The secret to quickly unlocking Nico Iamaleava's talent has been discovered, but Tennessee might not be willing to do it
Tennessee Vols redshirt freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava has had an up-and-down start to the 2024 season. Iamaleava is 6-1 as a starter this season with wins against Alabama and Florida. The California native has been good — wins are ultimately all that matter — but he's still got a long way to go before he […]
Tennessee Vols redshirt freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava has had an up-and-down start to the 2024 season.
Iamaleava is 6-1 as a starter this season with wins against Alabama and Florida. The California native has been good — wins are ultimately all that matter — but he's still got a long way to go before he reaches his ceiling.
The former five-star recruit has had a few moments where he looks like a future first round NFL draft pick. Iamaleava's throw to Chris Brazzell in the back of the end zone against Alabama, for example, was elite.
Iamaleava's had several of those moments this season, including a 66 yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Dont'e Thornton on the road against Oklahoma.
There have also been some moments from Iamaleava where he looks like a young quarterback. He's been a bit hesitant to let it rip or to take off running at times.
It's the moments when Iamaleava forgets about making mistakes, and instead just plays his game, where he's been at his best.
The second half against Alabama two weeks ago is a perfect example. In the first half, Iamaleava and the UT offense struggled to get anything going and subsequently trailed 7-0 at halftime.
In the second quarter, Iamaleava was briefly forced out of the game after he took a hard hit from Alabama linebacker Justin Jefferson.
Iamaleava said after the game that he felt like that hit woke him up.
Tennessee obviously doesn't want Nico taking hits, but it sounds like that might be the secret to getting the young quarterback going early in games.
The Knoxville News Sentinel's Adam Sparks joined The Tony Basilio Show last week and he mentioned that he recently spoke with Iamaleava's high school coach. The coach told Sparks that contact early in games always made Iamaleava play better in high school.
"I talked to Nico's high school coach last week," said Sparks. "And he brought up an interesting thing. He said that Nico loved to run over people in the open field. And his dad and his whole family — his dad was a coach at the time — early in a game, Nico would take off running, he loved to lower his shoulder and plow over a kid. And everybody in his family would flex and chest bump and they just loved that. Now obviously he doesn't need to be doing that at this level. But they said they learned that Nico plays far better after he [would do] that one time in a game.
"And so they would call a run play, like on the first drive of every game, because once Nico took some hard contact, his throws were better, he was more comfortable, everything was better after that."
Iamaleava is a tough player. And he's put on some good weight since arriving at Tennessee nearly two years ago. But this is still the SEC. Many of the defenders that Iamaleava's facing will be playing on Sundays in the future. Tennessee obviously can't have him getting lit up early in the game just to get him going.
But at the same time, there's clearly something to what Sparks is saying. We saw it in the Alabama game, after all.
The Vols need to find a way to get Nico some contact, without exposing him to injury, early in games. Or maybe before games (I don't know if they want to go with the John Henderson approach, but it's an option).
The secret to quickly unlocking Iamaleava's talent is out there. Now it's up to Josh Heupel and his staff to figure out a way to safely utilize that secret.