This isn’t how Josh Heupel envisioned his quarterback room ahead of a pivotal 2026 season
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If I gave Josh Heupel some truth serum, I’d guess that this wasn’t the way he drew it up.
A quarterback room is often a fluid beast in this era of college football, and controlling one can probably feel like hugging the wind. Best of luck. Like the wind, it’s unpredictable. Gone are the days of mapping out a 2-3 year plan for quarterback rooms.
I’d love to know what Heupel’s 2026 quarterback plan is. It’s unclear. I can’t imagine that he expected to close the transfer portal window without an incoming option after Tennessee publicly whiffed on several household names.
Ty Simpson was reportedly offered $4 million, but said “no.” Sam Leavitt chose Lane Kiffin and LSU, which wasn’t stunning, but was probably slightly more embarrassing that it happened after multiple outlets reported that he was still being pursued by the Vols with a high-priced offer after he gave LSU his verbal commitment. Beau Pribula was perhaps the biggest surprise decline of the group when he picked Virginia over Tennessee.
Three big swings, 3 big whiffs. Not the way Heupel drew it up.
As of this writing, we’re still waiting to hear an official word on Joey Aguilar and his attempt for another year of eligibility, but given how aggressive Tennessee was in the portal, one can assume this report from Matt Zenitz probably has more truth to it than not:
Not ideal.
It’s not ideal that Tennessee won’t even enter the 2026 season with Jake Merklinger as an option after he entered the transfer portal and signed with UConn. It’s not ideal that for the second time in as many seasons, Tennessee looks like a team that’s scrambling instead of a team that has a plan that’s being executed.
Unlike last year, however, the change of the lone transfer portal window means that Tennessee’s starter won’t be a post-spring addition. Of course, that means it won’t have to incur a post-spring loss like Nico Iamaleava.
Go figure that it’s Iamaleava who’ll be staying at UCLA and now it’s the Vols who are trying to find any sort of stability at the game’s most important position.
What’s interesting is that this pivotal season for Heupel will be Year 6, and he has yet to have the same QB1 to start consecutive season openers (remember that Joe Milton was his first QB1 in 2021 before Hendon Hooker took over). That’s not the way any coach would draw it up. That feels more like survival mode.
Sure, Tennessee fans might want to push back on that because it’s not that the quarterback room suddenly lacks talent. George MacIntyre was billed as the natural successor to Iamaleava. It was understood that the 6-6, 195-pound freshman was going to protect his redshirt while he put on weight and, for lack of a better word, waited behind Aguilar and Merklinger in 2025. Maybe MacIntyre is the guy.
Better yet, maybe Faizon Brandon will be the guy
That’s the 5-star early enrollee who’ll now get the “quarterback of the future” billing officially, though he’s had that since Iamaleava’s awkward departure last spring. Brandon might be the quarterback of the future, but it’s rarely ever the design to have a true freshman quarterback start from the jump in the SEC.
Bo Nix did it at Auburn, though he had a top-10 defense to help him along the way. DJ Lagway had success when he became Florida‘s starter as a true freshman in 2024, though that didn’t happen until Graham Mertz suffered a season-ending injury against, ironically enough, Tennessee. That was similar to Jake Fromm, who shined as a true freshman in helping Georgia to a national championship berth, though that wasn’t the plan for Kirby Smart in Year 2. It only happened because Jacob Eason, who was thrown into the fire as a true freshman in 2016, got hurt in the 2017 season opener.
Fromm is the last true freshman SEC quarterback to throw for 20 passing touchdowns. He and Jalen Hurts are the only SEC true freshmen in the Playoff era who threw for 20 touchdown passes. Just for a little perspective, 43 FBS quarterbacks hit that mark in 2025. We’re talking about what it looks like to have a respectable passing offense. No matter who Heupel starts, that’s what he’s aspiring to do in 2026.
Yes, you can set your watch to that ground game being productive, especially with DeSean Bishop’s return after a 1,000-yard season. It’s the first time in the Heupel era that he’ll return a 1,000-yard back, so that’ll help Tennessee’s new QB1.
If Brandon or MacIntyre is the guy, it’ll be another Heupel-era first. It’ll mark the first time that his opening day quarterback has never taken a snap Power Conference competition. That’s not that bold when you remember that 4 of Heupel’s 5 Week 1 starters were veteran transfers.
History tells us that it might be a quarterback-friendly, up-tempo offense, but you still need experience to run it properly. The only time that a Heupel offense finished outside the top 20 in yards/play was the Iamaleava-led group in 2024. Go figure that a herky-jerky, Dylan Sampson-dependent offense also coincided with the Vols’ first and only Playoff berth. A top-7 scoring defense might’ve had something to do with that.
You can bet that Heupel, who is now coming off his second consecutive disappointing finish to a season, would like to avoid any scenario in which he’s hearing hot-seat chatter. Someone who inherited a post-Jeremy Pruitt mess and has had nothing but winning seasons isn’t exactly a dead man walking, but after the way things fizzled out in 2025, there’s some urgency heading into 2026. That’s perhaps why Tennessee had such public high-priced offers to transfer quarterbacks.
In Heupel’s ideal world, he would’ve connected with one of them. In this current world, he struck out.
That doesn’t mean that Heupel will strike out in 2026, but truth serum or not, it’s certainly not the start that he was hoping for.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
