Tennessee Football: 3 questions while looking ahead to spring practice
Spring is finally among us, and so is the Tennessee Volunteers spring practice. The Volunteers begin their first spring practice under new head coach Jeremy Pruitt.
The Tennessee Volunteers spring practice begins today, kickstarting the new era under head coach Jeremy Pruitt. The Volunteers come into spring with a bunch of questions on both the offense and defense.
The Volunteers will practice every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday for the next four weeks, with the Spring Game on Saturday, April 21st. With Pruitt now at the helm, the Spring Game will likely feature a regular style game, instead of the point system that Butch Jones ran.
With spring practice beginning today, I will offer some questions that will likely be brought up over the next couple weeks of practice.
What will the Vols do with injuries?
Injuries have been a huge problem for the Volunteers over the last few seasons. They will be yet another big problem for Tennessee this spring.
Last season the Volunteers suffered injuries to many key players, including losing Darrin Kirkland Jr., Jauan Jennings, and Todd Kelly Jr. for the year. The offensive line took a beating last year as well, losing Jack Jones and Chance Hall for the year as well.
This spring, the offensive line will be very slim. Hall won’t practice, as he’s recovering from ACL surgery. Trey Smith, a freshman All-American, will not participate in spring practice as well, as he is overcoming a medical issue. The Vols will look upon Ryan Johnson and Riley Locklear to show out in spring practice, as well as new linemen in Ollie Lane, Jerome Carvin, and Jahmir Johnson.
The Volunteers will hope to come out of the spring with no significant injuries and will look forward to hopefully what is a successful season.
Who will win the QB battle?
After Quentin Dormady transferred earlier this offseason, it looked like the QB job would go to Jarrett Guarantano, but with the recent addition of grad transfer Keller Chryst, there will likely be a good QB battle this offseason. The Volunteers will have to wait to see Chryst in action as he will arrive after the spring.
Guarantano took on the starting role last season after Dormady started slow and suffered an injury. Guarantano started most of the games throughout the rest of the season, but also suffered an injury against Southern Miss, making the Volunteers burn Will McBride’s redshirt. McBride finished the rest of the Southern Miss game and also started the Missouri game.
Both QBs looked promising at points during the season last year. Guarantano played well at Kentucky as he went 18-23 and threw for 242 yards.
Chryst is a grad transfer from Stanford. Chryst saw action for the Cardinals over the last three years, including starring in 12 games and starting six in 2016. Overall in his career at Stanford, Chryst played in 23 games including 13 starts. He finished with 1901 passing yards, with 19 touchdowns and just six interceptions.
It will be interesting to see which QB emerges out of spring practice as the starting QB. Spring practice will offer a great time for the new staff to see how much Guarantano or McBride have improved since last season,
How will the new staff handle their first spring practice?
This will be the first spring practice for Pruitt and staff, so it will be interesting to see how spring practice goes. Will it be more uptempo under Pruitt, or will they take it slow as the players get adjusted? Many coaches come from different places, so it will be interesting to see how they handle their first spring practice together.
The new staff will be left with a few dilemmas, including a few that we’ve already mentioned. They will have to deal with injuries, so it’ll be interesting to see how they handle each injury situation and role. They will also have to deal with a few position battles. It will be interesting to see how they handle the quarterback and running back situation, with the recent additions of graduate transfers. It will also be interesting to see how the staff handles both the offensive and defensive line situations.