Tennessee to open 2025 season with Joey Aguilar at quarterback

Tennessee senior Joey Aguilar has won the starting quarterback job multiple sources have informed Volquest

Aguilar has been battling redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger and freshman George MacIntyre for the spot throughout fall camp which ended Sunday evening with a walk through practice in Neyland Stadium and a team meeting.

The Vols are off on Monday as they start classes. Tennessee moves into mock game week on Tuesday, which is when head coach Josh Heupel is set to meet the media again. Mock week begins Tennessee preparations for their August 30th season opener against Syracuse in Atlanta.

Aguilar had his best scrimmage to date as a Vol Friday morning showing he was clearly more comfortable with the offense.

“I thought he handled himself extremely well,” head coach Josh Heupel said. “That’s today, but I think he’s got better, from day one up until today’s scrimmage. Really every single day. Comfort and control. He’s handled himself extremely well during our night walkthroughs, which is mental focus, mental sweat. And because of that, he’s extremely comfortable in what we’re doing right now.”

Finding that comfort level has been a crash course for Aguilar, who arrived in Knoxville in mid-May after transferring from UCLA. Tennessee was in the market for a quarterback when Nico Iamaleava left the program in April to go to UCLA.

“Just put my nose down and grind,” the 24 year old Aguilar said of his focus upon arrival. “I came in with a short amount of time to learn the playbook. My goal was to be in here every day and get the details of the playbook down, watching film from last season and the spring to see how things are ran. The coaches helped me a lot with that.

“Coming from juco to App. State the playbook changed. The terminology and verbiage changed but some things stack on top each other. Just learning how coach Halzle and coach Heupel teaches it. I feel like the experience of going from juco to App. State and even to UCLA helped me get the playbook down easier.”

While at App. State, Aguilar threw for 3,003 yards and 29 touchdowns in 2024. In 2023, he threw for 3,757 yards and 33 touchdowns.

“It wasn’t the best I definitely put up a better season in 2023. I tried to do a little too much in 2024,” Aguilar admitted. “The past is the past all you can do it learn from it and get better.

“It just showed me that I have to stay neutral in every thing, football and life. I can’t get too excited on one thing and too down on another. Coming here, it was just put my nose down and work. It was focus on this team and go succeed this season.”

Offensive coordinator Joey Halzle said the goal for the last month has been to fined the best operator of the offense with a guy who also plays with an aggressive mindset.

“First and foremost, you got to play this game in this offense with an aggressive nature,” Halzle said. “I think a lot of times the mistake quarterbacks make in a competition is they try not to lose it. They try just to not make a mistake. We want our guy to walk the line between being extremely aggressive, but not reckless at all. Reckless is just throwing the ball up for grabs. Aggressive is driving the ball into a tight window.

“So we want our guy to be aggressive, we want him to be smart, and we want him to operate this offense. It’s not just about who throws the football the furthest or the hardest. It’s about who can operate this offense that when we take the field, gives us a chance to win. Whether that’s them carrying the football, them getting to their checkdowns, them making big plays down the field, however it presents to that individual skill set, it’s them doing that at an extremely high level to where we say that’s the guy that gives us the best chance to be a plus one at the end of a football game.”

For Tennessee the choice to start the 2025 campaign is the oldest and newest arriving signal caller in Joey Aguilar.

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