Tennessee Football: Jauan Jennings > Jeremy Pruitt

After the horrible loss to Georgia State, Jauan Jennings has been the only person to come out and show heart. He’s my captain now.

Jeremy Pruitt‘s thing since getting to Tennessee is finding players who want to play at Tennessee. When Tennessee fails on the field, Pruitt goes to the players who don’t want to be here or do it “Tennessee’s way.”

He went back to that well once again this past week after starting the season 0-1. Pruitt is continuing his “get out” message if you don’t want to be at Tennessee instead of taking responsibility.

Most recently Pruitt made another one of these statements during the Vol Network’s “Vol Calls” show ahead of the BYU game.

"“We probably got a few of them that might not be with us,” Pruitt said on “Vol Calls.” “Some of them has done left. There might be a few more, but that’s okay, they need to get out of our way, because we’ve got a bunch of them over there that are heading in the right direction.”"

I’m not saying Pruitt is wrong we saw just over the past few days that there were players joking about the Georgia State loss and most recently calling the Tennessee fanbase “fake a– fans.”

That’s no way to win over a fanbase after you just lost your worst game in program history. But Dominick Wood-Anderson apparently isn’t too worried about that loss and seems to be taking it well. I’m glad he was able to accept the loss easily.

While Pruitt continues to blame the program’s failures on players who aren’t bought in, Jauan Jennings, the real leader of the program, continues to say they’re going to get things right.

"“I am the leader,” Jennings said. “We’re going to get this right. I’m not worried about anything else other than this team and what we’ve got going here because it’s a great program."

The Vol Football Twitter tweeted out a video of Jennings making this claim, and some liked it, and some didn’t. I liked it because I’m a big Jennings fan and no matter what he or Pruitt says I know Jennings is the alpha male in that program.

"“I feel like this team wasn’t juiced up on the sideline and as a leader I take full responsibility for that,” Jennings said. “I’ve got to be out there, and I’ve got to be in their heads, in their ears 24/7.”“As a leader, I admit that I did not do that. This week and here on out, that’s what I’m going to focus on doing — making sure that this team knows that we’ve got a lot of fight left in us and we’re not going to give up.”"

I’m glad we have someone in this program that’s willing to give his all for Tennessee. It seemed like there were only two people on the sideline and on the field trying to change the outcome of the game and that’s Jennings and Trey Smith.

It’s hard to feel bad for a team when two players and no coaches were trying to rally the team. But the good thing is that I trust that Jennings is going to rally this team and figure things out.

The reason I believe things are going to turn around is because the program held a players-only meeting which I can only assume was led by Jennings along with Smith and maybe JG.

Pruitt, although he didn’t call out anyone specifically, said it was something “good to see” as the leaders of the team came together to iron things out within themselves.

"“It’s their team,” Pruitt said. “If you’re invested in something and you have passion about something, you confront people. That’s what leaders do. So that’s good to see.”"

Pruitt is right on this one; it is something good to see. I hope the guys can get things turned around for the BYU on Saturday night. It’s going to be primetime on ESPN in front of the whole country, and if they come out and lay an egg again, they’re going to get embarrassed again.

We’re now a day away from that BYU game, and BYU fans are going to be coming in hordes to Neyland, so if the guys aren’t ready, it could be another long game.