With five minutes remaining in the first half against Auburn, Josh Heupel had a tough decision to make. The Tennessee coach chose to bench his five-star quarterback, and it proved to be the correct call as it sparked the Vols' offense to a 24-14 win over Auburn. Sophomore George MacIntyre took over for Faizon Brandon, and though he wasn't asked to do much, he was effective when called upon.
MacIntyre completed 8 of 10 passing attempts for 86 yards, and one of those two incompletions was a drop on a perfect throw. That threat of the pass -- limited as it may have been -- opened up the ground game just enough for DeSean Bishop to run wild on the Auburn defense. Bishop exploded for 213 yards and a trio of touchdowns as the Vols averaged 5.0 yards per carry.
The question now is, quite simply, what comes next? "We'll go watch the tape," Heupel said after the game. "Faizon ultimately didn't play his best football.
The turnover on the sideline and some of the things, just progressions. I've said it a bunch to you guys. We're gonna need them both throughout the year." In 2021, Heupel dealt with a similar scenario.
Joe Milton won the starting job out of camp, but he was replaced by Hooker midway through the Vols' Week 2 game against Pittsburgh. Hooker took the job and ran with it, becoming one of Tennessee's best quarterbacks of the 21st century. Of course, there are a few key differences that don't apply here.
The first is that Milton left the Pitt game after getting banged up, not necessarily due to his ineffectiveness -- although he did have some bad misses through the air. The biggest difference is that Hooker wasn't a player Heupel recruited to Tennessee, and he certainly wasn't a five-star freshman making big money. Prior to his firing, Jeremy Pruitt landed Hooker on the transfer market, and Heupel's staff recruited Milton to Knoxville.
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