The general feeling that has emerged over the last week is that true freshman Faizon Brandon is starting to separate himself in the Tennessee Vols’ starting quarterback competition.

Redshirt freshman George MacIntyre has played well, but Brandon is reportedly making more plays.

The latest practice report on WNML’s SportsTalk from Riley Haltom, who was at Tennessee’s practice on Tuesday (which is the last one with portions open to the media), seems to confirm that Brandon is pulling away in the starting quarterback battle.

“It was nice to get a little bit of those deep passes to see (in practice),” said Haltom. “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.”

Faizon Brandon hasn’t officially won the job yet

Nothing is settled in this battle just yet. The final fall scrimmage on August 22 is important and will likely determine who starts at quarterback in the first game of the season for Tennessee.

But if it continues to trend the way it has over the last week, it’ll be Brandon who’s under center in the season-opener against Furman.

Now, he’ll have to perform well under the lights to keep the job — no one in this competition has proved anything on Saturdays yet — but it certainly feels like Brandon is going to get the first shot this season to be “the guy” for the Volunteers.