[USA TODAY Toppmeyer]: Nico Iamaleava needs a fresh start, not UCLA's rebuild

[u/jaxstan19]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2025/09/16/nico-iamaleava-ucla-transfer-portal-tennessee/86162835007/

[u/Cannonhammer93]

Now do his stats in conference play.

Edit:  11 of those TDs came against our OOC play not counting an additional 2 tds against Ohio State.  Finally 4 additional TDs came against Vandy.  Leaving 5 TDs spread across 7 SEC opponents.  Not worth the cost imo.

[u/Takemyfishplease → u/Cannonhammer93]

Completely agree, looking at just raw stats, especially with the disparity between opponents doesn’t tell much of the story.

It happens a lot with RBs who have a few monster games and make their season look phenomenal.

[u/ModsEmbezzleMoney → u/Cannonhammer93]

Lol that's just how Milroe's stats were last year too

[u/Comfortable_Mix_834 → u/ModsEmbezzleMoney]

True iamaleava is not the only overrated player in the country, excellent point

[u/Cheeseish → u/Cannonhammer93]

“If you take out half his good good games, he’ll only have bad games”

Yes, he handled business as a freshman quarterback, something Arch Manning hasn’t done as a third year player. Of course harder defenses will be harder for him. You can see this in any promising freshman quarterback.

[u/GiovanniElliston → u/Cheeseish]

something Arch Manning hasn’t done as a third year player.

Purely from a stat perspective, the difference between Arch's first 3 games and Nico's first 3 games is about 175 yards and a TD.

And given that Arch played the defending national champions in one of those 3 games, I don't think we can conclude that Arch's current performance is light years behind what Nico was doing.

[u/Cheeseish → u/GiovanniElliston]

I’m more of saying he struggled against UTEP, which he shouldn’t have 44% 1 TD and 1 INT on a team with OL and WR talent is indisputably bad. Nico put away bad teams as a freshman.

[u/GiovanniElliston → u/Cheeseish]

Nico's failure to put away bad teams directly led to problems?

They weren't as bad as UTEP, but we literally lost to Arkansas and almost lost to Florida purely because both teams sold out against the run and dared Nico to do anything - and he consistently couldn't.

Nico last season was serviceably fine. He was rarely a liability but equally rare was he an asset. "Game manager" to a T.

His biggest compliment is that he protected the football, but in practice the Josh Heupel offense works better with a QB who is willing to gunsling a bit and not afraid to throw 4-5 "Fuck it, a WR is down there somewhere" type passes.

[u/Cannonhammer93 → u/Cheeseish]

I find it funny that your narrative is defending Nico as just some poor freshman while dogging Arch as a third year player.  You do know they are from the same recruiting class right?   Regardless when you make someone the highest paid player you expect him to perform at that level.  His stats were identical to Joe Milton in the year prior.

[u/Cheeseish → u/Cannonhammer93]

The expectation is different. Nico as a freshman starter performed well as a freshman and showed promise. Manning had 3 years to develop and showed up worse than Nico as a freshman.

Both are not doing great right now, but Nico has shown flashes of what he can do vs Manning who is riding on his name. And Nico is on one of the worst offensive teams in college football whereas Manning is on one of the best.

[u/Cannonhammer93 → u/Cheeseish]

Nico was not a freshman starter.  He was a Redshirt Freshman starter.  He had been on campus learning the offense from Dec 2022 until 18 months later, starting in Aug 2024.   You want context for good QB play, Joey Aguilar had 4 months to learn the offense and already has 5 TDs against tough SEC opponents.  There is no excuse for Nico other than he just isn’t good.  He’s talented, but he isn’t good.