Will Tennessee officially name a starter this week? Maybe. The real question: will that starter be the starter this year?
We’ve looked at this before, and it’s worth repeating: in the post-Fulmer era, the only quarterbacks to take every meaningful snap in a season were Jonathan Crompton in 2009, and Josh Dobbs in 2015-16. Tyler Bray was briefly benched in the 2012 Vanderbilt game; your mileage may vary on how meaningful those snaps were. Even if you count that team on this list, you’re still looking at eight of the last twelve years when Tennessee used at least two quarterbacks.
Let’s say this team does get one guy. And let’s say that one guy stays healthy all year, and plays well enough to still be the guy in December. Let’s say QB1 is around the range we’ve seen from Josh Heupel teams before: Dillon Gabriel averaged 41.3 passes per game last year, way up from the 30.6 he averaged in 2019. McKenzie Milton averaged 31 per game before he got hurt the year before. Drew Lock was at 32.2 in 2017 and 36.2 in 2016.
So conservatively, let’s say QB1 throws it 30 times per game at Tennessee this fall. If he does that every Saturday, staying healthy and keeping his job throughout the season, and Tennessee plays in a bowl game? Those 390 passing attempts would rank fifth in career passes among Tennessee quarterbacks in the post-Fulmer era.
Maybe we’ll get excellence along the way. But first, what’s the value of simple stability?
Consider this: in Phillip Fulmer’s tenure, the Vols threw it more than 5,500 times from 1993-2008. And 85% of those passing attempts came from these guys (data via sports-reference):
- Peyton Manning 24.8%
- Casey Clausen 22.8%
- Erik Ainge 21.7%
- Tee Martin 10.6%
- Heath Shuler 5.1%
That’s three 3+ year starters, plus two years of the guy who won a natty and a year of the Heisman runner-up. That’s pretty good.
And the guys who were next – Jonathan Crompton at 4.4%, Rick Clausen at 3.6% – had their moments, even if Crompton’s came after Fulmer was gone.
In comparison, here’s the current percentage of passing attempts at Tennessee in the post-Fulmer era:
- Josh Dobbs 22.6%
- Tyler Bray 20.9%
- Jarrett Guarantano 18.3%
- Justin Worley 12.6%
- Jonathan Crompton 8.7%
That’s 83.1% of Tennessee’s passes since 2009. And only the top two – who account for less than half of what we’ve seen in the last dozen years – were long-term answers. The next two guys on this list – Matt Simms at 5.8%, Quinten Dormady at 4% – didn’t make it an entire year as a starter. And all of the non-JG options we’ve tried the last two years – Maurer, Shrout, Bailey – didn’t get or create enough opportunity for themselves to move any farther up the list.
Crompton threw it 384 times in 2009. If this year’s QB1 hits 385 – 29.6 per game in Heupel’s offense – they’d crack the top five on the career list post-Fulmer, and trail only Tyler Bray’s 451 (37.6 per game) from 2012 among single-season passing attempts since 2009.
If we get something truly great from QB1, hallelujah. But just getting something good enough to start every Saturday – and keeping it healthy – would provide stability we haven’t seen here in a very long time. To be sure, Dobbs had it, and obviously did plenty of truly great with his legs too. But QB1 doesn’t have to be Dobbs or 2012 Bray to be the most welcome sight we’ve seen at the helm in a very long time.