Tennessee football’s 5-7 season in 2018 left a lot to worry about with Jeremy Pruitt. Here are the Volunteers’ five concerning signs.
When Tennessee football fans nixed the Greg Schiano hire in 2017, it created a domino effect of events that almost led them to having Mike Leach as head coach but then led to Jeremy Pruitt after Phillip Fulmer replaced John Currie as athletic director. Over a year later, the evaluation of all that is, well, up in the air.
We can’t say for sure if Leach would have been the better hire after he had the Washington State Cougars one game away from being in the College Football Playoff conversation while Pruitt went 5-7 his first year. Remember, Leach went 3-9 his first year at Washington State.
Pruitt still has the fan base behind him and presenting a united front with him and Fulmer running the show. However, that doesn’t mean that everything coming from his first season on Rocky Top was good news.
Going 5-7 alone is clearly bad news. But the worst part is that it can’t all be explained away just by inheriting a mess. Tennessee football had some issues that could be specifically attributable to Pruitt, and we need to address those.
This isn’t to say he won’t fix them or even that they’ll matter in a year. Pruitt truly could have a long-term plan in place. But we have to judge based on what we’ve seen so far, and while there are indeed some good things, it’s not all pretty.
The last two coaches to have losing seasons their first year on Rocky Top were, well, the last two coaches who were fired: Derek Dooley and Butch Jones. That’s not good company for Pruitt to be in, and it goes deeper than just a 5-7 record.
So what should we be worrying about at this point? Will it manifest into anything long-term? Let’s take a look here. These are the five concerning signs for Tennessee football from its first year under Jeremy Pruitt as head coach.