The clock starts ... now. Jeremy Pruitt lost one of his excuses in closing loss to Vanderbilt
Tennessee’s pathetic loss to Vanderbilt was Jeremy Pruitt’s last chance to use the “first-year head coach” excuse.
It used to be a valid reason for Pruitt’s missteps. Mistakes are going to happen. There were points in the season in which Pruitt’s team didn’t seem prepared. There were also points in the season in which Pruitt didn’t have a firm grasp on how to lead a big-time college football program. Kirby Smart made plenty of mistakes in his first year at Georgia; let’s hope Pruitt got all of that out of his system.
Pruitt knows that recruiting will be the determining factor as to whether he succeeds in his new endeavor. He said as much following the Vols’ 38-13 loss to Vandy.
“I think if a young man wants an opportunity to have a chance to play in the SEC really early, this would be a good place to start,” Pruitt said.
While that might be true, there’s reason for prospects to take pause before they sign up to play for Pruitt. With surprising wins over Auburn and Kentucky, these Vols should have proven they wanted to finish 6-6 and locked into a bowl game Saturday. They didn’t. Instead, Tennessee floundered through the Vanderbilt game, which was nothing more than embarrassing for UT. The Vols have lost 3 in a row and 5 of the past 7 games against Vanderbilt. The Commodores took notice on social media.
“Our City. Our State.” Vandy’s marketing department posted on social media.
#OURSTATE | #ANCHORDOWN pic.twitter.com/eqT1lXcTGy
— Vanderbilt Football (@VandyFootball) November 25, 2018
Pruitt and the Vols had better be concerned about Vandy’s resurgence. The Vols don’t need a growing thorn in their side when it comes to recruiting. The Vols would be well served to spend much of their focus on recruiting on the mid-state area. However, they now have a much greater challenge recruiting Nashville. It is likely tougher to compete against Vanderbilt in decades, not since Gen. Robert Neyland was hired to turn the tide against the Commodores.
Had Pruitt and his Vols won Saturday, they could have said that Vanderbilt’s recent run of success was a thing of the past, that it was a byproduct of the Vols hiring two bad coaches. That argument is much more difficult to make now.
Pruitt has to sell mid-state prospects on hope. He has to convince those prospects that UT’s program is trending upward and that the Vols will be significantly better on the field than Vandy in the near and foreseeable future. That’s a much tougher sell after the Vols couldn’t even hang with the Commodores.
Vandy, like the Vols, can offer proximity for in-state prospects. The Dores can also offer a top-notch education. The Vols usually trumped that with a better football program that led to better facilities and more exposure on national television. Now, a prospect has to ask himself if UT will be a better football program over the next four years. Vandy still lags behind the Vols in facilities, but now that every game is on national television, what is to stop a mid-state prospect from deciding that staying closer to home is a better option? Pruitt had a chance to provide evidence to the contrary Saturday. He failed miserably.
The Vanderbilt loss, or a 5-7 regular season record, is reason to throw in the towel on Pruitt. After all, he was a first-year head coach. That excuse, however, has run its course.
If Pruitt looks like a first-year head coach next season, then it’s time for athletic director Phillip Fulmer to rethink his decision to hire Pruitt. Tennessee’s football program has not been one to hand over to a coach with a limited resume. Fulmer did that with Pruitt, who could still prove to be a diamond in the assistant coaching rough. Next season should prove plenty.
UT won’t face the gauntlet that it did 2018. The schedule lightens up considerably. If the Vols aren’t bowl eligible next season, then UT fans should fret. If the Vols don’t win 8 games, there should be cause for concern.
It’s certainly true that Pruitt was charged with changing the roster and culture at UT. That shouldn’t be expected to be an overnight fix. However, the early returns based on the 2018 season aren’t overly encouraging. And Pruitt has run out of one very understandable excuse. He’s no longer a first-year head coach.
The good news for Tennessee HS kids is they can play for a coach that went to a bowl game his first year as HC at Tennessee, they’ll have to come play at Mizzou to do it though.
