Is Nico Iamaleava poised for his breakout game at Tennessee?
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Chris Low, ESPN Senior Writer
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Nico Iamaleava, wearing his trademark glasses and an easy smile, sat in the Peyton Manning Room last week at Tennessee‘s Anderson Training Center.
All around the Volunteers redshirt freshman quarterback were pictures, mementos and reminders of the best — and most celebrated — quarterback ever to play at Tennessee.
“He texts me before every game and then texts me after every game, whether it’s a good game or bad game,” Iamaleava said of Manning. “It’s not that he’s giving me tips so much, but more, ‘Great job. Keep working. I’m here whenever you need me.'”
When Iamaleava interacts with Manning outside the season, it tends to be a bit different.
“He might send me a YouTube clip of an NFL game and how he breaks it down and what I see,” Iamaleava said. “If you ask him something, he’s got the answer.
“With Peyton, it’s always the little things.”
Not since Manning three decades ago has a football player walked onto Tennessee’s campus with expectations as lofty as those Iamaleava carried with him when he made the trek from Long Beach, California, to Rocky Top last year as a true freshman. That’s fitting because Tennessee will play in its biggest game in decades Saturday night (8 ET, ABC/ESPN+) when it travels to Ohio State for the first round of the College Football Playoff.
“The first time I met Nico in person, I knew he had the right stuff,” said Tennessee senior Cooper Mays, an All-SEC center. “There wasn’t any entitlement, none of that. He wanted to earn everything, wanted to grow as a player, and you’ve seen him do that. I think this is probably the best it’s been yet, his comfort level and his command, and I think the big thing for us is we’ve been better at protecting him.
“He has that experience now and is just able to play ball, and that’s going to exponentially increase how comfortable you are.”
But Iamaleava has always seemed comfortable in his own skin despite the dizzying hype surrounding him during his recruitment. He was a rock star before he ever took a snap in college. Fans at Tennessee baseball games would chant his name when he and his family would drop by Lindsey Nelson Stadium on visits. He was a five-star recruit with a big arm and even bigger NIL price tag.
Iamaleava’s reported $8 million deal, which escalates every year and averages at least $2 million annually, was unprecedented for a high school prospect when he signed in 2022 with Spyre Sports. Tennessee was on the front end of NIL collectives, brokering high-priced deals, and the commitment to Iamaleava changed the market as seven-figure deals are now commonplace among highly recruited quarterbacks.
“I was fortunate enough to be a part of that first class when NIL came out, and maybe it opened the door for others, but I wouldn’t say I take pride in it,” Iamaleava said. “I take pride in what I can do to help our team.”
So far, it’s difficult to argue with Tennessee’s investment, even with Iamaleava putting up pedestrian individual numbers this season against the Vols’ toughest competition. He accounted for just nine touchdowns and turned the ball over six times in eight SEC games.
Tennessee coach Josh Heupel wasn’t a numbers guy when he played quarterback at Oklahoma, so stats don’t concern him about Iamaleava, who threw eight of his 19 touchdown passes in his last two games.
“The primary goal for Nico, the No. 1 thing and the only thing, is to win. And to me, that’s how quarterbacks get measured,” said Heupel, who led Oklahoma to a national championship in 2000. “Numbers are one thing, but it’s about wins.”
Iamaleava already has etched his name into the Tennessee record books. He’s the first freshman (true freshman or redshirt) in school history to win 10 games as a starter. He’s also one of two freshman quarterbacks, along with Arizona State’s Sam Leavitt, to lead his team to the first 12-team playoff.
“This is why I came to Tennessee, not to break records or anything else like that, or to be known by all the fans out there,” Iamaleava said. “It’s about this team, my brothers. We want to win that last game of the season. I think I’ve gotten better each game. I still feel like I haven’t played my best game yet, really our whole team, but we’re looking to put that together.”
Iamaleava has gotten bigger and stronger since arriving on campus after facing questions about his durability and size coming out of high school.
The 6-foot-6 Iamaleava was gangly as a high school senior and admits he has been hit more this season than he was in his entire high school career. Also an outstanding volleyball player in high school, Iamaleava — who has beefed up to 215 pounds — has put to rest any questions about his toughness.
He took some wicked shots early in the season, but kept getting up. After suffering a concussion in the first half of the Vols’ Nov. 9 game against Mississippi State and missing the second half, he was back on the field the next week against Georgia after passing the concussion protocol.
