Spring Primer: How will Tennessee manage its crowded QB room?

To be completely clear from the jump: I have no concrete answer to the posited question of how Tennessee will manage its quarterback room. This piece is simply an exercise in thinking out loud.

Tennessee enters spring practice with perhaps the most crowded quarterback room in the country.

Two springs removed from having just a single scholarship quarterback on campus, Jeremy Pruitt has five options to evaluate over the next six weeks in 2020.

That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

To the chagrin of many in Vol Nation, Jarrett Guarantano opens spring practice with a sizable lead in the competition to be the Tennessee’s trigger-man in the fall.

Yes, the redshirt-senior had a rollercoaster 2019 season, but time and again, he proved to be the Vols’ most reliable option — and most importantly — the guy Pruitt trusted the most.

Tennessee doesn’t win six straight games without Guarantano coming off the bench to play hero against South Carolina, Kentucky or Missouri. And sure, Guarantano was mostly dreadful in the bowl win over Indiana (two interceptions, 58.1 completion percentage), but he did make several big throws late (7 of 11 for 91 yards in the final quarter) to help spur the comeback win after being benched at halftime.

Notably, this marks the first offseason of Guarantano’s mercurial career where he’s not learning a new offensive system. How might he improve in Year 2 under Jim Chaney? Could he avoid some of his calamitous mistakes by playing behind (likely) the best offensive line in his career? Will another spring in the same system help his anticipation? His intermediate accuracy?

So if Tennessee enters the spring with the notion that its most experienced quarterback is the starter until proven otherwise, what does that mean for the rest of the room?

Brian Maurer and JT Shrout both started games in 2019, and want to play. Former 5-star prospect Harrison Bailey was the crown jewel of Tennessee’s 2020 class and is on campus now with the expectation he can compete for the job. Jimmy Holiday was recruited with the promise he’d get a legitimate look at quarterback.

I have no idea how Tennessee plans to manage reps over four weeks of practice.

Ideally, all the competition brings the most of the group — both as a whole and individually — but guys need real work. Real reps.

Pruitt loves to brag about how the scout teamers get the same amount of practice reps as the starters at Tennessee, but the quarterback position works differently. Every one knows that.

Late last fall, Guarantano ceded both individual periods and team periods to Maurer and Shrout, allowing both freshman to get more work with the 1s and 2s. That won’t be the case this spring though, as Tennessee is going to want its nominal starter to get as much work as possible with a green wide receiver room.

At the same time, Pruitt is a head coach who routinely notes that every job is earned in his program.

It was right after the bowl game — one in which Guarantano and Maurer played quarterback yo-yo once again — when Pruitt said, “Nobody is entitled to anything around here. We have to earn it, earn every bit of it. Jarrett knows it, Brian knows it, everybody that’s associated with our program knows it. It’s a performance-based industry, and we’ve got to perform.”

With that in mind, Maurer, who did flash an interesting skill-set at times last fall, and Bailey, who comes to Rocky Top with as much hype as any quarterback signee in recent memory, will both have an opportunity to push Guarantano this spring.

But there’s no way Tennessee can evenly — or productively — split reps between five quarterbacks, much less three ostensibly competing for the starting job.

Someone is going to be shortchanged, and Shrout is the most obvious candidate to be on the outside looking in. Still, the California native has among the best pure arm talent on the roster and can’t be completely dismissed.

And finally, where does that leave Holliday, a speedster with a funky delivery who has reportedly impressed those in the building with his explosiveness during winter workouts? The indication is the Texas native didn’t just come to Tennessee to be a Wildcat quarterback — a play Chaney dialed up just 16 times last season, per PFF. With raw fundamentals, Holliday needs as much work as possible, but again, reps will be hard to come by.

It’s going to be among the most interesting storylines as to how this all plays out over. It’s a legitimately challenging situation for Chaney & Co. There are no answers right now, but the safest bet is the room on March 10 — the day Tennessee opens spring practice — won’t look the same on May 10 — a couple weeks after the Orange & White Game is in the books.