Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel won’t name a starting quarterback for at least another couple of weeks.

Redshirt freshman George MacIntyre and true freshman Faizon Brandon are battling for the job. Neither quarterback has much experience, so Heupel will almost certainly want to see how both players perform in Tennessee’s two fall scrimmages (the first of which is on August 15) before naming a starter for the Vols’ season-opener against Furman.

There’s a growing feeling, however, that both quarterbacks will see significant action against Furman regardless of who is named the starter out of fall camp.

SEC insider thinks both Tennessee quarterbacks will play against Furman

On3’s Chris Low joined 104.5 The Zone’s 3HL on Monday and he shared some thoughts on the Vols’ ongoing quarterback battle.

“I’m not saying this — no one’s told me this — I’m not saying they’re going to have a two-quarterback system. I don’t mean that at all,” said Low. “But I would not be at all shocked to see both of those kids play in the first game.

“If there’s not clear separation — and those guys have obviously come out and battled pretty hard and competed — and if it’s pretty close, if you’re the head coach, you probably owe it to the one who’s not the first guy to run out there to at least let him play and see how he does in the game. Because you go to Georgia Tech the second week, and you want to at least know that both of those kids have played in a game situation. You can go back, look at the tape, see how they’ve done, how they fared, and what they did at the line of scrimmage when they saw things that they weren’t expecting. How they adapted. All of those things that you get in a real game that you don’t necessarily get in scrimmages. At least you would see that. I don’t think [Heupel] wants to play two and go [multiple] weeks and play two. I don’t think that’s ideal at all. But I do think there’s a decent chance you’ll see both of them in the first game. And I don’t just mean if Tennessee gets up 35 points that they’re going to put in the other one.”

I think that scenario makes a lot of sense. Whichever quarterback doesn’t win the job out of camp needs to be ready because the team is always one snap away from needing the backup quarterback to play important snaps. There’s also the possibility that whoever starts game one isn’t necessarily the best option (as we saw in 2004 with Brent Schaeffer and Erik Ainge, and in 2021 with Joe Milton and Hendon Hooker).

There’s a lot of nuance in this battle. If it’s close, I think Brandon makes the most sense because of his upside. Brandon, though, has to prove that his upside translates to wins on Saturdays. It could be that MacIntyre proves to be the better option on Saturdays. We just won’t know until these quarterbacks play against quality competition.

Either way, it would certainly be wise for Heupel to make sure both quarterbacks get plenty of non-garbage time snaps against Furman.