Tennessee’s QB1 Nico Iamaleava and Bru McCoy excited to showcase their bond
Knoxville, Tenn. – There’s certainly an undeniable level of confidence amongst the Tennessee offense and there’s talent to back that up.
A connection that’s bound to impress in 2024, is between starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava and wide receiver Bru McCoy.
Even though McCoy didn’t receive a single pass from Iamaleava in 2023, mostly because McCoy only played in four games before his season-ending ankle injury against South Carolina, the duo have made up for lost time.
“The chemistry between Bru and Nico is great,” said Offensive Coordinator Joey Halzle.
Living close to one another, McCoy is regularly at Iamaleava’s house studying tape. Specifically going over route concepts, where McCoy breaks, and where Iamaleava can deliver the ball.
“Switching from one quarterback to the next you’ve still got to kind of go do your thing, see what the defense gives you, how am I gonna react to it? And the quarterback feeling how he’s going to read the route and them getting on the same page. And that’s nothing but rep after rep after rep on the field. And then I know the guys, they spend a lot of time watching tape together, so they watch how do you see this, how do you see this? And they can get synced up. It kind of takes place for, as you said, not having live bullets together,” said Halzle.
As McCoy enters his redshirt senior year, Iamaleava finally gets the chance to be the quarterback that connects with McCoy for the big plays.
A reality that seemed in the far distance when McCoy first suffered his injury, then as the offseason wore on and he was able to get more reps on the field, his confidence in himself and with his new QB1 continued to grow.
“You start to build your confidence back,” said McCoy. You start to build a connection with them. They start to understand how you run routes and how you come out of the top of a route. They understand the decision-making process, so those first few passes are the beginning of starting to build a foundation of confidence. You then have the entire camp to keep building on that, and now you have a mock game week and another week to keep building.”
An aspect of McCoy’s game, Iamaleava has been wowed by since their high school days.
“When I was younger, man, I thought Bru was the greatest high school player of all the time,” said Iamaleava. “The first guy I had ever seen play receiver and D-end at the same time. So seeing him come off the edge and have five sets and then go score three touchdowns right after was crazy for me to watch. And yeah, Bru always been the top player of mine.”
Watching McCoy play in high school isn’t as crazy as it sounds, because they grew up less than an hour away from each other and their schools were less than 30 minutes a part. McCoy attended Mater Dei and Iamaleava attended Warren High School.
McCoy was also the No. 2 prospect out of California and No. 12 in the country for the 2019 class.
Now, two former five-stars look to bring that wow factor in the Orange and White.
“It’s been great, man. Bru’s one of the hardest workers I know. So I see him every day go out there and work and put his head down, man. It makes me want to go out there and work even harder. So it’s definitely exciting to see him get back into his own man. I feel like you know that (number) five on him, take him back to his high school days, so hopefully we’ll get to show you me and Bru’s connection,” said Iamaleava.