Tennessee Football: Leadership turned the Vols’ season around
Tennessee football is on a 3-1 run and is looking to sneak into bowl eligibility with only needing to win two out of their last three games.
The Tennessee Volunteers football team started the season 1-4. A loss to Georgia State and BYU to start the year, a win over UT-Chattanooga, and back-to-back losses to rivals Florida and Georgia.
That’s a tough start for a second-year coach who is trying to prove himself to a fan base that’s tired of losing.
I’m not going to lie when Tennessee was 1-3 I was ready to get Jeremy Pruitt the heck out of here and ship him back to Alabama. Through the first four games of the season, it looked like the players didn’t want to play for him, and they weren’t bought in.
The Georgia game was a bit different, though. I think that’s where we saw the season start to turn around. The Vols competed with Georgia last year and were a few bad plays away from having a chance to win the game, and that was also the case this year.
After that game, Tennessee beat Mississippi State, South Carolina, and UAB. They even competed with Alabama to the point that the officials had to lend the Tide a hand throughout the game and push them to the finish line.
This Tennessee football team flipped a complete 180 from Week 1 to where we’re at now. I said it back when things started to change. I flipped on Pruitt. I was out on him at the beginning of the season, but from the end of the first half against Georgia to now, I have been sold on him.
He has some bad apples on that roster, and we all knew that but he’s dismissed most of those guys, and after that, this team improved tremendously.
Pruitt doesn’t credit himself for kicking off those bad apples or for coaching his players the right way. Instead, he gave credit to the leaders on his team.
"“Our kids have come and our coaching staff done a really good job to get them to come to practice, buy in, compete hard,” Pruitt said. “We’ve got good leadership on our team. Our guys have never flinched. They just kind of keep working.“They believe in what we’re doing here. It’s amazing: When you believe in something, you kind of stay the course. Our kids believe. They believe in what we’re doing. They believe in our strength and conditioning, our nutrition, the people that are coaching them, player development.“We’ve kind of stuck together and just keep grinding it out.”"
There have been games where Tennessee has been without its best players. The backups stood up and got the job done and changed this season.
Pruitt knows who his leaders are. Heck, we know who the leaders are, and they’re some great football players that fight until the final whistle and will go a little longer if they need to.
Next. Backcourt could be one of the best in the country. dark
Tennessee looks to finish this fight with winning at least two out of their last three games against Kentucky, Missouri, and Vanderbilt. If I had to guess I’d say Pruitt’s team is going to get the job done.