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Tennessee football: 5 questions heading into Vols 2019 spring practice

By Caleb Calhoun

KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 08: Tennessee mascot Davy Crockett carries the flag across the end zone during a game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the East Tennessee State University Buccaneers at Neyland Stadium on September 8, 2018 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennesee won the game 59-3. (Photo by Donald Page/Getty Images)
KNOXVILLE, TN - SEPTEMBER 08: Tennessee mascot Davy Crockett carries the flag across the end zone during a game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the East Tennessee State University Buccaneers at Neyland Stadium on September 8, 2018 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Tennesee won the game 59-3. (Photo by Donald Page/Getty Images) /
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1. What will be Jeremy Pruitt’s focus: Scheme or practice habits?

One way that it could be hard to determine how much change the new Tennessee football coordinators bring is if Jeremy Pruitt shifts around his practice priorities. He did to start last spring, and it gave us a limited view of the team.

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At that point, Pruitt was very open about the fact that he was focused on trying to teach guys how to practice. Considering all the poor conditioning and injuries, it was clear that Butch Jones was doing something wrong.

As a result, Pruitt had to spend lots of time simply developing toughness. That did show with significantly fewer injuries in 2018, so you can’t knock him for it. But it limited what he could teach the team schematically.

On top of developing more toughness, though, he also just had to teach them brand new systems. To somewhat quote the great Yoda, they had to unlearn what they had learned. The Vols had to transition from a spread to a pro-style on offense and from a 4-3 to a 3-4 on defense.

This year, there is not as much unlearning required, even with Jim Chaney likely to change up the offense a bit. The Vols simply need to be learning. So what does that mean for how Pruitt is going to run his practices?

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Will Tennessee football’s schemes in spring ball give anything away? Is Pruitt going to throw a lot more at the players? Well, that’s the biggest question. If he can do that, then it means the Vols could be much further ahead going into 2019. But if he has to repeat last year, there could be recurring problems again in the regular season.

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