Graduate transfer Joey Aguilar arrived at Tennessee this past spring with the intention of winning the starting quarterback job over redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger and true freshman George MacIntyre.
Preseason practices will determine who is under center first when the Volunteers open their 2025 schedule Aug. 30 against Syracuse inside Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. What Aguilar has won to this point is the first impression.
“Joey has been high-end since he got here in late May,” Vols offensive coordinator Joey Halzle said Tuesday during a news conference to preview Wednesday’s start to fall camp. “He didn’t start by starting where everybody else was. He went back and did every single spring install that our entire team went through, and he did that on his own in about four days. He went out and walked through it on the field at a high level.
“He’s been going through summer ball the same exact way, and he’s done a great job of getting around his teammates. He’s taking the O-line out to dinner and the receivers out to dinner, and he and Jake do that together a lot, actually. They want to make sure this is a tight-knit unit no matter who steps out there that first game.”
Aguilar later clarified Halzle’s comments about meals with the linemen, saying he has taken them out at different times, “or else that bill would be crazy.”
The 6-foot-3, 225-pounder from Antioch, California, arrived in Knoxville with 25 career appearances as a Bowl Subdivision quarterback at Appalachian State, with 24 of those starts. He threw for at least 200 yards in each of those starts and has six career 300-yard games and one 400-yard contest.
Aguilar is the active FBS leader with 288.5 total offensive yards per game (minimum of 2,500 career yards), but he is still the newcomer when it comes to the Tennessee race. Which is why he hit the ground running, often showing up at 7 in the morning and leaving at 9 at night.
“I just wanted to put my nose down and grind,” Aguilar said. “I came in with a short amount of time to learn the playbook and the details of the playbook and watch film of last season. It was a lot to take in at first, but when I got here, it made it easier running it in person.
“I like to physically run stuff. I was just trying to get through everything and get a visual of everything.”
Tennessee is conducting its first quarterback competition in a preseason since Josh Heupel’s first season in 2021, when Alex Golesh was offensive coordinator and Halzle the quarterbacks coach. Joe Milton III eventually won that battle, but he was hurt in the second game of that season, which opened the door for Hendon Hooker to start through mid November of 2022, when his college career was cut short by a torn ACL.
Halzle was asked Tuesday what he’s looking for in the days and weeks ahead.
“There are not enough reps to go around to where everybody can get every look they need, so we’ve got to be able to talk about each other’s reps,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to have conversations in the meeting room to where nobody is trying to cut the other guy down when it’s their rep. If we go about our business understanding that we’re going to compete fiercely amongst each other but the team is still first, then we’ll be in a really good spot coming out of fall camp.”
And should Aguilar emerge victorious, it sure won’t be from a position of discomfort.
“The surprising point of all this is how many people knew who I was when I got here,” he said. “I really haven’t done anything for this university yet, and all these people have been super welcoming and asking for autographs and pictures, which has been very awesome.
“It’s very heartwarming for sure. When I first got here, I connected with the teammates like I had been here for a couple of seasons already.”
McCoy update
Heupel on Tuesday was asked to provide the latest on junior cornerback Jermod McCoy, the preseason SEC first-team selection who tore his ACL back in January.
“There is no timetable on him,” Heupel said. “There are benchmark things that he has to accomplish in our training room to move on to the next phase of it. He’s handled it really well from the very beginning just in his mindset and his approach every single day.
“He’s done a really good job throughout the course of the summer, and periodically you can see his movement in drills. As we go through training camp, there will be a progression, and how his body responds to some of those things will kind of dictate the time period of when he’s available for us.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.