Tennessee Football: Vols O-line to look much better in 2019

A big eyesore on Tennessee’s offense recently has been their offensive line, but Jeremy Pruitt is optimistic that they will be much better in 2019.

Jarrett Guarantano got beaten in just about every game in 2018 due to the lackluster offensive line. That might not be the case in 2019 after Jeremy Pruitt‘s comments on the new o-line.

The offensive line in recent years has been a position group that has suffered injury after injury and has yet to catch a break. Pruitt said it’s time to stop focusing on what’s happened in the past and only focus on what can happen now.

"“I’m not worried about last year,” Pruitt said during Thursday’s pre-camp press conference. “That book kind of closed in November. We’re worried about the 2019 version. And we’re going to start writing it tomorrow, or today when we report for camp. I know our guys have a lot of goals and expectations."

Brandon Kennedy and Trey Smith have been two notable players that have gone down with injuries over the past year or so. Kennedy is returning to the field this fall, and if we’re lucky, we could even see Smith too.

But even if we don’t the offensive line should be much improved from 2018. Pruitt added Darnell Wright and Wanya Morris to the offensive line, and we could see Jackson Lampley out there some too at guard.

This new and improved young offensive line will serve much more beneficial to Guarantano than last year’s squad.

If Smith comes back, then the offensive line could very well be one of the best in the SEC and could be the position group leading the Vols down the field throughout the season.

Even with those dominant offensive linemen coming in they still need a good coach to help them develop before the start of the 2019 season. Luckily for them, Pruitt snatched Jim Chaney from Georgia, and he’s the perfect guy to develop those guys up front.

"“Well I’m excited about our 2019 offensive line,” Pruitt said. “You look at these guys when they walk into a room, whether it’s guys that have been here for a year, two years, three years, you can see how their bodies have changed in a positive way.”"

Based off that quote alone, it seems like Pruitt is the most excited about the offensive line. He believes they’ll take a big jump in 2019 and I can’t disagree with him.

Pruitt made it a main focus of last year’s recruiting class to go out and get some big offensive linemen to help fix the depleting position group, and he did just that by getting some of the best talents in the country.

Fall camp is where we’ll see how well they perform together as a group and if they will be an improved version of last year’s o-line. That was another point by Pruitt, and hopefully, the inexperience they have together won’t hurt them.

"“We have guys to me that demonstrated in the spring some physical toughness, some physicality,” Pruitt said. “But if you look at the group all together, they’ve not played a lot together. We mixed two different groups this spring.”"

That’s not a great thing to be thinking about when you have some bad offensive lines in the past couple of years, but that’s the reality of the situation. If the offensive line can come together this fall, then the 2019 season could be a good one for Pruitt and the Vols.