“Your football team is going to take on the traits of your quarterback, and you’re talking about toughness,” Heupel said. “When your football team sees that guy playing with physical toughness and mental toughness too, it garners a ton of respect from the guys around him.
“I also think it raises the level of play of the guys around him.”
Former UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton has worked closely with Iamaleava the past two seasons as an offensive analyst at Tennessee. Milton was recently hired to return to UCF as quarterbacks coach under Scott Frost, but he will stay on with Tennessee throughout the playoff.
Milton has been impressed with the way Iamaleava came in with an underdog mentality despite all the acclaim — and has kept it.
“He soaks up everything, wants to learn, absorbing everything he can from the coaches and his teammates,” Milton said. “Yeah, he might come in as the top dog, but watching the way he helps bring guys along, maybe guys who are struggling a little bit, while also remaining humble and just being a sponge is the definition of a leader.”
In fact, Iamaleava was named to the team’s leadership council this season despite having just one career start: the 35-0 Citrus Bowl victory over Iowa to cap his true freshman season.
“It was really cool to see the way his demeanor sharpened, especially when it was time to take over the team,” said Tennessee senior linebacker and team captain Keenan Pili, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in October. “Nico’s not a rah-rah guy. He’s more the kind of guy that takes a teammate aside and tells him what the team needs out of him.
“He’s more on the quiet side, but he’s loud when he needs to be.”
Some restless fans started getting loud earlier this season when the Vols were puttering along on offense, with explosive pass plays few and far between. Iamaleava was being sacked more than he was throwing touchdowns.
In one five-game stretch, he was sacked 15 times. Some of that was because he was holding on to the ball too long, but the Vols also had trouble protecting him off the edge, and his receivers weren’t getting open or making key catches.
In Tennessee’s 19-14 road loss to Arkansas on Oct. 5, Iamaleava got his best dose yet of what it’s like to play quarterback in the SEC when things don’t go right. The Vols had one last play from the Hogs’ 20-yard line, and as Iamaleava scrambled right, he ran out of bounds as time expired instead of taking a shot at the end zone.
It was a young quarterback, in only his second start against an SEC team, letting the moment get the better of him. And in the aftermath of that loss, with fans lighting up the message boards and talk radio shows, Iamaleava recalled what former Tennessee quarterbacks Hendon Hooker and Joe Milton told him.
“Both of them told me that the fans can be cruel sometimes and they’re on your side when you’re doing good and they can be against you when you do something bad,” Iamaleava said. “They said whether it’s good or bad to stay focused on your team … and stay off social media.”
Iamaleava insists he has followed that advice.
Told that he may be the only 20-year-old on the planet not on some form of social media, Iamaleava smiled and said, “Nah man, I’ve got it downloaded, but my pops never wanted me to have social media, so I kind of just stay off it and stick to my video games.”
Video games were how Iamaleava was introduced to football; as a toddler he used to sit in the lap of his father while he played Madden. Iamaleava is one of eight siblings, ranging in age from 23 to 11, and family is extremely important. He said the entire family was together for Thanksgiving, and they all drove to Nashville that Saturday for the Vanderbilt game. His parents have been to every Vols game this season.
“My dad always forced us to compete, to learn how to get that competitive edge,” Iamaleava said. “I think that’s one of the reasons I have such a great bond with my teammates because of how family-oriented it was in our house growing up. You don’t back down, but you treat people the way you want to be treated.”
Soon after word of Iamaleava’s NIL contract surfaced, he knew the stakes. So did his father, Big Nic, whose advice to his son was simple.
“He just told me that it all starts over when I get here,” Iamaleava said. “None of that high school stuff matters. Any accolades that happened in the past … that it all starts over again. The work starts over. So as soon as I got here, I put my head down and went to work.
“All that other noise, I let it go. It wasn’t going to get in my way.”
Some young players are swallowed up by the hype. Others thrive. Heupel said he knew during the recruiting process what he was getting in Iamaleava.
“There’s no doubt that he’s heard those expectations and has to live with them every single day,” Heupel said. “But what’s really unique about Nico is that he can be himself and go through his journey as a quarterback growing into the player that he’s going to be capable of, which is elite, but he can handle everything else that’s going on around him.
