A lot of people on here seem to think Pruitt is an elite recruiter but if you look at the numbers, that really isn’t the case. His recruiting rankings tend to be right in the middle of the pack for the SEC, and he’s behind where Butch was at this point in his tenure, and he’s about equal to Dooley. I won’t count the 2018 class for Pruitt since that was a transition year, but according to 247Sports, our recruiting class was 7th best in the SEC in both 2019 and 2020...so basically right in the middle. Our 2021 class is currently 5th but that is a little deceiving because we’ve already filled out 27 spots, while the highest of any team behind us just has 20 spots filled. In particular, Texas A&M is 6th with 9 fewer commitments than us, Auburn is 7th with 14 less commitments, and Arkansas is 8th with 8 fewer commitments. It is fairly likely that we will get passed by all those teams, especially with the way we have been playing lately. So the best case scenario is probably ending up 8th in the SEC for the 2021 class.
People often criticize Dooley for dropping the ball in regards to recruiting, so let’s take a look at his two full classes. In 2011, 247Sports had us at 6th in the SEC, and then we were 8th in 2012. That is an average of 7th, the same as Pruitt through his first two full classes. Finally, if we look at Butch’s first 3 full classes, we were 5th in 2014, 2nd in 2015, and 7th in 2016 in the SEC. Therefore, Butch had an average of 4.7, compared to 7 for Dooley and Pruitt. So basically, my point is that while Pruitt’s recruiting has been decent, it is definitely not elite, at least not to the point it would make up for our deficiencies in coaching and player development. Pruitt would need to be recruiting at a Kirby Smart level probably for it to actually make up for his bad coaching. Also, coaches typically get a bump in recruiting their first several seasons when they can sell recruits on hope for the future and immediate playing time. You have to figure Pruitt won’t be able to do that for much longer and will need to show actual results on the field.