And if Tennessee high school kids look south instead of northwest, they find two neighboring universities at the top of their games in Bama and Georgia. Georgia is already taking some of the best TN talent and I bet Alabama is too.
“If the Vols don’t win 8 games (in 2019) there should be cause for concern”.
Who will they beat next year that they didn’t this year?
Their 2019 Schedule will have 3 winnable games in Ga State, Chattanooga, and UAB. They will need to find 5 (five!!!) more wins out of the filling teams to get to 8 wins
– Alabama
– UGA
– Florida
–
Cont…
-Miss State
-Mizzou
-Kentucky
-Vandy
-BYU
Maybe they upset two of these teams? Maybe? If they get 3 wins from these teams that’s 6-6
I don’t see them winning 8 at all. Maybe they get BYU, Kentucky, and/or SC/Vandy? Can you count on all 4 to be wins? Not at all.
8 wins next year would be a HUGE success for this program. It isn’t a starting point at all.
8 wins is the UT ceiling now.
UT finished 1 win better than many people thought they would this year. Most had them beating Vandy instead of Auburn though so it evened out.
I too was wondering where he got 8 wins from. UT is again the worst team in the SEC East. They have an automatic loss on their schedule from Alabama every year from the west. They don’t get a return visit from the lowly Barn next season, instead drawing Miss State. Pruitt made a grave mistake taking that job. He should have waited another year, and had much better opportunities this season than taking the helm of a program that has been dead and buried for a full decade now.
The SEC needs to go to 9 conference games put Missouri in the west and Auburn in the east and Tennessee needs to quit playing Alabama every year as it is no longer a rival when you lose 10-15 games in a row to a team. Tennessee will be back but it will be 2-3 years and then hopefully they will stay a winning team again. They will never dominate like Alabama,Florida, Georgia and LSU because Tennessee does not produce that kind of talent although it is getting better. The 7-9 wins yearly and every ten years a 10 or 11 win season is what the benchmark should be. Tennessee should never have losing season but a 6 or 7 win season in two out of ten years and as I said 7-9 wins yearly should be the norm. They will never win big again until they fix the offensive and defensive lines because they have been terrible for many years.
I don’t like the idea of running from Alabama because Tenn has been on the losing end. Tenn doesn’t avoid anybody…and I didn’t like what Hamilton did a few years ago with North Carolina, they’re on the schedule play the game. But moving Missouri to the west has always made sense geographical… it would bring rival Auburn back into the fold. But your right Tenn not only expects to go to bowl games but compete for Championships every year, hopefully there are better days in the future. I’ve seen it happen before, Johnny Majors team went 5-6 one year and then 10-2 the next. Sometimes one year can really make a difference, hopefully that happens with this team.
I can’t find too much of an argument here. Mizzou will,have some turnover, in particular at QB, and that may open an opportunity. Florida was better this year than I thought that they would be. Vandy has certainly handled us over the past few years, but they loose some big pieces as well. Shurmur owns UT. Kentucky will be changed with Benny Snell potentially gone. uT has a lot of holes to,fill especially up front on offense and some coaching improvement is needed as well. This is a 3-4 year turn around…not 1-2.
Florida has always pretty much had the edge on Tennessee in talent…no matter what they’re fans say. The run over Tenn hasn’t really been about coaching, Florida has fired Zook, Muscamp and Mcelwain. They have been getting by on talent mostly and a little luck in some close games. But I’d rather be lucky sometimes than just plain out good.
Oh please. We beat Kentucky this year. Vandy will be without Shurmur. BYU is a very mediocre non-SEC team, we will kill them. Mizzou will lose Locke and their two best WRs, which is the only reason they were worth a dam the last 3 -4 years.
We have played Carolina close 3-4 years in a row and have them at home next year.
MSU, it depends on how much they lose off their D, I haven’t looked it up yet.
But yes, 8 games are winnable.
I will probably get blasted for saying this but I think 8 wins is conservative (depending on recruiting).
