If former Tennessee Vols quarterback Nico Iamaleava needs any motivation for the 2025 season, then he received it this week from Action Network's Collin Wilson. 

Iamaleava, who left Tennessee via the NCAA transfer portal last month, is expected to start at quarterback for the UCLA Bruins in 2025. 

UCLA opens the season at home against Utah on August 30. 

And Wilson doesn't think that start will go very well for Iamaleava and the Bruins. 

"Eric Bieniemy is out at offensive coordinator for UCLA," said Wilson during an appearance on On3's Andy and Ari. "Tino Sunseri (new UCLA offensive coordinator), a respectable job he's done, he's going to come in and call plays for Nico Iamaleava. The problem with that is [that] Nico had a 25 percent pressure to sack ratio last year for Tennessee. That is God awful. It was absolutely the worst in the SEC. And I think fourth in the entire nation of anybody that had enough quality passing attempts. 

"You're going to give Nico to a 4-2-5 Morgan Scalley defense? It's just not going to work out in his first game for UCLA."

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Interestingly, Wilson also suggested that Iamaleava wasn't a good fit for Tennessee's offense. 

"Nico can't run that (Tennessee) offense," said Wilson. "Hendon Hooker was perfect for that offense. You have to go find somebody who can absolutely throw bullets to the slot and that can hit somebody over the top…and you have to be a little bit nimble. That was a big problem for Nico." 

Wilson clearly doesn't think very highly of Iamaleava. 

And look, it's easy for folks to pile on Iamaleava right now based on the way his time with Tennessee ended. But just a couple of months ago, Vols fans were brimming with excitement at the potential jump that Iamaleava could take in 2025. Iamaleava is still developing as a player, and he's about to enter his third year of college with an 11-3 record as a starter and a College Football Playoff appearance under his belt. I don't know how people are talking about him like he's a bust when he's already accomplished way more than media darling Arch Manning, for example. 

Sure, there are plenty of areas where Iamaleava needs to improve — mostly I think he just needs to play free and easy and trust his abilities/instincts (which was exactly the case with Hooker when he arrived at Tennessee in 2021) — but he obviously has elite traits and skills. It seems like analysts want to view the California native as a finished product before he's even celebrated his 21st birthday. Development isn't linear. Iamaleava still has a lot that he can unlock in order to become a high-level college football quarterback. 

Iamaleava will get a chance to prove Wilson and the other doubters wrong on August 30 against Utah. It's not an ideal debut matchup for Iamaleava, but we've seen plenty of times over the last several years that what we think is going to happen isn't always what actually happens in college football. 

Josh Heupel needs to take a page out of Phillip Fulmer’s playbook for the Tennessee Vols to be successful in 2025

It’s a must