A special performance.
All the chatter, all the hype — anyone watching the game on Saturday quickly learned that it was real. Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava absolutely buried Chattanooga before they could even get warmed up, scoring 38 points in the matter of roughly 20 minutes.
Let’s be clear, it was just Chattanooga, but that felt different than last year. The passing attack largely struggled with Joe Milton running the show. The inaccuracy, inconsistency, indecision just never got straightened out. We didn’t see any of that on Saturday from Iamaleava.
A half of work left Iamaleava with 314 passing yards and three touchdowns. Nico exited after hitting 22 of his 28 passing attempts, nearly hitting maximum efficiency on the day.
“He’s the real deal,” Chattanooga head coach Rusty Wright said after the game. “I think the more football that young man plays — I think he fits really well in the scheme of what they want to do. I think he was what they’d been looking for at that spot. Got all the tools, ball comes out of his hand good. I just think the more football he plays, the better he will be. And of course he will because he’s, what, started two games I think now. I think middle of the year, he’ll be rolling pretty good.”
What stood out to me was just how comfortable he was in the pocket. Nothing seemed too fast, nothing overwhelming. Nico stood in and delivered strikes, which was something that was missing from last year’s offense. He showed some touch at times and really worked downfield with ease, which was a lingering question that I personally had just simply because we hadn’t seen it yet.
Iamaleava had a miss here and there and a couple of things to clean up, but the upside was very apparent after an offseason of work.
“Your perspective might be a little bit different than mine, but he knows those things too,” Josh Heupel said of his quarterback. “He is a young player. Came out, played really efficiently, effectively, made plays down the field. There’s some things that he can control and be better and he knows that and he wants that too.”
The hype train is going to roll from here, and for good reason. Iamaleava has already passed his first true test in the bowl game last season, and his next one looms next week in Charlotte against NC State.