Nobody Asked Mailbag: What Is Tennessee Going To Do At Quarterback In The Transfer Portal?
Tennessee has gigantic questions to address at the most important position in football this offseason. Plus, I answer a couple more mailbag questions on the Vols.
Happy Friday, everybody. It has been months, er, years, since I have written one of these Nobody Asked mailbag columns.
I’ve missed writing these dearly for a couple of reasons: 1) I can’t write about everything I’d like to write about over the course of the week, so writing this particular column on this specific day of the week allows me to kind of do it, and 2) I’ve always worried if I opened up this column as an Actual Mailbag with Actual Reader Mailbag Questions than I might end up writing about a lot of other things besides the aforementioned things I wanted to write about.
So, here we are.
If you’d like me to write about a Tennessee question for a piece next week, I would be happy to acquiesce. Leave a comment at the end of this column today, and I’ll write about it next week.
Q: Would taking a Trinidad Chambliss-type over a Brendan Sorsby-type in the transfer portal warrant a freakout by Tennessee fans? – Nobody, NotARealTown
This is one of those conundrums for Tennessee head football coach Josh Heupel that serves as a reminder of how challenging and stressful being a college head football coach is these days. I wrote a lot about how thin the margins were between Tennessee securing back-to-back trips to the College Football Playoff and finishing 8-4 in the regular season for the second time in the last three seasons. (Note: Tennessee has flip-flopped between 10 and eight regular-season wins the last four seasons, and had the 12-team field existed back in 2022, Heupel would have taken Tennessee to the CFP every even year that he’s been in Knoxville.)
Had Tennessee beaten Georgia and found a way to split the Oklahoma and Vanderbilt games at home, Heupel would have a lot more leeway in rolling with redshirt freshman George MacIntyre or true freshman Faizon Brandon at quarterback next season. You could even take this a step further: had Nico Iamaleava not departed in the spring, would the competition be between redshirt sophomore Jake Merklinger, MacIntyre, and Brandon going into 2026, and Tennessee wouldn’t have had to take a transfer quarterback at all this cycle?
What happened, happened, though. I don’t think Heupel and his staff can go into 2026 with that much uncertainty at quarterback. In the Big 12, BYU can start a true freshman in Bear Bachmeier and not miss a beat. In the ACC, Pittsburgh can turn to a true freshman quarterback in the middle of their season and be in the conference title race in November. Even in the Big 12, Michigan can start a true freshman in Bryce Underwood because the Wolverines faced three ranked teams in the regular season. With the SEC moving to nine conference games next season, I don’t think the same rules apply.
Of the five teams from the SEC who made the CFP this season, zero have an underclassman at quarterback – Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed is the youngest and a redshirt sophomore – and Florida was the only SEC school to start a quarterback with two years or less college experience to begin the season. Tennessee’s 2026 schedule is loaded, and I suspect they’ll have to spend big on a quarterback out of the transfer portal, even with all their needs on the defensive side of the ball.
Q: Most pleasant surprise for Tennessee men’s basketball through the first month and some change of the 2025-26 season? – Nobody, NotARealTown
Longtime listeners of The Chase Thomas Podcast know that I have been a believer in redshirt sophomore big JP Estrella. The former blue-chip recruit has a sky-high ceiling in Knoxville, and I’ve still got my fingers crossed that he reaches it while a member of the Tennessee Volunteers men’s basketball team.
You saw glimpses again of Estrella’s potential emergence inside with a couple of buckets around the rim against Louisville at the Food City Center on Tuesday evening in the Vols’ blowout win over the Cardinals.
However, Vanderbilt transfer big Jaylen Carey is my answer here, and it’s not really close. When you combine Estrella’s continued awful injury luck, along with junior big Cade Phillips having to shut his season down due to shoulder surgery, head men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes very much needed Carey to be A Guy.
I’m happy to write that Carey is A Guy for Tennessee. He was electric against Syracuse, where he was 10-of-16 from the floor and finished with a 22/9 line. He was the lone bright spot in a terrible loss on the road in upstate New York. The junior big is averaging nearly nine boards and nearly 14 points per game over his last four with the Vols.
Carey, like Estrella, can at times seem unstoppable once they get in position and the ball inside. My lone complaint is the poor free-throw shooting thus far from Carey, but he’s doing so many other things well that it’s hard to get too riled up about that. The Carey we’re seeing now is a very different Carey from the one we saw to start the season, which is huge with SEC play starting here in just a matter of weeks.
Q: Now that Josh Elander’s first coaching staff at Tennessee as the head baseball coach is complete, who do you think will prove to be the most important hire this cycle? – Nobody, NotARealTown
I wrote earlier this week about how excited I am to watch this Tennessee baseball team in 2026 under first-year head baseball coach Josh Elander. The longtime assistant under Tony Vitello was the right choice for the job, and his inaugural staff here in Knoxville has all the potential to be another juggernaut in the loaded SEC.
You could go one of two ways here: 1) Chuck Jeroloman or 2) Keegan Knoll. I lean towards the latter.
Rocky Top Insider’s Ryan Schumpert wrote a really great piece on the excellence of Eberhardt in 2023 that I think back to when I answer this question. Josh Reynolds was a Vitello hire from Cincinnati in 2024 and felt like the pitching-coach-in-waiting for Tennessee whenever Frank Anderson retired, or in this case, followed Vitello to his next job. I think he keeps these elite Tennessee arms rolling in 2026 and beyond.
With Eberhardt, though, there was no obvious in-house replacement for him. The fact that he and Knoll worked together in the Big Leagues in Chicago in 2022 matters. The strength coach position is huge for Tennessee baseball. The Vols must continue to obliterate the baseball, particularly in Lindsey Nelson Stadium, to keep the university’s best program humming. (Essentially, you don’t want to become the 2024 or 2025 Atlanta Braves.)
If Knoll proves to be a plug-and-play replacement for Eberhardt, I suspect his addition this offseason would prove to be the most critical. Still, all of Knoll, Craig Bell, and Jeroloman figure to be fantastic hires for Elander, but if I can only select one of these three names, I think it’s Knoll.