In a violent sport like football, players toil through pain.
While throwing for more than 3,500 yards and leading Tennessee to eight wins during the 2025 college football season, first-year transfer quarterback Joey Aguilar was dealing with something else entirely.
The Volunteers’ senior QB underwent surgery on Friday, Jan. 2 to remove a benign tumor on his arm, according to a report from Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network.
The tumor, according to the report, was pressing up against his biceps tendon and labrum, causing weakness and pain in the arm. It’s expected to take eight weeks for Aguilar to recover from the procedure.
The tumor hadn’t previously been publicly disclosed, with Aguilar playing with it during the 2025 season.
In his first season at Tennessee, Aguilar led all SEC players with 3,565 passing yards, along with 24 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. He also ran for 101 yards and four touchdowns. His passing yards were the third-most by a Vols quarterback in program history.
The 24-year-old Aguilar was part of what was effectively a trade during the spring of 2025. After transferring from Appalachian State, where he played from 2023-24, Aguilar transferred to UCLA, but left the school shortly after Tennessee’s Nico Iamaleava joined the Bruins’ program in one of the more high-profile additions of the transfer portal cycle. Ultimately, he ended up at Tennessee, where he occupied the starting role that Iamaleava vacated.
While Aguilar has the opportunity to enter the 2026 NFL Draft, he could return to college based on the outcome of a lawsuit against the NCAA in federal court that was filed by Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia and others that could give Aguilar an extra season of eligibility. He has spent seven seasons in college, but only three of those were spent at NCAA member institutions. Aguilar’s first four years in college were at junior colleges.