Tennessee Summer Stock Report: Quarterbacks
What to make of the Vols' 2025 QB room heading into the summer.
Tennessee will kick off the 2025 college football season against Syracuse at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on August 30 in the Aflac Kickoff game at noon EST. With only a couple of months between now and the Vols’ return to the gridiron, it’s preview and prediction season for all things Tennessee football. In this series, I’ll be writing about my feelings on each position group and where the stock is with each of them, in my humble opinion.
Let’s dive into today’s position group in our Tennessee Summer Stock Report.
Quarterbacks:
Joey Aguilar, 6-3, 220 lbs, senior.
Jake Merklinger, 6-3, 215 lbs, redshirt freshman.
George MacIntyre, 6-6, 190 lbs, freshman.
If I had been writing this piece a little over a month ago, this would be one of the more straightforward position groups to write about. Fast forward a month, and there may not be a less straightforward position group to write about.
For the last three offseasons, there has been no question about who QB1 is heading into fall camp. Last year, it was Nico Iamaleava. The year prior, it was Joe Milton. The year before that, it was Hendon Hooker. Over the past three seasons, head football coach Josh Heupel and Tennessee have won thirty games. A sliver of that success must include stability at the most important position in the sport. Sure, Milton and Iamaleava did not reach Hooker’s level of success through the air, but the former did win nineteen of those thirty games. It has to be a positive to go into three straight offseasons with no questions about who will be under center in Week 1.
For the first time since Heupel’s first season in Knoxville in 2021, Tennessee will start fall camp with questions about who will be under center in Week 1.
The favorite to get the first snap under center versus the Orangemen in Atlanta is Appalachian State and UCLA transfer Joey Aguilar. He started 24 games for the Mountaineers over the last two seasons. It is not a coincidence that the final four teams in last season’s College Football Playoffs each started an upperclassmen quarterback – Will Howard, Riley Leonard, Quinn Ewers, and Drew Allar. For Tennessee to reach its absolute ceiling this upcoming season, their lone upperclassmen quarterback winning the job and running with it at an elite level is likely a requirement.
Aguilar, however, came to Tennessee via the spring transfer portal window. The same was true for Milton in 2021. The latter won the quarterback battle in fall camp, but Hooker started 11 of Tennessee’s 13 games that season. You don’t have to squint too hard to see a similar scenario for the Vols in 2025. Merklinger has a year-and-a-half head start on Aguilar learning and understanding Heupel’s scheme. When you examine Aguilar’s Mountaineers stats, you notice every single record he broke in Boone came in 2023. Six program records, all impressive to be sure, but they all came in his first year as a starter. He went into the 2024 season as the Sun Belt Preseason Player of the Year, but would ultimately lead all of FBS in interceptions and complete just 55 percent of his passes. Tennessee hasn’t had a starting quarterback with a completion percentage below 64 percent since Milton in 2021, who completed just 51 percent of his passes in his two starts. Aguilar threw 14 interceptions last season, and Tennessee starting quarterbacks have combined to throw 15 interceptions across four seasons under Heupel.
Aguilar has the experience edge, but the warning signs are there even if he wins the job out of fall camp. If his past issues with accuracy and turnovers don’t radically change, history suggests he will not be the starter for the Vols at quarterback next season. (If, of course, he wins the job outright in fall camp.)
As I wrote earlier, the former four-star quarterback out of Savannah has been in the system for a year-and-a-half now – the same amount of time Iamaleava had been in the system before he was handed the reins last season. Merklinger, however, was in the same recruiting class as projected starter wideouts Mike Matthews and Braylon Staley. If Peyton Lewis and William Satterwhite earn starting roles in their position battles in fall camp at running back and at center, respectively, that’d be five blue-chip players, along with Merklinger, who all arrived together in the 2024 Tennessee recruiting class in starting roles for this year’s Tennessee team. In Merklinger’s final two seasons at Calvary Day, he completed 70 percent of his passes and threw just four interceptions on 371 attempts.
Who knows how much of Merklinger’s prep accuracy and limited turnovers translate in the SEC? However, from what we know about both quarterbacks, history suggests that one should not overlook Merklinger in this quarterback battle this summer and into fall. Heupel’s quarterbacks protect the football and are asked to make quick, accurate decisions with the ball in their hands. If Aguilar struggles to do that, Merklinger might have the skillset to mesh nicely in this system this season.
In his detailed evaluation of Merklinger as a prep recruit, 247Sports’ Director of Scouting Andrew Ivins wrote on the former four-star player, “Not only has posted a 29-9 record as a starter heading into his senior season, but is also closing in on 700 live pass attempts.” Merklinger won a whole lot of games in South Georgia and threw a whole lot of passes in South Georgia, too. Two other sentences that Ivins wrote at the time that stand out to me include, “Mobile and quick enough to turn a scramble into a chunk play, but looks more times than not to win from the pocket.” The other being, “No stranger to RPOs and is likely going to find the most success on Saturdays in a balanced offensive scheme that wants its quarterback to function almost like a point guard.”
Those last two words jump out at you: point guard. Is there a better description of what made Hooker a special quarterback at Tennessee in 2021 and 2022? Hooker to Hyatt felt a lot like Zeigler to Knecht. He was an efficient machine who knew when and how to scramble and operated like an elite point guard.
The ultimate wildcard in this room is freshman George MacIntyre out of Brentwood Academy. If MacIntyre starts any games for Tennessee this season, it’s fair to assume things did not go well offensively for the Vols. Tennessee is in a bit of Quarterback Jenga right now. One errant move and a lot can come tumbling down. If Aguilar wins and keeps the job, the Vols have a clean and exciting three-man battle in 2026 between Merklinger, MacIntyre, and incoming five-star freshman Faizon Brandon. If Merklinger wins and keeps the job, it muddles the water for 2026 and beyond. If MacIntyre wins and keeps the job, the water is even more muddled at quarterback in 2026 and beyond. MacIntyre is a huge unknown and a potential beneficiary of the sudden, unexpected departure of Iamaleava. With Iamaleava in the fold in 2025, a serious in-game look was not a possibility, most likely. Without Iamaleava in the fold in 2025, a serious in-game look is now very much a possibility, most likely. Could Tennessee finish the 2025 season with all three quarterbacks starting at least one game? I wouldn’t expect it, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Each of the three quarterbacks is extremely different in many ways. With any of the three at quarterback this season, I expect the Vols’ offense to look and feel very different. I don’t know how it all shakes out for this room in 2025, but I expect wild swings in the stock of this room throughout Heupel’s fifth season at Tennessee. Only time will tell if that is a good development for the Vols.