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Tennessee Football Gets Good News on Coveted Star on Tuesday
The Tennessee Volunteers have secured seven commits in the Class of 2026, including three-star EDGE C.J. Edwards, and head coach Josh Heupel and his staff received even more good news about another defensive end prospect.
Four-star EDGE Dre Quinn included the Volunteers in his top six schools. The Norcross, Georgia, prospect revealed his finalists on April 29, narrowing his list to Clemson, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, Tennessee and Texas.
Quinn carries an On3 Industry Ranking of No. 31 at EDGE and No. 267 overall in the 2026 class. The prospect holds 27 scholarship offers and has finalized an official visit to Tennessee set for June 20.
“I am down to Clemson, Georgia, Notre Dame, Tennessee and Texas along with Georgia Tech,” Quinn told On3. “I feel best about these schools.
They share the same principles, I have relationships with each school and I think that all six fit me. It was hard to get it down to six and there are a lot of great schools that I like, but I have visited a lot of schools and these stand out.” NEWS: Norcross (Ga.) 4-star EDGE Dre Quinn narrows his list down to Clemson, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, Tennessee and Texas.
Quinn’s official visit slate includes stops at Clemson on May 30, Georgia on June 6, following a visit to Georgia Tech on April 26, Texas on June 13 and Notre Dame on June 3. He is expected to make his decision soon after his Knoxville visit. “I want to commit in late June or early in July,” He added. “Official visits will be big for sure. It is not all about the NIL or money, so getting to see everything and hear everything on the official visits will be important to me. Getting a real feel for the college each weekend is important too.
“I know a final decision will be hard. These six schools check a lot of boxes for me, so I will really have to look at the pros and cons after the official visits.”
Tennessee HC Josh Heupel just showed he’s done worrying about Nico Iamaleava
He’s off to UCLA and there’s a new projected starting quarterback in town. That’s what’s surely on the mind of Tennessee Vols head coach Josh Heupel these days. Heupel has had a much busier spring than anyone could have ever imagined.
As you all know by now, Nico Iamaleava has left Tennessee for a return home to play for the UCLA Bruins. It’s not news to say that a lot of people remain pretty ticked off with Nico for making this decision. However, Heupel is ready to move forward and put everything in the past, especially with Joey Aguilar being Knoxville-bound.
In a new interview this week, the Vols leader was asked about what happened with Iamaleava and how it has impacted his team. Heupel’s response is one that continues to make a lot of people in Knoxville pretty darn happy:
“Let’s start calling it the Joey Aguilar Situation”
Josh Heupel is confident Joey Aguilar will get the job done for Tennessee
“Well let’s start calling it the Joey Aguilar situation,” Heupel said with passion. “At the end of the day that’s just the landscape (in college football). You’re not going to keep everybody. You’ve got opportunities to put your roster together. I feel like we’ve got a team that’s accountable, connected, works hard, competes hard and we’re built to win. Now we’ve got to go earn it every single day. We’ve got some new pieces we’ve got to get onboarded here in May – that’s the nature of college football. We’ll get ready, keep competing and keep growing.”
That’s quite the message from Heupel. At the end of the day, as he’s said multiple times over the last few weeks, there’s no one bigger than the program. Iamaleava made the tough decision to leave town and play closer to home. We’re not going to get into all of the drama surrounding NIL talks there.
Once he left the program, Heupel shifted his focus to finding someone else to run his offense and funny enough, a QB trade was posted with Aguilar signing with UT. He’ll now have the chance to push for the starting job, though Jake Merklinger isn’t just going to hand it over to him.
Once Aguilar gets to campus, he’ll hit the ground running in learning the playbook and trying to build some chemistry with his receivers, of course including former 5-star signee Mike Matthews. The time is now for people to start backing Aguilar and Heupel is ready for him to prove a lot of his doubters wrong once the campaign gets here.
