Pruitt, Tennessee slide into the dead period smiling
When the dust settled on Friday evening, Jeremy Pruitt sat back in his office and finally smiled.
I’m only guessing, but it’s a good hunch.
While it’s been a rollercoaster 12 months for Tennessee’s first-year head coach, the last week has been some of the best days of Pruitt’s tenure.
Keep your strength and conditioning coordinator from leaving for his alma mater.
Check.
Have a no fuss Wednesday, inking 17 commits without a single bad surprise.
Check.
Land a major in-state playmaker over a pair of SEC contenders.
Check.
Have your top pass rusher announce his decision to return to school
Check.
The week was capped off with Pruitt's two biggest recruiting wins since coming to Tennessee, as the Vols won a pair of battles over some big boys by stealthily beating out Georgia for former 5-star and Michigan defensive tackle transfer Aubrey Solomon and then poaching top prospect Quavaris Crouch away from Clemson or Michigan.
Enjoy the early presents Vol Nation, Christmas came early.
After the season, I wrote that Tennessee’s 2018 was like a picture in the Louvre: Depending on where you’re standing in front of the painting, you can see what you want to see.
Well, Friday was Pruitt’s chef d’oeuvre.
While Pruitt has plenty of unanswered questions about his ability as a head coach (the OC search remains a sore subject for Tennessee fans), evaluating and recruiting talent isn’t among them. Tennessee’s staff is betting big on its assessment of signees like Roman Harrison, Elijah Simmons and Jerrod Means, but everyone wanted Solomon and Crouch. The same goes for Wanya Morris, and 5-star tackle target Darnell Wright.
Tennessee isn’t going to out-Alabama Alabama — definitely not anytime soon at least — but the fastest way to compete with the Tide, Bulldogs and Tigers is to stack talent on top of talent.
Bud Elliot’s Blue-Chip Ratio Rankings don’t lie.
Folks always want to point or complain about stars, but there’s a reason why Alabama parlays National Signing Day titles into true championships. It’s about having more good players than everyone else.
Unlike a year ago, Pruitt had a full cycle to build this class. There were certainly misses (Justin Eboigbe, Zion Logue, Owen Pappoe) but key hits like Crouch, Morris and Solomon — all coming off a 5-7 season with 25-point loss at Vandy to end the year — tease this staff’s potential to overhaul the roster with studs.
That’s what it’s going to take. Pruitt knows it, too.
The challenge is making Friday a typical day in Tennessee's recruiting moving forward.. We'll see if Pruitt can do that, but the (late) early signing day surge certainly left the Vols' head coach grinning for the first time in a while.