Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and one could also include Vanderbilt in the list are the teams that Tennessee overcame last year to reach the playoffs, the first time in their history. The architects? It was, of course, Vols’ ace QB Nico Iamaleava and the brilliance of Josh Heupel to build a playoff contender team. Now imagine this. Josh Heupel wakes up one odd morning and finds that the key piece of his 2025 puzzle, Nico, has decided to move on from the team. How will Heupel cope then?

“Friday morning, you know when he’s a no-show. You come off the field, and there’s no communication,” said Heupel as Nico finally announced his departure on April 11th. It was a blow Josh Heupel didn’t prepare for, and within days on April 16th, Iamaleava landed at UCLA. ESPN termed the whole situation to be an “ugly breakup” as fans and teammates publicly turned against Nico. “He left his brothers behind,” said Boo Carter about the QB’s exit. Nevertheless, the head coach tapped into the portal and brought Joey Aguilar from Nico’s new home: UCLA. Yet, the question still remains about Aguilar’s quality and production being the same as Nico’s.

ESPN’s Rece Davis and Dan Wetzel sat on the August 9th ESPN CFB podcast and discussed teams that would finish at the bottom of the SEC. Rece Davis’s picks initially included Arkansas, Mississippi State, and Kentucky, but the analyst also pondered moving Tennessee into the list. “We haven’t really talked about Tennessee either, and that’s largely because Nico has moved on. You don’t know what you’re getting at quarterback. Tennessee fans are hoping Joey Aguilar will be great, but there are teams that right now I’m looking at as a kind of the bottom of the SEC, but maybe they have potential to move up,” concluded Davis. However, Dan Wetzel’s opinion differed quite a bit from Davis’s.

Wetzel acknowledged the uncertainty at the quarterback spot, but still touted Tennessee to be a “very, very good team.” The reason? It’s straightforward for Wetzel, as he predicted the team to undergo a “rallying effect” and do wonders with what they have got. “They should be a very, very good team. We just don’t know in such a position. And how will they? There also can be a rallying effect, too, you know? It’s all we got. We are all we got, we are all we need, right? And so, if they can do that. I like the falls amongst that group,” said Wetzel. Despite that promise, though, the QB spot still needs to be at least 70-80% productive as Nico was. And guess what? It might be!!

Joey Aguilar, unlike Nico, doesn’t carry a 5-star tag on his back and comes from the JUCO ranks to prove his worth in the SEC. But when you look at the journey he has gone through and the production he brought to Appalachian State? Joey Aguilar suddenly starts to look like a real deal. It’s one thing to produce 3,003 yards in 2024, which Aguilar did, but it speaks volumes to do that from being a zero-star recruit to becoming the face of a playoff contender like Tennessee. Moreover, now at Vols camp, the QB is not leaving any stone unturned.

Are Joey Aguilar’s new performances bolstering Tennessee’s playoff hopes?

Joey Aguilar probably didn’t have the type of talent that other 4 or 5-star QBs usually have in high schools. But what he had was determination and sheer willpower to make it big. So, despite getting no attention from FBS schools, Aguilar enrolled at a JUCO college and hired a personal QB coach to train him. The result? It was spectacular as Appalachian State took notice gradually, and he finally moved to where he always desired to play: the FBS level. But little did he know that fate had other plans for him.

After completing the 2024 season with Appalachian State, UCLA showed interest in Aguilar, and he moved to the team quickly. But with Nico’s signing, the doors of that QB1 spot looked to be shutting down for him, and that’s when Tennessee came calling. In that short time, Aguilar not just won an extra year of eligibility courtesy of Diego Pavia’s legal win over the NCAA but also reportedly earned a $1.2 million contract from Tennessee. And now, the QB is repaying Josh Heupel’s faith.

In a recent video on the internet, Aguilar can be seen slinging those passes perfectly. Deep passes, intermediate passes, passes with an inch-perfect spiral, and short passes, you name it, and Aguilar’s doing that perfectly in the video. Of course, Nico Iamaleava’s exit was ugly and unexpected for Josh Heupel, but with what Aguilar is putting in practices? It seems Tennessee fans would forget about Nico sooner rather than later.