Paul Finebaum expresses concern in Tennessee for 2025 season after loss of Nico Iamaleava

The dust has settled in the saga between the Tennessee Volunteers and quarterback Nico Iamaleava. Now, the Volunteers need to find a way forward without their starting quarterback from last year’s College Football Playoff run.

It’s made for a challenging spring for Tennessee and head coach Josh Heupel to bounce back from. It’s also put the Volunteers in a difficult position that has Paul Finebaum concerned about them in 2025.

“I think you have to be worried about Tennessee,” Paul Finebaum said. “I know that I’m probably not breaking a new story here but what is the quarterback situation really going to be like? Listen, [Joey] Aguilar is serviceable. They have two backups who have no experience, but I think that’s a tremendous drop-off.”

Nico Iamaleava came to Tennessee as a five-star recruit in the Class of 2023, according to the On3 Industry Ranking. After sitting out a season, he flashed success in his first full year as a starter in 2024, going to the CFP. He also finished the season throwing for 2,616 yards and 19 touchdowns last season. That was with just five interceptions. He also rushed for 358 yards and three more scores.

Tennessee was hoping to repeat that success and even build on it in 2025. However, with a difficult schedule ahead and newfound questions at quarterback, that’s going to be much more difficult to do.

“Considering Georgia is right out of the shoot,” Finebaum said. “At Alabama, at Florida. You have to be a little bit worried about them.”

Joey Aguilar ended up transferring to Tennessee from UCLA after, ironically, Nico Iamaleava transferred there. He’s now expected to compete for the starting job, bringing experience with him from his time at App State. George MacIntyre and Jake Merklinger are also currently listed on the Tennessee roster. However, they’re just freshmen and lack any in-game experience.

Paul Finebaum: Moving on from Nico Iamaleava is the right call for Tennessee

Today, Paul Finebaum is cautioning that Tennessee is going to be in for a difficult season thanks to the Nico Iamaleava situation. At the time of the public falling out, however, he did agree that the Volunteers made the right call to move on.

“I think the fans that I talked to yesterday afternoon, Shae, agree with this. It is the right call, and it’s the right call because they’ve already been held hostage to a degree by Nico and his people. They went to bat for him about a year ago. They fought because the NCAA wanted to rule him ineligible because of the recruiting, and they stood by and they kept his eligibility. They gave him a chance, and by the way, he helped to reward them by helping Tennessee get to the playoffs last year. But the bigger story here is beyond Nico. This is an inflection point in the history of college football,” Finebaum said.

“This is the first time in this NIL era that we have had a literal holdout. Happens every day in the NFL. It’s never happened in college football, he was expected to make about two and a half million dollars. And while people are seeing their 401s crash right now, he wanted more than that, reportedly as much as $4 million and Tennessee finally said, ‘You know what we’re done.’ What’s interesting is, he’s not that great. I talked to very various sources around the SEC yesterday, and I said, ‘Tell me where he ranks out of the 16 quarterbacks in the SEC,’ they said, somewhere between ‘six and eight.’ Tennessee saw the same thing and that’s why he was no longer on the Tennessee roster this morning.”