Tennessee football: 4 things Jeremy Pruitt has to fix with Vols

2. Tennessee football has to recruit more selectively and with better evaluation.

This is a huge one. Butch Jones won over the Tennessee football fans base early on by scoring two Top 5 recruiting classes. He also lured in quite a few big names from the state of Tennessee.

However, the most productive class was his first class, and it was the most lowly ranked. After that, Jones spent the rest of the time targeting top guys with no regard to how they fit into the system he ran.

The result was a series of pocket passers outside of Joshua Dobbs that he tried to force into his spread offense, a big running back in Jalen Hurd who belongs more in a power ace back offense, and a collection of deep-threat receivers who never got the chance to reach their potential.

Jeremy Pruitt appears to be bringing a defensive mindset with a focus on a pro-style offense. If that’s the case, he needs to make sure that while he recruits at a high level, he gets the right fits.

To be fair, he already seems to be doing it. Much of the turnover in Tennessee football’s recruiting class right now centers around the fact that Pruitt is targeting a completely different crop of talent than what Jones went for.

On top of that, because Jones just went out and got anybody, Pruitt has a few guys already better-suited to reach the next level with him as head coach.

And there’s a final factor to that. It also leads to our final point.