“It’s really rare for a young quarterback to be able to do that.”
Mays, who comes from a family of Tennessee offensive linemen, admits he’s no quarterback guru. But he can usually sniff out who’s a competitor and who’s serious about putting in the work that it takes to be elite.
The Vols were finishing their Orange Bowl preparations in December 2022 when Iamaleava, who was among a group of incoming freshmen already on campus, walked up to Mays after practice.
Immediately, Iamaleava started asking Mays why he was turning the protection a certain way.
“For him to be invested enough to come up and ask me those things, just showing that kind of humility in and of itself, told me that he was going to figure stuff out here early,” Mays said. “Obviously, you’re going to wonder about any five-star kid who gets that much attention, how he’s going to react to not being the best player on the team anymore. A lot of times it’s hard for those kids to adjust, but not Nico.”
Heupel added: “Players know faster than anybody who the real players are and who’s a facade.”
Over time, Iamaleava has become accustomed to his celebrity status in Knoxville. He quips that he could “hide in Cali.” Even during classes, students will occasionally come up and want pictures or autographs.
He joked that teammates Ethan Davis and Cam Seldon have acted as his bodyguards.
“But it’s all cool. You know that’s just part of the deal,” he said.
Having a chance to learn under Milton a year ago and not have to be the starter right away was a huge benefit for Iamaleava, who played some but didn’t see any meaningful action until the bowl game.
Of course, as this season began, the expectation was that he would be the reincarnation of Manning. And in reality, their numbers as second-year players were similar. As a sophomore, Manning passed for 2,954 yards, 22 touchdowns and 4 interceptions, while Iamaleava has 2,512 yards, 19 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. But Manning also had an offensive line in which all five starters went on to play in the NFL, as well as future NFL receivers Joey Kent and Marcus Nash.
This year’s Tennessee team has played more to its defense, which allowed 20 or more points only once in 12 games, and leaned heavily on running back Dylan Sampson, who rushed for 1,485 yards and 22 touchdowns on his way to SEC Offensive Player of the Year honors. Iamaleava attempted 30 or more passes only twice all season and passed for more than 200 yards in only two of eight SEC contests.
“He’s still young in the sense that he can get so much better in certain areas,” said Milton, who passed for 4,037 yards and 37 touchdowns in his sophomore season at UCF. “But the thing about him, and you’re talking about a kid who has everything, is that he’s as eager to learn as he is talented, and I think he’s one of the most talented, if not the most talented kid that I’ve ever been around.”
Any time he’s felt even the slightest tinge of pressure this season, Iamaleava has gone back to his days when he was playing flag football as a 6-year-old.
“Football is a fun sport. I think the more you enjoy it, the more you have fun with it,” Iamaleava said. “The less stress you feel with all the outside noise and stuff like that, just going back to when you were a little kid playing the game you love, that’s when it’s the most fun.
“I feel like I have to remind myself at times that it’s a game at the end of the day.”
All the while knowing the game of his life, at least to this point, awaits in Columbus, Ohio, on Saturday.
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Alden Gonzalez
Less than two years ago, the Texas Rangers rode a potent offense to the first World Series championship in franchise history. Since then — on paper, at least — that group has only improved. Established sluggers were brought in. Young, promising players accrued more seasoning. Core stars remained in their primes. And yet, over the course of 10 baseball months since hoisting the trophy on Nov. 1, 2023, the Rangers have fielded one of the sport’s worst offenses, a sobering reality that continues to vex team officials.
The circumstances of 2025 have only intensified the frustration.
The Rangers have received Cy Young-caliber production from a rejuvenated Jacob deGrom, who had compiled fewer than 200 innings over the last four years. Their rotation went into the All-Star break with the second-lowest ERA in the major leagues. Their bullpen, practically rebuilt over one offseason, ranked third. Their defense (16 outs above average) was elite, as was their baserunning (10.8 runs above average). But the Rangers, despite back-to-back wins over the first-place Detroit Tigers this weekend, find themselves only a game over .500, seven games out of first place and 2 1/2 games out of a playoff spot, because they can’t do the one thing they were expected to do best: hit.
Bret Boone, the former All-Star second baseman who was installed as the team’s hitting coach in early May, has been tasked with fixing that — but he is also realistic.
