Tennessee’s starting quarterback battle will likely be decided on Saturday during the Vols’ final fall scrimmage.

And On3’s Pete Nakos has “high confidence” in his prediction for who will be named Tennessee’s starter.

Nakos “called his shot” on Thursday, predicting that true freshman Faizon Brandon will beat out redshirt freshman George MacIntyre for the job.

“Sources told On3 that Brandon was the better quarterback in Tennessee’s first preseason scrimmage, completing multiple deep balls downfield and showing a knack for making plays in live-play situations,” wrote Nakos. “Midway through camp, Brandon has the edge in the competition. But do not rule out head coach Josh Heupel playing both quarterbacks in Week 1 against Furman before a Week 2 road test at Georgia Tech. Calling My Shot: Faizon Brandon Confidence Level: High.”

Based on all of the recent intel around the quarterback situation, it sounds like the only way Brandon doesn’t win the job is if he has a terrible scrimmage on Saturday and MacIntyre is lights out.

Faizon Brandon is separating himself in Tennessee’s quarterback battle

Brandon, according to reports, has started to “separate himself” in the battle thanks in part to his ability to throw the ball down the field.

“It was nice to get a little bit of those deep passes to see (in practice),” said Riley Haltom during his practice report this week on WNML’s SportsTalk. “You don’t get to see that very often in the open media period. But I guess since it was the last one, they decided to throw us a little bit of a bone there. And it matches a lot of what I was told about what happened in Tennessee’s scrimmage. And that was that Faizon Brandon, the way he separated himself in that scrimmage, was his willingness and ability to connect with the deep ball. And that seemed to play out on the practice field as well.

“Faizon Brandon, I would say, had the better day there. Again, George MacIntyre did not have a bad day. It wasn’t like he was just missing wildly, but he didn’t connect on every one. And you had a couple of overthrows there where George just was not totally on target. Faizon Brandon, however, had a really good day. He did a lot of really good things that you feel good about — that you could potentially go into the season having a quarterback that is willing and able to stretch the field. So, not saying this quarterback competition is done, but I am starting to feel like Faizon Brandon is separating himself a little bit. Which we were kind of waiting on him to do the first two weeks of practice and he never really did. But it seems like after that scrimmage, we’re getting a little bit of that separation here for Faizon Brandon.”

Even if Brandon is named the starter for the opener, he’ll have to perform well on Saturdays to keep the job.