Jeremy Pruitt was ahead of his time

#78
#78
BigOrangePaddy said:
Pruitt inherited a tonne of talent from Butch. Butch pulled in some huge classes. Pruitt's teams were the most lifeless unentertaining teams in Tennessee football history. Dooley at least assembled an elite offense and some of his teams were fun to watch. Both were terrible head coaches but Pruitt was so bad it was literally painful to watch during his tenure....mainly because of his undying loyalty to trot JG out there every game.

Heupel would have won an SEC championship with the talent that Pruitt inherited.
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This is ridiculous. Jeremy Pruitt's first season at Tennessee was in 2018. Since then, there have been 3 NFL drafts held (2019, 2020 and 2021). From those 3 drafts, Tennessee had a grand total of 4 players selected.

2019

NONE

2020

Darrell Taylor - 2nd Round
Jauan Jennings - 7th Round

2021

Josh Palmer - 3rd Round
Trey Smith - 6th Round

Jeremy Pruitt did not inherit "a ton of talent from Butch." Nick Saban could not have won the SEC Championship with the talent Pruitt inherited.
 
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#81
#81
knox-townVOL said:
Folk are probably being a little bit hard on Pruitt.

Think of it like someone leading a military. Pruitt was very good at capitalizing on having the more powerful army. If he had the stronger force, he could get the most out of his stronger force, he proved that at his previous stops. He could use his stronger force to exploit your weaknesses.

Now what he couldn’t do, is take the weaker force and make them play like the stronger force. If he was outmatched he had no shot. That wasn’t what 4-8 Tennessee needed.

So far, Heupel seems to be what we need. If he has the stronger force, he will absolutely march all over you. If he has the weaker force, he will, at the very least, make you feel the punches of the weaker force. Usually he can make a good fight against your stronger force.
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He didn't just lose at UT to more or even equally talented teams. He lost multiple games to teams with much less talent.

As head coach, he's an unmitigated disaster.
 
#82
#82
BowlBrother85 said:
This is ridiculous. Jeremy Pruitt's first season at Tennessee was in 2018. Since then, there have been 3 NFL drafts held (2019, 2020 and 2021). From those 3 drafts, Tennessee had a grand total of 4 players selected.

2019

NONE

2020

Darrell Taylor - 2nd Round
Jauan Jennings - 7th Round

2021

Josh Palmer - 3rd Round
Trey Smith - 6th Round

Jeremy Pruitt did not inherit "a ton of talent from Butch." Nick Saban could not have won the SEC Championship with the talent Pruitt inherited.
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A lot of those guys just weren't coached up period. You want proof?

Here is a CBS 2018 team roster ranking based off of 247 rankings for every player on each team. Tennessee ranked number 10 in the nation:

Roster talent rankings: College football teams with the best players in 2018

Pruitt squandered more talent than any coach in recent history. Well, i guess Butch's and Fulmer's very last years were pretty underwhelming as well. But at least they won some as well here.... especially Fulmer ofcourse. Butch needed Dobbs to look decent but he recruited a tonne of talent as well.
 
#83
#83
BigOrangePaddy said:
A lot of those guys just weren't coached up period. You want proof?

Here is a CBS 2018 team roster ranking based off of 247 rankings for every player on each team. Tennessee ranked number 10 in the nation:

Roster talent rankings: College football teams with the best players in 2018

Pruitt squandered more talent than any coach in recent history. Well, i guess Butch's and Fulmer's very last years were pretty underwhelming as well. But at least they won some as well here.... especially Fulmer ofcourse. Butch needed Dobbs to look decent but he recruited a tonne of talent as well.
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Player development and/or being out of position could be factors in some cases.

However, the more pertinent explanation for only having 4 players selected over the course of 3 drafts, will be that the majority of those players had been poorly evaluated.

It's not uncommon for a player with unimpressive film to still be drafted anyway, based on sheer size, strength, speed and all-around athleticism displayed during their pro day or at the NFL combine... but that didn't happen for Tennessee players from 2019-2021. The raw talent just wasn't there. You are wrong on this.
 
#85
#85
BigOrangePaddy said:
Give them both the same amount of talent and i will choose Dooley everytime, if for nothing else, he at least knows how to assemble a good offense. Not to mention the fact that players and fellow coaches HATED pruitt as well. An bery unlikeable guy in general.
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The biggest part of being a head coach is recruiting. Dooley completely whiffed on recruiting OL in one cycle, something you just cannot do and keep a program competitive. Dooley also pi$$ed off a lot of TN high school coaches. He was toxic. Not sure there was more hate for Pruitt than for Dooley from staff and players. Both had huge deficiencies that doomed their tenures. Let's just say both did more damage to the Vol football program than anyone in history.
 
#86
#86
volsrock09 said:
If we are being honest, Dobbs is the main reason for Butches stability. He saved their season in 2014, a primary reason the season didn't fall apart in 2015 after their start, and the reason UT beat UF and UGA in 2016.
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The 2014 team was loaded with a great Freshman class that Butch recruited--one of the best ever, from top to bottom, arguably the #1 recruiting class in the country. I think the coaching staff was solid and motivated, then, as Butch's ego ballooned, the coaches started looking for an exit and the team started to crumble. Dobbs held it together. Butch was a great salesman--terrible coach. Kind of a poor man's Mac Brown.
 
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#87
#87
LAVol1 said:
The 2014 team was loaded with a great Freshman class that Butch recruited--one of the best ever, from top to bottom, arguably the #1 recruiting class in the country. I think thaleae coaching staff was solid and motivated, then, as Butch's ego ballooned, the coaches started looking for an exit and the team started to crumble. Dobbs held it together. Butch was a great salesman--terrible coach. Kind of a poor man's Mac Brown.
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Butch could definitely recruit talent. He just wasn't good at recruiting positions that we were lacking in though.. It's like he would just try to recruit as many four stars at any random position as possible and tell them they would be champions of life lol.
 
#88
#88
BigOrangePaddy said:
Butch could definitely recruit talent. He just wasn't good at recruiting positions that we were lacking in though.. It's like he would just try to recruit as many four stars at any random position as possible and tell them they would be champions of life lol.
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I think we can begin comparing our coaching situation to what Alabama went through before they hired Saban. A series of bad hires and rapided decline of football and other athletic programs. It seems that we may have ended our multiple years of wandering through the wilderness poor leadership at the top of the chain. We now have a different President, Chancellor , Athletic Director, Head Coach, and Assistant Coaches which appear to be huge improvements over those who proceeded them over the last 12-15 years. I think we finally are back on the road to a successful Athletic Program and especially Football team. I am more comfortable about our situation than I have been in Years. I think happy days are here again.
 
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