“I’m not gonna come in here and ‘abracadabra,'” he said, waving his right arm as if wielding a magic wand. “That’s the big misnomer about hitting. Hitting is really hard. The bottom line is — you can prepare as much as you want, but when you get in the box, it’s just you and that pitcher.”
Boone isn’t here for an overhaul. He’s here to encourage. To simplify. One of his prevailing messages to players, he said, has been to “watch the game” — to put away the tablet, come up to the dugout railing and see how opposing pitchers are attacking other hitters. Boone has emphasized the importance of approaching each game with a plan, whatever that might be. He has occasionally blocked off the indoor batting cage, worried that hitters of this generation swing too often. And he has encouraged conversation.
“That’s what great offenses do,” Boone said. “They’re constantly interacting.”
There might not be a more interesting team to watch ahead of the trade deadline. Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young is not one to give up on a season, particularly with a team this talented. But one more rough patch might force him to, at least to an extent. Young would prefer to add, but it’s hard to envision a way to improve the lineup from outside.
He won’t find a better middle-infield combo than Corey Seager and Marcus Semien. Or a better outfield than Evan Carter, Wyatt Langford and Adolis García. Or a better designated hitter than Joc Pederson, who could return from a hand fracture before the end of this month. Or a better catching tandem than Jonah Heim and Kyle Higashioka. Or a better crop of corner infielders than Josh Smith, Josh Jung and Jake Burger, though Burger returned to the injured list with a quad strain earlier this week.
Any offensive improvement will probably come internally, signs of which emerged recently. The Rangers got Carter back from the bereavement list on July 4 and Langford back from the IL on July 5, making their lineup as close to whole as it has been all year. Over the ensuing week, they scored 53 runs in seven games heading into the All-Star break. Maybe it was a sign of things to come. Or, if recent history is any indication, a short burst of false promise.
Below is a look at five numbers that define the Rangers’ surprising offensive downturn.
1. Semien and Seager’s combined OPS on June 22: .671
The Rangers’ rise began in late November 2021, just before the sport shut down in the leadup to an ugly labor fight, when Semien and Seager secured contracts totaling $500 million. Their deals came within days of each other, ensuring they’d share a middle infield for years to come. And when the Rangers won it all in 2023, it was Semien and Seager hitting back-to-back at the top of the lineup, setting the tone for an offense that overwhelmed teams in October.
Some things haven’t changed: Semien and Seager are still the driving forces of this offense. For most of this year, though, that hasn’t been a positive thing.
As late as June 22, with the Rangers 78 games into their season, Semien and Seager had combined for a .229/.312/.359 slash line. Their combined OPS, .671, sat 44 points below the league average.
Semien, traditionally a slow starter, finished the month of May with the second-lowest slugging percentage among qualified hitters and at times batted ninth. Seager made two separate trips to the IL because of the same right hamstring strain and eventually fell out of whack, batting .188 in June. If the Rangers are looking for good news, though, it’s that Semien and Seager finally got going in the leadup to the All-Star break. From June 23 to July 13 — with Seager and Semien settling into the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively — they slashed .313/.418/.592.
“We all want to be on at the same time,” Semien said. “It’ll never happen like that, but if Corey and I are on, this team goes.”
2. Texas’ slash line against fastballs: .236/.312/.372
One of the Rangers’ coaches recently recalled some of the most iconic homers from the team’s championship run — García’s grand slam in the American League Championship Series, and Seager’s blasts against Houston’s Cristian Javier and Arizona’s Paul Sewald.
They all had one thing in common: turning on high fastballs and pulverizing them.
The Rangers were one of the best fastball-hitting teams in 2023. That has been far from the case since. The Rangers slashed just .233/.315/.379 against four-seam fastballs in 2024, worse than every team except the Chicago White Sox, who lost a record 121 games. This year, it isn’t much better.
The Rangers’ slash line against four-seamers was only .236/.312/.372 heading into the All-Star break, good for a .684 OPS that ranked 27th in the majors. Burger (.473 OPS), Heim (.500), Pederson (.620) and García (.660) were especially vulnerable. Against four-seamers that were elevated, no team had a higher swing-and-miss percentage than Texas (55.5%).
