Joey Aguilar makes interesting comments about Tennessee practices

Tennessee’s regular season came to a close over the weekend with an embarrassing, blowout loss to Vanderbilt in Knoxville. The Volunteers were tied up with the Commodores at halftime, but Vandy turned it on late and shut Tennessee down to win by 21 points.

The offense was nowhere to be found after the second quarter. Tennessee failed to get anything going on the ground and Joey Aguilar was under constant pressure as Vanderbilt ramped up the pressure. Aguilar was spot on when he had time to operate, making Tennessee look like the offense we had seen all season long.

The Appalachian State transfer was a major spark for the Tennessee offense this season, bringing back the Vols’ downfield attack. Aguilar joined the team in May following the Nico Iamaleava situation, but quickly became a team leader and a guy that his teammates gravitated to, which makes his comments following the Vanderbilt game pretty interesting.

Aguilar noted that Tennessee practices weren’t always as intense as they should have been, which is something we’ve heard over the past month.

“Some days we’re really good at practice,” Aguilar said. “Some days we’re a little slower. And I mean, that carries on to game days. So, I think what we got to do is just attack the week like it’s your last. I mean, sometimes it could be your last, sometimes it can’t.

“We’re grateful that we are able to keep on going, but I think we just got to attack practice every day more seriously. And not saying that we don’t, but I mean there’s an extra level of urgency that we can have attacking practice week by week. So I would just say that.”

Josh Heupel has vaguely referenced how his team performed in the week of practice after losses before. Clearly, Aguilar felt that and showed some frustration following Saturday’s loss.

There was this last month from Chris Low, too.

One source told On3 that one of the biggest concerns among some within the program is that the practices throughout the entire year, not just the season, aren’t physical enough and that there’s not enough contact.

“You gotta hit and do enough of it if you’re going to be good at it, both tackling and blocking,” the source said. (Chris Low, On3 Sports)

Aguilar still has bowl practices ahead of him at least — perhaps more. He joined Diego Pavia’s lawsuit against the NCAA with hopes of getting another year of eligibility for 2026.

“I guess we’ll see,” Aguilar said of the possibility. “I’m not sure.”

Aguilar finished the regular season with 3,444 yards and 24 touchdown passes. He connected on 66.8 percent of his passes and averaged 8.9 yards per attempt, which both were career highs.