Nico Iamaleava left Tennessee after leading the Vols to the College Football Playoff to chase the money. Flash forward a few months, and he not only ended up making less money this season at UCLA than he would have if he stayed at Tennessee, but he’s also winless through his first three games back home in California. As for Joey Aguilar, who replaced him in a Tennessee-UCLA quarterback proxy trade, well, he’s about to have his first test against Georgia and hasn’t lost yet.
The way things have gone for Iamaleava this season, though, shouldn’t be a shock. He was OK at Tennessee, but he had a lot of work to do to become an NFL prospect. His regression at UCLA is so bad that he might be out of a starting job at the college level next year.
He looks like a completely different quarterback on the West Coast, and I’m sure he’s regretting leaving Knoxville because his college career is headed in the wrong direction. The signs were there, and now it’s clear that Iamaleava was always overrated. His move to UCLA was supposed to prove he was worth the NIL package he was demanding. Instead, it’s proof he’s overpaid.
Nico Iamaleava’s abrupt decline in 2025 highlights how much he needed Tennessee
The numbers tell a story, but not the whole story. Iamaleava has just over 600 passing yards, three touchdown passes and three interceptions thrown. This is against Utah, UNLV and New Mexico, at least two teams he should have torched. In his first three games last year, he had 698 yards with six touchdown passes and two interceptions. He also didn’t play the full game in any of the first three games; he’s played three full games at UCLA.
Regardless of who his coach is, he’s talented enough to beat teams like UNLV and New Mexico and should probably be beating Utah as well. This is alarming because he doesn’t look anything like he did at Tennessee at all. I’m sure the Bruins weapons aren’t nearly as explosive as what Tennessee had either, which doesn’t help. But these struggles stem from more than just Iamaleava.
DeShaun Foster is proving why coaches matter in college
DeShaun Foster was handed a gift when Iamaleava landed on the West Coast after two seasons in Knoxville. Foster got a quarterback that was supposed to be better than Aguilar and provide a spark for this offense. Instead, he doesn’t know how to get the most out of Iamaleava like Heupel did, and that’s clear now.
It’s almost night and day what we’re seeing from Iamaleava, and truthfully, the coach has to be blamed for this. Iamaleava deserves a lot of the blame, for sure, because he should look better than he has, but the fact that this offense can’t score isn’t completely on him. But Foster is the one who failed to rebuild his offensive line over the offseason, and who gave Iamaleava an OC in Tino Sunseri who's never called plays at this level before.
Foster and this offensive coaching staff has to figure out how to ease Iamaleava into this offense and quickly. Only scoring 10 points to New Mexico is a serious problem. I don’t have the answer, and it’s clear UCLA doesn’t either. Foster went into this game teetering on the hot seat, now he can’t avoid it. And if things continue to spiral, he’ll be looking for a new job by the end of the season. He chose to give up on Aguilar before he had a chance and now he looks even worse for turning to Iamaleava when he didn’t have to.
Can Nico Iamaleava salvage his image after a UCLA disaster-class?
The only way Iamaleava can save his college football career is if he finds some humility. He’s trending toward what happened with Malachi Nelson. While Nelson’s ego wasn’t nearly as inflated as Iamaleava’s, he was a five-star quarterback that never lived up to the hype. When Iamaleava was at Tennessee, he had a chance to live up to the expectations.
Now he’ll end up becoming one of the biggest what-ifs in college football. There’s a chance he can turn things around, but he won’t be able to do it at UCLA. And truthfully, players that transfer multiple times don’t usually end up getting better after they move on.
It feels like only Lincoln Riley will be a good enough coach to turn Iamaleava into an NFL prospect, but Riley may not want to have his job aligned with Iamaleava’s success. That’s how bad things have gotten and how impossible it feels for Iamaleava to turn it around.