Josh Heupel evaluates his confidence in Nico Iamaleava entering spring

Tennessee made headlines when the Volunteers landed Nico Iamaleava. Now, entering spring ball, head coach Josh Heupel has given his evaluation of Iamaleava and explained just how confident he is in the young signal caller.

Heupel explained that despite his age Iamaleava has already been impressive during his press conference ahead of spring practice.

“Well, he’s gonna be pushed extremely quickly,” Josh Heupel said. “Just look at where we’re at, at the quarterback position. So, a great urgency is gonna be needed for him.”

A former quarterback himself, Josh Heupel has become known as a great quarterback developer. He’s developed quarterbacks like Dillon Gabriel and Hendon Hooker in an explosive, quarterback-friendly offense.

“He’s extremely coachable. He’s a guy that from the moment he stepped on campus — that’s bowl preparation to coming back here at the end of January when we started the winter semester — has been phenomenal,” Heupel said.

“He’s got great urgency, He cares a great deal about learning his craft, not only learning our offense but learning his craft at the quarterback position. Takes coaching extremely well. He resets, moves onto the next play at a really high level. You know, he’s come in, he’s worked, guys believe in him and I’m just talking about how he carries himself, and slowly you’ve seen him start to grow into taking more ownership.”

Despite this praise, Joe Milton is still expected to be Tennessee’s starter in 2023. Still, Nico Iamaleava has the talent to push him. After all, Iamaleava was a five-star recruit in the Class of 2023. There is going to be pressure to see him if Milton struggles.

“He’s still really young, but I’m excited to have these 15 days with him.”

Josh Heupel on how his connection with Danny White led to the Tennessee job

When a coaching hire works, there tends to be a lot of revisionist history about it. That’s already the case with Josh Heupel at Tennessee. Despite being an SEC power, it looked like sanctions were coming and the program was struggling on the field. In the end, athletic director Danny White hired a familiar face, one who he had worked with at UCF.

“One of the things that were important to me was figuring out what the landscape truly was. My relationship with Danny allowed me to have great trust in the things that I was hearing were the actual things that were going on and the truth of where we were at and how we were going to get to where we needed to go,” Heupel said.

“The ability to have that relationship with him allowed me to trust everything that I was hearing, believe in the opportunity that was here. And then also, once I took the job, to truly hit the ground running from the first moment.”