Tennessee football head coach Josh Heupel gets a pass for how he treated his quarterback situation this time around. Next time, he might not be so lucky.
Heupel, who is in his eighth season as a head coach and fifth with the Vols, made plenty of missteps to eventually get to a top-flight quarterback in Joey Aguilar. However, he hasn’t caught much of the flack that went along with the Vols tying their big orange wagon to Nico Iamaleava, who is appearing to flame out at UCLA.
Why?
The Iamaleavas handled things so poorly that they caught all the blame, and rightly so. They held the Vols hostage throughout spring practice up to the Tennessee football Orange and White game. It was them, not Heupel, who were the main factors in that divorce
However, Heupel should have had better foresight into the situation and known that, first, his quarterbacks don’t have to be elite high school prospects like Iamaleava to be elite college quarterbacks in his system. He also should have known that he’s undermining his team by tying so much financially to one player, even a quarterback.
Aguilar has proven that Heupel’s offense doesn’t need a prototypical, NFL-type of quarterback. A good sense of the game and an accurate deep ball are all that is necessary to excel, but Heupel failed to notice that about his own offense when he went after Iamaleava.
That’s a mistake Heupel doesn’t need to make again.
Heupel will be forced to make some tough financial decisions one day when it comes to paying players. While there won’t likely be a salary cap to hold up in court, he will be in charge of millions at some point in his career. If he’s smart, he’ll look back on the Iamaleava situation and realize that they took the heat off of him. He won’t be so fortunate if it happens again.
