Hendon Hooker and Joe Milton have a lot in common. Both transferred to Tennessee after getting benched at their respective Power 5 programs in 2020. They lived together and became close friends despite the sometimes awkward circumstances surrounding their shared desire to lead Josh Heupel’s offense. They’re both pass-first, mobile quarterbacks who showed they can air it out, though obviously to say that their arms are the same would be a slap in the face to the maker who blessed Milton with his cannon.

Now, it’s Hooker who’ll pass the baton to his buddy, Milton. Well, some are convinced that Nico Iamaleava has a realistic chance of beating out Milton by Week 1 and starting immediately as a highly touted true freshman. Barring a shocking turn of events, the job will be Milton’s. Again.

If possible, maybe let’s end the Milton-Hooker comps right there.

It’s not fair to the player that Milton is if the standard is Hooker, who was the best Tennessee quarterback since Peyton Manning. Hooker finished 5th in the Heisman Trophy voting, and he did things in Knoxville that will be discussed in college football circles for decades, most notably ending the Alabama streak. The guy had a 58-5 TD-INT ratio with over 1,000 rushing yards and 10 scores with his legs in 2 years. If this were the 20th century, we’d be talking about a statue for Hooker. Shoot, maybe we still should.

But it’s not. It’s 2023, and because of Heupel’s offense with Milton’s immense physical potential, the hope/expectation is that he’ll live up to the Hooker standard.

That’s lofty for someone who is expected to get his third crack at holding down a starting job. Hooker is partially to blame for that all but impossible standard for Milton to live up to as he enters Year 6 of his roller-coaster career.

Let’s also not forget about the Heupel standard. These are his FBS scoring offense ranks since becoming a head coach at UCF in 2018:

  • 2018 (UCF): No. 6
  • 2019 (UCF): No. 5
  • 2020 (UCF): No. 8
  • 2021 (Tennessee): No. 7
  • 2022 (Tennessee): No. 1

Heupel, Lincoln Riley and Nick Saban are the only FBS head coaches who are riding a streak of 5 consecutive top-10 scoring offenses. Once upon a time, Milton lost his job in part because he got injured and Hooker stepped in, but also because when healthy, he didn’t live up to the Heupel standard.

After Milton beat out Hooker for the job in 2021, it became clear to the Tennessee staff that what they saw on the practice field didn’t translate to Saturdays.

“At that point, Joe Milton was the best practice quarterback that any of us had ever seen,” former Tennessee offensive coordinator and current USF coach Alex Golesh told SDS. “In a red jersey where nobody can touch ya, the prettiest deep ball I have ever seen. Ever. And I have been around some NFL quarterbacks. I had never seen anything like it. None of us had … you saw Joe throw the ball and you saw (Heupel’s) eyes light up, and he’s not one to give a ton of people, especially quarterbacks, credit. It was like, ‘Woah.’

“What you can’t tell in practice is the other stuff.”

The “other stuff” was getting into live action and reading pressure, understanding timing, developing touch and not forcing the action. The same issues that plagued Milton at Michigan during 2020 didn’t just fade with a change of scenery. You can’t tell “the other stuff” by just looking at the cumulative numbers, either. And not the physical numbers for Milton, who looks like an NFL edge-rusher at a chiseled 6-5, 245 pounds.

If you just looked at his total numbers in Knoxville — he’s averaging 9.3 yards per attempt with a 12-0 TD-INT ratio and 4.5 yards per rush — you’d be dismissing how rocky his start was in 2021. Milton completed 48% of his passes against a lackluster Bowling Green squad, and his day against Pitt started with him averaging 4 yards per attempt with several maddening deep-ball overthrows before going down with an injury in the second quarter.

But during that time in which Milton got a front-row seat to Hooker’s ascent, he did the rare thing in the modern era of college football. He stayed and got better. That was evident by the spots Tennessee’s staff put him in throughout 2022. When Hooker retired for the day in the midst of blowouts, Milton came in and ran the same offense instead of just exclusively handing the ball off. It’s why he finished 5th in the SEC with 9 completions of 40 yards. Even Stetson Bennett IV, who played 15 games, didn’t complete as many deep balls as Milton.

Compare the side-by-side of Milton’s 2021 numbers as a starter to what he did in 2022 and it’s not even close:

Milton
QB1 in 2021
2022
TD-INT
1-0
10-0
Completion %
51.4%
64.6%
Yards/pass attempt
5.4
11.8
40-yard completions
1 in 35 total passes
9 in 82 total passes

“He’s an elite level quarterback now. He wasn’t a year and a half ago,” Golesh said. “But he is now because he learned his deficiencies, he learned his strengths, he learned how to play within the system and he’s learned how to play within himself … two years ago, and I bet he would tell you the same, he thought he had to go win the game. He doesn’t. He’s gotta go manage the game, take care of the football.”

Of course, those 2022 numbers included Milton carving up Clemson in the Orange Bowl in place of the injured Hooker. For many, that game was the confirmation that Milton was ready to live up to the Heupel standard and perhaps be the second coming of Hooker. For Golesh, that actually happened in much quieter fashion in the regular season finale against Vanderbilt when he only completed 52.4% of his passes, but he hit on a deep ball early and he didn’t have those crucial mistakes.

“He only threw for about 180, but it was almost a perfect game,” Golesh said. “No turnovers, took care of the ball. It was after that game that you were like, ‘Joe got it figured out. This is it. It’s his time. It’s his team.’”

(Milton actually had 147 passing yards, but you get it.)

It is indeed Milton’s team as long as he’s the starter. Combined with the fact that his predecessor led the nation’s top scoring offense is the hype for Iamaleava. The No. 3 overall recruit in the 2023 class is the quarterback of the future in Knoxville, which means that if Milton goes back to his old ways, there’ll be an overwhelming public desire for Heupel to turn the page.

So what does that mean then? What should the true standard be for Milton now that this is, as Golesh said, his team?

For starters, Milton can quiet at least some of the Iamaleava talk by avoiding consecutive poor performances. What constitutes a “poor” performance? It isn’t as simple as what the scoreboard says. The scoreboard said that Milton led a blowout effort in his Tennessee debut against Bowling Green. The stat sheet said that finishing the game by going 4-for-14 after those first 2 drives was indeed a poor performance. Missing open receivers and having multi-quarter scoring droughts is an easy way to fall out of favor.

Heupel can brush off a down game from Milton. Even Hooker, while incredible, had the occasional down game the last 2 years. What Heupel can’t brush off is consecutive losses wherein the offense looks stagnant and inefficient. That’s when the clamoring for Iamaleava will be deafening and skeptics will say “same old Joe.”

Milton has all the pieces to lead Heupel’s 6th consecutive top-10 offense, even with Golesh off to USF and his top 2 receivers (Jalin Hyatt and Cedric Tillman) off to the NFL. There’s no reason why Milton can’t establish himself as one of the better quarterbacks in the conference and hold off the Iamaleava era until 2024. We shouldn’t expect Milton to suddenly have the perfect touch on all of his meaningful throws, but we should expect to see all that progression that Golesh and Co. raved about.

The bar for QB1 on Rocky Top was raised to perhaps insurmountable heights by Hooker. Milton’s last chance won’t be defined by whether he can one-up his former roommate, nor will it be defined by whether he can go viral every few games.

It’ll be defined by the other stuff.