Tennessee Football: Jarrett Guarantano has … improved?

Before the season started, I was team Jarrett Guarantano, but after Week 1 it was clear he didn’t improve over the offseason, but Pruitt believes he did.

If you didn’t catch the game and you just looked at the stats on the paper, Jarrett Guarantano looked good in the stat line. He went 26-of-40 passes and totaling 311 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception.

That’s not a bad stat line; it’s actually pretty good which shows that he’s moving forward but if you watched the game and saw what he looked like on the field it didn’t look good. He continued to struggle with making reads and finding the open man downfield.

Even though he couldn’t make the right reads and lead the Vols to a win over a 2-10 Sun Belt team in Georgia State, Jeremy Pruitt still believes he has improved.

"“We’ve got to be able to manage the offense,” Pruitt said. “Jarrett put a lot of good plays together. Unfortunately, at that position, the ball goes through your hand every snap."

Well, he put together a few good plays I wouldn’t say a lot. And the last sentence there is very telling and not a good look for either Pruitt or JG.

“Unfortunately, at that position, the ball goes through your hand every snap.” Unfortunately? If it’s unfortunate that the ball is going through your starting quarterback’s hands on every play then why is he your quarterback?

That makes no sense that it’s an unfortunate thing that your quarterback touches the ball on every play. You should want the quarterback to have the ball in his hands if you trust him and believe he’s the best player on the field or at least a leader.

"“There’s plays that he probably left out there on the field,” Pruitt continued. He could’ve changed protections a couple of times and didn’t. He can do that. He’s got that capability. He needs to be efficient and stay within the offense.”"

With that quote, I question how much power JG has, and is it too much or too little? He has the opportunity to change protections and plays, and he can do whatever at the line if he feels the need to, but even Pruitt said he didn’t. Maybe that’s because he hasn’t improved.

I try to keep things positive when it comes to the players since their not getting paid (wink, wink) but it’s hard to do that after Saturday’s game and Pruitt’s postgame comments.

I don’t know why, but this is a completely different coach than we had last year. Maybe he took some Xanax or something before the game; I don’t know.

Hopefully, that changes this week because if it doesn’t, we’re going to get molly whopped on our home field again, this time against BYU.