Being in position to hit the fastball has been one of the points of emphasis from the hitting coaches in recent weeks. It doesn’t mean every hitter will look fastball first — approaches are individualistic and often alter based on matchups — but it does underscore the importance of narrowing the focus. Opposing pitchers are too good these days. Hitters can’t account for everything. And the best offenses are able to take something away from an opposing pitching staff. The 2023 team took away the fastball as an attack weapon. But the Rangers, in the words of one staffer, have been “stuck in between” ever since — late on velocity and off balance against spin.
It’s a tough way to live.
3. Rangers’ chase rate with RISP: 32.2%
When asked about the biggest difference between the 2023 offense and the 2025 version, Rangers manager Bruce Bochy mentioned the approach in run-scoring opportunities. The team from two years ago, he said, was much better at situational hitting with runners in scoring position. This team seems to chase too much in those situations.
The numbers bear that out.
The Rangers’ chase percentage with runners in scoring position was 32.2% coming out of the All-Star break, fourth worst in the major leagues. Their strikeout percentage, 23.7%, was fifth worst. Their slash line, .230/.304/.357, was down there with some of the worst teams in the sport. The Rangers’ lineup has some strikeout in it — with Burger, Jung and García at the top of that list — but team officials believe it should be much better adept at driving in runs.
Not being able to has led to some dramatic highs and lows. The Rangers have scored eight or more runs 13 times, including two instances over a 72-hour stretch in which they hung 16 runs on the Minnesota Twins. But there have also been 25 games in which they have been held to one or zero runs, third most in the major leagues.
4. Carter’s and Jung’s wOBA ranks since 2023: 205th and 264th
Entering the second half, 380 players had accumulated at least 300 plate appearances since the start of the 2024 season. Among them, Carter ranked 205th with a .308 weighted on-base average. Jung, with a .295 wOBA, ranked 264th.
Jung looked like a budding star at third base in 2023, making the All-Star team and finishing fourth in AL Rookie of the Year voting. Carter came up in September and surged throughout October. With those two and Langford, Texas’ draft pick at No. 4 earlier that summer, the Rangers had three young, controllable players they could surround with their long list of established stars. It seemed unfair, yet it hasn’t come close to panning out.
Carter struggled through the first two months of 2024, was diagnosed with a stress reaction in his back, couldn’t fully ramp back up, got shut down for good in August, didn’t look right the following spring training and started the 2025 season in Triple-A. Carter appeared in just 45 games in 2024. Jung played in only one more, after a wrist fracture held him out for most of the first four months.
Then came a stretch of 101 plate appearances this June during which Jung notched just 15 hits, 5 walks and 27 strikeouts. Eight of those strikeouts came over his last four games, when his chase rate jumped to 45.9% — 12 percentage points above his career average. A Rangers source described him as “defeated” and “lost.”
On the second day of July, Jung was optioned to Triple-A Round Rock.
5. Rangers’ wRC+ since 2023: 94
There might not be a better representation of the Rangers’ drop-off than weighted runs created plus, which attempts to quantify total offensive value by gathering every relevant statistic, assigning each its proper weight and synthesizing it all into one convenient, park- and league-adjusted metric. The league average is 100, with every tick above or below representing a percentage point better or worse than the rest of the sport at that time.
During the 2023 regular season, the Rangers put together 117 wRC+. In other words, their offense was 17% above league average. Only one team — the Atlanta Braves, another currently underperforming club — was better. From the start of the 2024 season to the start of the 2025 All-Star break, the Rangers compiled a 94 wRC+, putting them 6% below the league average. Only eight teams were worse.
Five every-day players from that 2023 team are still on the Rangers — not counting Carter, who didn’t come up until September — and all of them have seen their OPS drop by more than 100 points. Seager? 1.013 OPS in 2023, .856 OPS since. García? .836 in 2023, .681 since. Heim? .755 in 2023, .605 since. Semien? .826 in 2023, .693 since. Jung? .781 in 2023, .676 since.
For Young, it’s not just the individual performances but how they coalesce.
“What we had was just a really balanced approach and a collective mindset in terms of the way we were attacking the opposing pitcher,” Young, in his fifth season as the head of baseball operations, said of the 2023 offense. “We had other guys who could grind out at-bats. We had guys who could hit for average. We had guys who slugged. And I still think we have that in our lineup. It’s just, for whatever reason, a number of them have had bad years to start the season. When you have a couple guys having down years, you can survive. When you have a majority of them having down years, it’s magnified. And then guys start pressing and putting pressure on themselves, and it makes it even harder.”
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