In about a week, the open competition will officially get started for the Tennessee football team, as three gunslingers will push to win the starting quarterback job. That's right, Joey Aguilar, Jake Merklinger and George MacIntyre will ALL be given a fair chance to come out on top.
Josh Heupel has a difficult decision on his hands, but plenty of people are convinced that App State/UCLA transfer Aguilar is going to be given the keys to the offense. Kirk Herbstreit appears to be on that list. During a recent podcast appearance, the same one where he shared some eye-opening Nico Iamaleava rumors, Herbie predicted Aguilar to do quite well working with Heupel in 2025:
Joey Aguilar remains the clear-cut favorite to be Tennessee starting QB in 2025
“I’m going to wait to see (how he does),” Herbstreit said. “He’s going into a great system. Josh (Heupel) puts the quarterback in a spot to be successful with the system that they run, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see him do well. And also he’s going in with - I don’t want to say nothing to lose, but the expectations are always high at Tennessee, but they’re (fans) going to be in his corner. The fanbase is going to be in his corner after Nico kind of left them the way he did.”
As most of you have probably seen by now, Herbstreit said that his sources told him that part of Iamaleava's exit in Knoxville was due to the fact that his dad kept telling Heupel that the program didn't bring in enough talent to support his son. Yikes.
Once Iamaleava left for UCLA, the door opened for Tennessee to bring in a different QB via the transfer portal and a 'trade' of sorts was recorded with Aguilar making the move from Westwood to Knoxville. He's thrown for at least 3,000 yards in back-to-back seasons, doing so with App State.
Come '25, Aguilar will be excited to make his Tennessee debut and if all goes to plan for him, he'll be throwing the ball all over the field once Week 1 vs. Syracuse gets here. The job won't be handed to him of course, but Herbstreit seems confident that Heupel will put him in a tremendous spot to do well this fall if he does in fact win the starting job. It's starting to feel like it'd be a bit of a surprise if he doesn't.