Tennessee football: Vols, Gators restoring identity by going opposite ways

When Tennessee football faces Florida Saturday, the Volunteers and Gators will be going in opposite directions with Jeremy Pruitt and Dan Mullen.

The Hail Mary by Feleipe Franks to deliver a victory for the Florida Gators over Tennessee football last season was not a spark to turn around a program. It was one last bit of excitement in the midst of a downward spiral, a program that had fallen off the map under Tim Tebow.

Meanwhile, the loss for the Vols got the ball rolling on the bottom finally falling out under Butch Jones, and it resulted in the worst season in school history. When the dust settled, the Vols were last place and winless in the SEC.

After nearly a decade of futility, both teams finished last season with four wins. And to restore their former glory, they have turned to coaches that restore the identities they both once took pride in…identities that are complete opposites of each other.

For Tennessee football, Jeremy Pruitt has been hired to restore the Vols. Pruitt is a Nick Saban disciple, and although he’s an Alabama Crimson Tide graduate, his approach to restoring the Vols is exactly what made them great in the first place.

If you know Tennessee tradition, you know they like to win with tough defense and a pro-style offense. Both sides use the athletes they have to wreak havoc, and either one can find a way to win in a different week, something different from Alabama’s and LSU’s traditions of tough defense and just limiting mistakes on offense.

However, under Jones, they were a finesse, spread offense based on trickery. All they did was run misdirection, and rather than put the ball in the best players’ hands, everything was about rotation, which made it hard to get into a rhythm. The defense was all about anticipation. It was never a fit for Rocky Top and what the program had built under Johnny Majors and Phillip Fulmer.

Pruitt demonstrated that he’s returning the Vols to that by bringing in Tyson Helton to run the offense. Helton is two degrees removed from the Bobby Petrino offensive tree, having served as Jeff Brohm’s offensive coordinator with the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers.

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Then, while working with his brother Clay Helton and the USC Trojans, he got a feel for the West Coast pro-style. The combination is now in Knoxville, and Tyson Helton is trying to restore what Tennessee football once were on offense: power running, efficient passing, deep balls at the right time, and receivers making plays.

While the Vols restore their program with a return to the pro-style and tough defense, the Florida Gators are restoring it by going the opposite way on offense. Oh, they’re also installing a 3-4 defense that is once again based on toughness, similar to Charlie Strong’s 3-3-5 defense back in the day. But the offense is where Gator tradition returns.

In addition to dominating defenses like what Strong and Bob Stoops even ran, Steve Spurrier and Urban Meyer turned the Florida Gators into a powerhouse with high-scoring offenses based on speed. It reflected the football talent of the Sunshine State.

Spurrier took the SEC by storm with his fun-n-gun in the 1990s, and it resulted in four straight SEC titles, six overall, and a national title. Meyer, meanwhile, introduced the spread offense to the world using Florida speed when he took over in 2005. The result was two national championships in three years.

Florida is not meant to run a physical, pro-style offense that bores fans. That’s what they have been doing throughout this decade, and it failed. So Mullen is back to revive the Meyer spread offense, returning the program to its identity of unique offensive schemes that keep the rest of the league on its heels.

It’s hard to know who’s ahead in their return to identities so far. But we’ll have a better idea when Tennessee football faces the Gators Saturday. And maybe, just maybe, this will signal the return to the excitement that once existed in this rivalry when Fulmer went against Spurrier.