I stopped reading this when you said Pruitt is an awful football coach in all caps. That stance is completely unfounded and it seems you are the one actually not considering all of the facts. Yeah we lost to Georgia St. and BYU... but when you consider everything below, that’s not enough to qualify him as an awful coach.
Measurables:
We went from dead last to third in the SEC East in two years. Not like it’s third in the west, but... well just look what Kentucky did to Louisville. They are second in the ACC Atlantic Conference. Point to SC? They beat Georgia at Georgia who beat Notre Dame, Auburn and Florida. The East isn’t THAT bad compared to other conferences.
In two years, Pruitt might double the number of wins the team he was given had the year before he took the job.
The teams we played went 92-66. That is a 72% winning percentage.
The teams that beat us all had winning records.
If Missouri had not been illeligble we would have beaten 4 bowl teams. If we beat Indiana, that is 5.
We improved in every area on offense and defense this year. Numbers don’t lie.
Intangibles
We were installing a new offense and this was year one.
We were very thin on talent to BEGIN the season with... but probably a crucial LB and and one blown play away from possibly being a 9 win team.
We were one terrible play from being a one game score in the 4th against Bama.
You did you not include Mississippi State.
When you look at every coach UT has had when you go all the way back to Johnny Majors, Pruitt has the best resume and results of any of them during his developmental years.
Pruitt’s team began winning after he booted toxic talent.
Use your eyes. We are clearly a better team than we were and that takes good coaching. Mental mistakes hurt us all year and they weren’t mistakes that can be blamed on coaching. Those were on the players. Our mental game needs serious work.
Pruitt has only coached two years. If he continues to improve at this rate, he will be the best coach we have had since I was born.
All that said I read about an extension and a raise. No way. Pruitt has three years left on his contract. No one is buying him out. He hasn’t even reached the level of wins Butch Jones achieved in two seasons. This would be absolute foolishness to do. Pruitt made a sacrifice on pay to bring on a great staff. Well, we took a risk hiring a coach with zero HC experience with a lot of coaches that had no experience at the level he hired them on.
He needs to prove that we can win more than seven or eight games in a season before I vote for that.
Players who looked like busts came on towards the end of the year and younger players improved drastically.
He is able to put together a solid staff and he weathered the vol storm when crap hit the fan—keeping the locker room together.
gatorshimeGator Great
I was watching ESPN going over the Bowl season and they were saying what a wonderful and great job Pruitt did at U.T. to end the season with 5 straightvwins and to finish 7-5 but, is it really all that great?
They beat:
S.Carolina,
U.A.B.,
Mizzou,
U.K. and
Vandy
who were a combined 29-32 and if you take away UAB’s 9-4, they beat teams with a combined record of 20-28. Don’t get me wrong, they can keep Jeremy as long as they want as he’s also the coach who lost to Georgia St. to start the year and is IMO, an AWFUL football coach. It just gets to me how all these so-called expert Analysts don’t look at the entire picture. Well besides Heather Dinich who kept saying we didn’t deserve to be in the CFP given our 2 Division 2 schools on our schedule BUT, WAIT, she didn’t bring up how we were the ONLY Power 5 school to play not 1 BUT, 2 Power 5 schools in their out of conference schedule. She’s awful and beyond biased in my humble opinion. I have no problem with female analysts or announcers, just make them knowledgeable like Sam Ponder who knows her stuff.
1 Wednesday at 11:56 AM
These guys are hilarious. Keep reading though, you’ll get a kick out of it. They seem pretty sure about themselves.
Sorry but Mr. Potatohead didn't rescue jack crap. He has been driving that program into the ground if you haven't noticed. He's not recruiting as well as Butch Jones was before him, so the talent level is going down there with every year he stays, not to mention he drove off much of the senior talent that they DID have by blaming those players each and every day he's been on the job for all of Tennessee's woes. It's supposed to be part of his job to protect those players from such criticisms, instead he threw them under the bus on day one in his coaching acceptance speech and has never quit since. He can't develop players. He can't figure out game time adjustments to a game plan. He can't call plays for crap. And his idea of motivating the players is to scream at them.
What did he do this year? He stumbled upon the one and only winning formula he had. He just started throwing hail mary passes on every other down to his 2 senior WR's who just happen to be the only NFL talent left on that team. Those 2 guys bailed the entire program out this year and it only took him a year and a half to realize that all he had to do was throw it deep on every single play to one of them and they usually will catch it or get a penalty against the D. Well guess what, those 2 guys are gone now. He has nothing left in his bag of tricks. And let's look real closely at just how pathetic the back end of their season was anyways. A missouri team that won't go to a bowl game. A South carolina team that won't go to a bowl game. A Vandy team that won't go to a bowl game. A Kentucky team that hasn't even had a quarterback playing the position for much of the year. And some token OOC game from the FCS. Yeah that's a real proud turn around. Boasting about that is about the same as boasting that McElwain won the SEC East his first 2 years here even though they were historically the 2 worst years for the East in the SEC Divisional era.
When they fail to go to a bowl game next year, do not be surprised one bit.
22 Yesterday at 11:39 PM
This one just that J.J. and Callaway was it? He hasn’t been watching our games to well has he? He thinks Butch Jones recruited better than him. I got news for this person, he hasn’t seen the development of our players this year either. You know it is a bad attitude of a person that’s isn’t to sure of hisself here.
