Tennessee football: Five best signs from Jeremy Pruitt’s second year with Vols

3. Dramatic improvement as season went on

Coaching is all about developing talent. If that talent gets better throughout the course of the season, then nobody can deny that coaching made an impact. Well, in Tennessee football’s case, there was improvement across the board. As a result, Jeremy Pruitt deserves a ton of credit for the way he developed the talent and helped it improve.

Let’s start with quarterback. Jarrett Guarantano struggled severely early. Pruitt handled that flawlessly. He benched Guarantano and started Brian Maurer, but he still maintained his confidence in Guarantano. Over time, Guarantano became the comeback kid and earned back his job. The handling of that kid all year is what allowed him to turn things around.

Meanwhile, the offensive and defensive lines were major works in progress, as one replaced all of its talent from last year and the other was historically bad last year. By the end of the year, both were strengths for this team. It’s also worth noting that the secondary struggled in a huge way with major lapses early on, and that group, with Nigel Warrior at the helm, got way better.

Then there’s the development and improvement of freshmen. Henry To’o To’o was awful in his first start without Daniel Bituli. By the end of the year, he was a defensive star. Eric Gray could never break the long one early. But he was the feature back by November. This level of development is all a testament to Pruitt’s coaching, and it’s a good sign going forward.