Joey Aguilar's arrival on Rocky Top has brought excitement on Rocky Top ahead of the 2025 season, and it is because he could be preparing for a breakout season with the Vols.
Jason DeLoach, Senior Media Research Associate for Pro Football Focus, compiled a chart of college football quarterbacks with the highest big play potential, paired with bad play rates.
The closer the quarterback is to the top right, the more big plays and fewer bad plays you can expect this year, based on previous seasons.
Joey Aguilar ranks among the top quarterbacks in the country, with the fifth-highest explosive play rate in the nation. He only trails Miami's Carson Beck, Oklahoma's John Mateer, Duke's Darian Mensa, and Northwestern's Preston Stone.
Rate of plays that either gained or lost 1 or more expected points for the potential 2025 QB starters in the FBS. Cade Klubnik and Dylan Raiola are two QBs that id like to see generate more explosives in 2025 (not entirely on them but they are the QBs) pic.twitter.com/X4YEQ0u6su
— CFBNumbers (@CFBNumbers) July 28, 2025
Nico Iamaleava's performance is significantly lower than Aguilar's, posting below the college football average. While Aguilar's big play rate is over the 28% mark, Nico falls below the 24% mark.
While Nico has a slightly lower bad play rate, Aguilar's big play rate heavily outweighs that, and if he gets comfortable in Tennessee's offense, he could be even better and more explosive this season.
Aguilar also ranked higher than Nico in DeLoach's July QB power ranking and point rating. Not only does this add more fuel to the fire that Aguilar and the Vols won the "trade" that resulted in Nico going to UCLA and Aguilar coming to Rocky Top, but it also gives Vols fans an insight into what they could expect, assuming Aguilar wins the starting quarterback job.
This is each QBs (who qualifies) point rating along with their teams power rating (with their point rating factored in). As you can see these ratings are from July so will be redoing them one final time before start of season but this is where we stand today pic.twitter.com/FqAESrGvwB
— CFBNumbers (@CFBNumbers) July 31, 2025
Aguilar is currently working to earn the starting quarterback job over Jake Merklinger. Each quarterback has put together a great performance in the first couple of Fall practices, so we might not know who Tennessee's starting quarterback will be until we get closer to the season.
Tennessee's first game of the year could be a challenge for the Vols as they face Syracuse in Atlanta, Georgia, for the season opener in a Power Four battle on August 30 at 12:00 PM ET.