Jeremy Pruitt breaks down Tennessee’s first spring scrimmage
By SDS Staff
Published:
Tennessee held its first spring scrimmage Saturday in Neyland Stadium, and on Tuesday, Jeremy Pruitt made his first public comments about how his team performed.
Pruitt appeared to be encouraged by the offensive starters, while he sounded a bit discouraged by the defensive starters.
“I thought for the first time the offense working together — I thought especially with the ones — I thought they had really good tempo, managed the game really well,” Pruitt said. “Didn’t turn the ball over and ran the ball pretty efficiently. Was pretty good on third down offensively.
“When you look at it on the other side, defensively, with the ones, we didn’t get enough turnovers and probably didn’t affect the quarterback enough. Got to generate some more pass rush. Got to play a little better up front and keep them cut off in the back end on third down.”
Being a defensive-minded coach, Pruitt will likely be tougher on the defense than the offense. Finding and developing pass rushers will be a huge key for the Vols defense in 2019.
Pruitt then went on to discuss the young quarterbacks, JT Shrout and Brian Maurer.
“I thought with the twos, you know, there’s not as much experience at the quarterback position,” Pruitt said. “I thought the two young quarterbacks got lots of reps. Both of them improved as the scrimmage went. You know, got to take care of the football.”
Tennessee’s head coach then discussed special teams, and he didn’t sound too encouraged by the punting game.
“In the kicking game, we’ve got to do a better job with our punters,” Pruitt said. “We have experience there. Didn’t feel like we punted the football very good, especially the other night into the wind, and we got to do a much better job there. I think our coverage units have done a nice job this spring. We’re developing some guys in the return game, and we’ve just got to continue to do that.”
You can watch Pruitt’s comments below, via Knoxville News Sentinel:
Saturday Down South reports and comments on the news around the Southeastern Conference as well as larger college football topics.
