Tennessee football quarterback Jarrett Guarantano will start against the South Carolina Gamecocks. The Volunteers coaches are setting him up to fail.
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It’s bad enough that the Tennessee football coaches are making this switch at this time. Quinten Dormady was solid for the Vols during the first five games, and benching him is complete blame deflection by Butch Jones and Larry Scott.
That’s why we wrote our piece about the coaches sabotaging Dormady before benching him. However, they’re not being any more fair to Jarrett Guarantano.
Guarantano gets his first start against the South Carolina Gamecocks. With the Vols 3-2 and morale at an all-time low, it would seem that Butch Jones is doing it for a spark. What he’s actually doing, though, is setting up Guarantano to fail spectacularly.
South Carolina is better this year on defense than they were last year. Will Muschamp makes a living eating quarterbacks alive. This year, he has the additional element of playmakers on defense who can score.
Just ask the Arkansas Razorbacks last week.
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But beyond that, the one thing he does extremely well is shut down mobile quarterbacks. We know that Dormady is a better pocket-passer than Guarantano. And we also know that Jones is moving to Guarantano this week to get a spark with a dual-threat quarterback.
Ask Joshua Dobbs how that worked out last year.
Dobbs was a senior and a veteran who had solid accuracy, was very smart, and could tuck it and run better than anybody. Muschamp’s defense ripped him to shreds, forcing him to make mistake after mistake and costing the Vols that game.
If he couldn’t do it, why does anybody think Guarantano will be able to do it? Guarantano doesn’t have Dobbs’s experience, and South Carolina is even better this year on defense.
Oh, and he doesn’t have too many playmakers to rely on. Ethan Wolf is a safety blanket and John Kelly is a star at running back. But the only true receiver Guarantano can trust is Marquez Callaway.
As a redshirt freshman earning his first start against Muschamp’s Gamecocks, what chance does Guarantano have when he also has limited options on where to throw the ball?
Simply put, it doesn’t seem like he has a chance to succeed. As a result, it’s incredibly unfair to Guarantano for the coaches to make the switch to him during this game while desperately looking for a spark.
It’s a complete setup, and Guarantano deserves better. The guy’s mobility will be completely useless in this game on Saturday, and we know that he’s not as accurate as Dormady. So he’s going to struggle.
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His supporters will not that he hasn’t yet turned the ball over. Well, he played against the Indiana State Sycamores, the UMass Minutemen, and the Georgia Bulldogs in garbage time. With meaningful reps against the Gamecocks, he’s bound to make mistakes. And the coaches have put him in a terrible position.