Tennessee has a somewhat crowded quarterback room currently with five scholarship quarterbacks and four walk-ons, including a former 4-star transfer from Maryland in Kasim Hill. Adding JT Daniels would signal to all those quarterbacks that the coaches don't believe they can lead this team to consistent victories. While this may not bother either of the freshmen, the other three scholarship quarterbacks have all started at least one game for the Vols and would inevitably see this as an indictment on their body of work.
I've seen several Vol fans declaring he could get Tennessee over the top. I'm not really sure where they've gotten this idea based on Daniels current body of work, which consists of 15 touchdowns to 11 interceptions and a quarterback rating of 128.7. Now, for comparison, the quarterback that Vol fans are fed up with and wanting to replace has a similar completion percentage, 32 touchdowns to 13 interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 139.5. Guarantano also has a higher yards per attempt. Essentially, Vol fans are pretty much clamoring to replace Guarantano with a similar quarterback, at least based on their respective bodies of work.
Daniels isn't transferring because he's looking for a change of scenery. He's transferring because once he went down with an injury, he got replaced by a player who put up much better numbers than him after he got hurt. Kedon Slovis isn't about to give up that job to anybody, having a freshman campaign that most senior quarterbacks would kill for. Adding Daniels could give Tennessee their version of Joe Burrow, sure. It could also just as easily leave Tennessee with three years of another version of Keller Chryst. There is nothing currently to suggest that Tennessee would be getting some magical upgrade.
Now, there are a few ways this plays out in adding him. It's possible he provides a talented option for the staff to compete for the job, only lose a couple of guys, and he gives them a strong option moving forward. It's also possible adding him cleans out talented options, he never shows significant progress from where he has been so far through 12 games played, and instead it's subtraction by addition as they simply added a body to subtract 2-3 others. He's talented, but he's not a no brainer talent. This isn't Justin Fields or Jalen Hurts. This is a gamble on a player with a good not great body of work to replace a player with a good not great body of work.
Tennessee is playing Texas hold 'em on this one, and they are about to go all-in hoping to hit on a royal flush on the river if they add Daniels. They'll either bust completely or take the pot and change the course of the program. Now, that's often true of recruiting quarterbacks in general, but in this case we're talking about a coaching staff that needs to hit on a quarterback, and Daniels doesn't initially have the appearance of a program-changing quarterback. For my part, I'd ride one more year with Guarantano, develop Bailey, Holiday, Maurer, and Shrout for the future, and save the roster space that I would sacrifice to add Daniels. If there's a season in 2020, everyone will be heading into the season with some handicaps, and Guarantano at least knows the system as opposed to having to try and teach it to him in August. Tennessee has a ton of experience going into next season, and that could be a huge benefit to them as long as they don't potentially take a big risk. I don't expect this to be a popular opinion, but Tennessee doesn't need the quarterback of the future in 2020; they need the quarterback of the present to simply protect the football and allow the offensive line, running backs, and defense to lead the way.
