Stock Report: Tennessee Football Fall Camp Week 2 Thoughts

A whole lot of thoughts all about Tennessee football after wrapping up their second week of fall camp.

Happy Sunday, y’all.

Let’s dive into which Vols saw their stock rise and which saw their stock fall after two weeks of fall camp.

Stock Up: Running Back Trio

Even at the time of his transfer commitment announcement, Duke transfer Star Thomas’ decision to join Tennessee running backs coach De’Rail Sims' room for the 2025 season felt like a luxury. Tennessee returned both redshirt sophomore DeSean Bishop and redshirt freshman Peyton Lewis. The Vols also had two talented true freshmen joining the room with Oakland’s Daune Morris and Buford’s Justin Baker. Thomas tallied nearly 1,000 yards on the ground as the lead tailback for a Duke team that almost won ten games in Manny Diaz’s first season as their head football coach.

With or without Thomas in the fold, the Vols would have found a way to run the ball effectively this fall. Head football coach Josh Heupel’s teams over the last four seasons have averaged nearly 5.0 YPC on the ground each season with very different rooms and rotations. Last year, Dylan Sampson was the bell cow back. This year, it might be a healthy mixture of Lewis, Bishop, and Thomas – similar to what Vol fans grew accustomed to in 2022 and 2023. However, this is Year 2 for Sims as the team’s running backs coach, and we don’t know for sure he’ll rotate as much as Jerry Mack did in his three seasons on Rocky Top. If Sims follows Mack’s approach in 2025, Tennessee figures to have one of the most underrated and strongest running back rooms in the SEC once again, even with Sampson off to the NFL.

Stock Down: One Starting Quarterback All Season

It’s probably a positive sign that the reporting coming out of Tennessee’s first scrimmage is that Star Thomas looks the part. On the flipside, it’s not a positive sign that coming out of scrimmage No. 1, that neither UCLA transfer quarterback Joey Aguilar nor redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger separated themselves as the favorite to be the team’s starting quarterback when the Vols kick things off against the Orangemen on August 30 inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta at noon EST. With only two weeks remaining before game week prep, I suspect it would be a whole lot better for the passing game if one of Aguilar or Merklinger separated themselves in a big way on Saturday so that one could start building consistent chemistry with the starting wide receivers and tight ends. With so much ambiguity about where things stand in that QB1 battle right now, I’ve never been more confident that we'll see at least two different starting quarterbacks this season for the Vols. With MacIntyre not falling out of the competition this week, too, it doesn’t seem all that crazy to think we might see all three scholarship quarterbacks start a game this season.

Stock Up: Defensive Line Depth

There are a whole lot of ways to waste one’s time on this planet. One of the silliest is worrying about a defensive line in the SEC coached by Rodney Garner, and LEOs coached by Levorn “Chop” Harbin. What is interesting, though, is that clearly 2026 and 2027 should feature a whole lot more high-upside, blue-chip talent in the interior and at strongside defensive end; those potential future greats get to learn behind four fantastic team leaders in Joshua Josephs, Dominic Bailey, Bryson Eason and Jaxon Moi this fall.

The Strange Vibe Around Tennessee Football This Season

I’ve maintained this offseason that 2027 is the year the Vols are in good shape to look a lot like Clemson does in 2025. Last season, the Vols had two defensive linemen who were picked in the first two rounds of the NFL Draft in James Pearce Jr. and Omarr Norman-Lott, respectively. Unless Josephs has a breakout season in the sacks department, it doesn’t seem likely that any of the starting four DLs are taken that high in the 2026 NFL Draft. Still, I suspect all four to grade well each week in PFF, and all four seem ostensibly like fantastic Bridge Guys for the next wave of scary blue-chip talent across the Vols’ defensive line, like Marion Dye, Isaiah Campbell, Ethan Utley, Jordan Ross, Christian Gass, and many more.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how Garner and Harbin blend all the talented young guys with the solid veteran guys this fall. I have questions about how the rotation will ultimately shake out in some areas, but, as I wrote when I started this section, I am not going to spend a whole lot of time worrying about how Garner and Harbin handle too many helpful and intriguing college football defensive linemen.