SEC pundits believe Jeremy Pruitt's résumé casts optimism for Vols
ATLANTA — Jeremy Pruitt spent much of his SEC Media Days appearance Wednesday selling the ‘Power of the T.’
His message was subtle yet sanguine: The Tennessee brand isn’t dead. It’s simply been dormant for more than a decade.
The Vols haven’t found a successful successor to Phillip Fulmer, so after whiffs with Lane Kiffin, Derek Dooley and Butch Jones, the Hall of Fame coach decided to handpick his heir himself.
Is Pruitt up for it? Can he truly be the one to finally lead the Vols out of the wilderness and back on the road to righteousness?
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Right now, no one can answer whether Pruitt will make Tennessee great again, but a consensus from some of the league’s pundits and top coaches in Atlanta last week — the Aaron Murray kerfuffle notwithstanding — suggested that Pruitt was the ideal hire for the Vols to make in December.
It was a risk. Sure. Pruitt is a first-time head coach at any level.
But in 2018, unless you’re picking from a small pool of usually unavailable coaches, every hire comes with uncertainties. Tennessee is betting on one of the nation's top defensive minds in becoming a valuable CEO and bucking the trend of the flubbing law firm of Kiffin, Dooley & Jones.
“His dad was a high school coach. He’s been around some really great coaches in Nick Saban, Jimbo Fisher and Mark Richt,” former head coach Gene Chizik, who won titles at Auburn and Texas, told VolQuest.
“If there’s anybody that has a pedigree as an assistant to go in there and turn this thing around, it’s him.”
So why might Pruitt be different than his predecessors?
Resumé and recruiting.
While Pruitt’s bravado and bluntness were questioned by Murray, former Sabanites offered their full-throated endorsements throughout the week at SEC Media Days. They were cagey in their advice for a new colleague, but Kirby Smart, Jimbo Fisher and Will Muschamp all specifically praised Pruitt’s credentials — namely his ability to evaluate talent and recruit. Saban also went to bat hard for his protégé, calling Pruitt one of the best assistants he'd ever had.
Pruitt’s resumé includes five national championships and he’s now the first true Saban acolyte to completely maturate from inside the Saban machine. In 2007, he was plucked away as an Alabama high school coach to become the Tide’s director of player personnel. And Pruitt simply worked his way up from there.
We'll see if Pruitt truly learned from the early mistakes made by Muschamp, Smart and Fisher to start their head coaching careers, but Tennessee's first-year head coach has a blueprint he believes in and he’s specifically assembled a staff that understands the rigors of recruiting in the SEC.
“That’s one of the biggest differences from the last staff, getting guys who know how to recruit this league. Everything is about players. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to win,” Chizik said.
“He has guys who can stand back-to-back with him and know what it’s like on a Sunday when you get beat by three touchdowns. They know what it’s like when you go into a young man’s high school and you’re competing with Alabama, Auburn and Georgia.”
Pruitt has already displayed his recruiting acumen in his first seven months on the job, but with the fall approaching, how he handles a foundational first season could determine how long Tennessee’s rebuild might take.
There will be Year 1 struggles. There usually are. The Vols lost eight games in 2017, and while Pruitt has just eight losses in his last five seasons as a defensive coordinator, most expect the Vols to be a bad this fall.
They were picked to finish sixth in the SEC East and placed just a single player (Trey Smith) on a preseason all-conference team. Tennessee didn’t just change its head coach this offseason, its culture, offensive and defensive systems and personnel are all in transition, too.
“It’s at least a two or three-year rebuild project,” Chizik said.
“I think they’re a ways off. Based on watching film on them, their personnel at most positions, if Jeremy takes them to a bowl game, he’s done one heckuva job.”
Still, Tennessee is a proud program. Ordinarily, just making a bowl game would cause consternation down at Long’s or Gus’. But after a 4-8 season and years of static thinking, constant turnover and an administration walking to a different beat, folks on Rocky Top are hopeful that the Fulmer-Pruitt duo is finally the right combination to change the narrative on Rocky Top.
“Jeremy Pruitt has been a success at every place he’s ever been,” SEC Network analyst Tony Barnhart told VolQuest.
“He’s a football coach. He’s not an entertainer. He’s not a PR guy. He’s not going to win press conferences. But he knows how to coach.
“Georgia is only going to get better. Florida, they have built in advantages over Tennessee. … You have to overcome all that, and it’s not going to be easy. It can be done, though. Phillip Fulmer did it.”
It sounds like a pejorative to call a football coach, a football coach. But the Vols haven’t had one of those in a while.
They do now. The rest of the answers will come in due time.