Is Tennessee Football’s D-Line suffering from lack of talent or Pruitt’s high expectations
Jeremy Pruitt believes that the Tennessee Football defensive line needs to be tougher. Are they suffering from a lack of talent or Pruitt’s high expectations?
When the announcement was made that Jeremy Pruitt would be Tennessee football’s new head coach, I knew that the Vols were getting a guy that wants to win and a guy that has the potential to be a great head football coach.
Pruitt has had a successful career as an assistant college football coach from his time at Georgia, Florida State, and Alabama. He brings the best from what he’s learned from all three of those schools, and with that comes high expectations and for his players to play with intensity, heart, and determination. He wants his players to be great.
He’s also going to push his players and have high expectations for his players so they can be great, so when Pruitt says that the Vols defensive line needs to be tougher, I wonder if that’s because they’re soft or if that is just Pruitt’s high expectations. I hope it’s the latter.
Pruitt worries about the pass rush upfront. The Vols lost Darrell Taylor to graduation, so finding someone to replace him as a pass rusher might be difficult. That might be what Pruitt is worried about with the pass rush.
The Vols are deep up front; it’s just a matter of one or two players stepping up and taking the bull by the horns and being the leader on the defensive line.
"“When it comes to rushing the quarterback, we’ve really got to improve there,” Pruitt said on Tuesday. “It’s something that we felt like in the offseason that – from getting the quarterback off his spot, improving our pass rush up the middle and finding guys that once they get on the edge can capture an edge and finish. In college football, the ball comes out really fast, so lots of times you can affect the quarterback more so up the middle than you can on the edge and we’ve really got to improve there.”"
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The Vols are deep when it comes to the front seven. There’s a good mix of upper and lower class players on the defensive line, so surely the Vols will have a couple of them step up. Even if this is just Pruitt’s high expectations, he has a good reason to want the best out of his players. Tennessee doesn’t have an easy schedule, so Pruitt is going to need his players to be their best this fall.