8 wins:
1)Georgia State
2)Chattanooga
3)UAB
4)BYU-who loses their starting QB Tanner Mangum and also finished 6-6 this year playing the bottom of the barrel that is the Pac-12
5)Mississippi State-at home with no Nick Fitzgerald
6)Kentucky-losing Benny Snell which was the base of their offense
7)Missouri-losing Drew Lock which was the base of their offense
8)Vanderbilt-losing Kyle Shurmur which was a major part of their offense and we play them at home
Not to mention we play South Carolina at home and should have beaten them this year…
Pruitt was always a pawn for Fulmer. Uncle Phil will have to appoint himself coach next year. That was always the plan.
LOL! Really Coreyalan?? That’s a good one.
Garbage, ignorant article. Dooley had players with fight, Kiffin had players with fight, Butch had a few players with fight and Dobbs. However, Butch also lost our S and C coach and let players run over him. The only way you go from a 9-3 or 8-4 season to a 4-8 season (getting spanked all season long) is relying on your starters and never developing your backups. That’s what we’re seeing now. The starters then were good. Now that they’re gone, we see that these players were never actually coached or lack the fire to win. While the season is disappointing, we improved if only by 1 win and won 2 sec games. We need to develope the lines before we get much better.
All the while trying to switch offensive and defensive schemes
Butch ran a lot of players off…never developed the talent. I don’t see nowhere near the players leaving Tenn under Pruitt. He is working to develop some guys…in the secondary and the DL. Paul Bain sat on the bench for years, but Pruitt has tried to make him a better player and contributor. Several other players you can say that about too.
Two issues I see with Tennessee. 1. They are going to have to be very patient and patience is non-existent in big time programs these days, especially in the SEC. 2. Even if fans are patient, the problem with hiring a first time head coach is that you don’t know if he is capable of turning around a program with so many issues.
Saban didn’t set the world on fire either his first year at Bama, going 6-6 and then winning a bowl game. But he immediately started bringing in number 1 or 2 recruiting classes every year, made a huge difference.
Really? Pruitt was hired a week before signing period started so he had to scramble to get recruits. Was left with half a team basically after Jones ran most the good players off or they left for the NFL. Plus he had a new QB. Perfect storm. I give Pruitt credit for what he did. The man can’t perform miracles. Comparing him to Smart is just ludricus. Smart had a team already full of 4 and 5 stars Richt left him. Give Pruitt time get his recruits in place. He is gonna have to get o-linemen and a bunch of them. Plus one more thing, Vandy isn’t the same old Vandy it used to be. They compete or win most of their games. It’s not the same team from 20 years ago, but neither is Tennessee.
UT doesn’t have to worry about recruiting against Vandy. That’s just silly. Any recruits that are any good will go everywhere else. Plus, the recruiting rankings are just evidence of that. That’s blowing things a bit out of proportion.
Issues started at UT when/ how they fired Coach Fulmer, like him or not you have to admit that’s when we went South. We’ve had our share of different coaches but Coach Pruitt will get this program back on course again. I picked us to go 6-6 this season, all the time hoping 7-5 but we didn’t make it this year. 2019 season will be better and 2020 will be even better so look the history up because that’s what we have to go off of.
History says:
– Alabama is at the Top- .723 win%- 26 SEC Championships
– Tennessee is next – .677 win% – 13 SEC Championships
– Georgia is next – .651 win% – 13 SEC Championships
The top 5 – 3- from the west & 2 – from the east and just so we are clear, Florida and Missouri are not in the top 5 (Surprise)
I like Pruitt and think a 2 year leash is stupid. How many times did we think Mike Stoops would be fired? They stood behind him and gave him a chance. Now look at his team. Nobody is a miracle worker, not even Saban. First years are deceiving. Gus wins the SEC and plays in the NC his first year. Averages 4 losses a year since. I hope y’all won’t think this last opinion is a shot. The players that go to Vandy want to be there and have the academics to enroll. Their recruiting pool is smaller with higher academic standards.