Breaking down what you need to know about Tennessee Quarterback Joey Aguilar, ahead of Saturday's matchup
The Oklahoma Sooners faced a high-octane offensive attack this Saturday, led by Tennessee quarterback Joey Aguilar. The fact that Aguilar is even the Volunteers’ quarterback at this point is an interesting story in itself.
Aguilar started his career at the City College of San Francisco. He then attended Diablo Valley, followed by a move to the Division I level to play at Appalachian State.
In his time at Appalachian State, Aguilar made an easy transition to the FBS. In 2023, he was named the Sun Belt Conference’s Newcomer of the Year, and was a second-team all-conference selection.
His time with the Mountaineers was filled with peaks and valleys though. Despite playing only two seasons at Appalachian State, he holds multiple single season passing records and ranks among the program's top 10 in several career passing categories. However, Aguilar led the FBS in interceptions thrown last season with 14.
Initially, Aguilar hit the transfer portal last offseason to head to UCLA for his final year of eligibility. Not too long after he arrived, Nico Iamaleava announced his decision to transfer to Westwood as well. As a result, Aguilar ended up leaving UCLA and went to Tennessee to replace Iamaleava, resulting in College Football’s first-ever de-facto transfer portal trade.
So far in his time with the Volunteers, Aguilar has done a solid job. The Tennessee quarterback has completed 65.9% of his passes, for 2,344 yards, along with 18 touchdown passes and six interceptions.
The interceptions will be something to monitor, as that remains a weakness for Aguilar dating back to his time at Appalachian State, and it will certainly be a sticking point for Brent Venables’ defense. Aguilar has had two multiple-interception games this season, and they each pushed the contests into overtime (44-41 L vs. Georgia, 41-34 W vs. Mississippi State).
Led by Aguilar, the Volunteers rank third nationally in total offense (510.1 yards per game) and third in passing (266.3). In his weekly news conference, Venables credited Aguilar’s poise and precision, “He’s helped their offense be incredibly efficient and explosive,” Venables said. “He’s thrown the deep ball with great accuracy and allowed them to stay on schedule through all eight games.”
While the Sooners have been one of the best team in the country in preventing explosive plays, Venables reinforced the importance of not letting the Volunteers off the hook, “Teams that win the explosive play battle give themselves an opportunity to win the game,” Venables said. “We’ve made a tremendous amount of improvement in that area, both in run defense and pass defense.”
No. 14 Tennessee (6-2) battles No. 18 Oklahoma (6-2) in a pivotal SEC showdown Saturday at 6:30 p.m. CT on ABC, with quite the duel between SEC’s highest-scoring offense led by Aguilar, against the Sooners’ aggressive defense.