have healthy competition among all those guys.

For now, though, this addition sets Tennessee football up nicely at quarterback over the next four years. Heupel will likely add other guys on the recruiting trail in the future during that time, but Shuler addresses a major need for them now.