Josh Heupel will remain the game-changer on Rocky Top. Since he took the chair in 2021, the Vols have continued to ride upward, winning 37 games in a four-year stretch, including a pair of ten-win seasons and a playoff appearance. The one goal they are yet to get their hands on is the Natty. 2025 can very well be the year of chasing that unprecedented national championship but under one condition. Nico Iamaleava has to improve his game under the center, increasing yards per pass, marking the offensive dominance he vehemently missed last year. Are we on the route to excellence? Can Nico meet the line? Josh Heupel had an important insight to zero in on.

Let’s be brutal and swallow a bitter pill. Nico Iamaleava was far from perfect last year. In crunch-time situations, the QB1 often went missing. It’s not like he didn’t make any clutch plays. But blink and boom! The next day, Iamaleava gets banged up by the defenders lurking behind. His cannon arm and superb athleticism matched the main character’s modus operandi against teams like Alabama and Florida. But quickly, that inconsistency hit back, and Iameleava looked terrible when throwing passes from the pocket.

On top of that, the grueling upper-body injury against Mississippi State kept him in check throughout the rest of the season. But heading into the spring, it seems he made some significant jumps to be the archetype he’s always meant to be. Coach Heupel kept track and said during a recent On3 appearance, “I just think, year one, he’s a guy that pushed extremely hard, played really well throughout the course of the season. There are some things that he knew he had to improve upon, but some things that the guys around him do. We’ve got to be better at it, too. 

Let’s just not make him an easy scapegoat. Heupel knows that his team couldn’t bear the responsibility of building a proper safety net for his third-year quarterback. He never tried to cover it up with anything. Rather, he scouted through the portal to fill up the void. Honestly, it’s not a cakewalk to handle a mass departure in the receivers’ room, including Squireel White, Cam Seldon, Kaleb Webb, Chas Nimrod, and more.

But still, Heupel sees the silver lining in Nico’s early season buildup. “Complete control and command, the understanding of protections, you know, run checks, whatever it might be and then, you know, the fundamental play within the scope of the pocket to be consistently accurate, be on time with the football, be a part of of us operating at the level that we’re capable of. He has done a great job of continuing to grow throughout the course of this season,” the Vols head coach gave his guy the flower he deserves.

But the question is, have they yet sorted it out? A portal mess looked like a bunch of unanswered questions diving deeper into the spring.

Josh Heupel continues to pitch the portal hope in a messy receivers’ room

The receiver thing has to be a priority, but in reality, it looks like a doomed sideline. Only Chris Brazzell II and Braylon Staley looked to have some gas in their tanks, but they couldn’t save the ride alone. Indeed, Coach Heupel made a desperate move in the portal, catching random receivers out of the pool. But do they serve the purpose? Well, pretty far-fetched as far as the spring game is concerned.

On April 9, Ari Wasserman and Andy Staples came clean on the tough receivers situation. Andy said, “Nico had some overthrow problems, and he had some issues, um, last year… but at the same time, I don’t know that he was working with a full deck of—of elite-level receivers.” Ari interrupted and asked. “Did they get better this year [at receiver]?” Andy took a deep pause and then dished the doubt like confetti: “I don’t know… receiver—there’s a young receiver on the team that I think has a chance to be very good [Mike Matthews].”

Matthews, in reality, is far from hitting the ball yet in the spring. Amari Jefferson from Alabama and RB Star Thomas can evoke relaxation to some extent, but it still doesn’t look like a team worth taking a stand for. But the good thing is that Heupel is more than open to embracing more receivers in the upcoming spring portal. They have six scholarship wide receivers in the room, and among them, a few are injury-bugged. History suggests that won’t be enough. However, Heupel can address that in the upcoming portal window.