Tennessee Football: Jeremy Pruitt addresses QB issues by firing defensive line coach

Tennessee Football has an issue at the quarterback position, and Jeremy Pruitt has addressed that issue by … firing the defensive line coach.

Tennessee football has a clear issue with the offense and, most importantly, the quarterback position. This week Jeremy Pruitt has to decide who his quarterback against Alabama will be, and after some questionable moves already with the offense, this decision is going to hold a lot of weight.

So far, Pruitt hasn’t looked very competent when it comes to decision-making with the offense. Knowing he has an issue with the offense, Pruitt fired an assistant coach.

He didn’t fire a coach on offense, though. He fired Jimmy Brumbaugh, the Vols defensive line coach. Pruitt cited philosophical differences behind the reason for firing Brumbaugh.

Brumbaugh was in his first season as a Tennessee assistant coach and replaced Tracy Rocker as the defensive line coach after Rocker left Tennessee for South Carolina.

Pruitt was pretty vague on his reasoning behind firing Brumbaugh. Pruitt said that he “worked his tail off” and “did a really nice job.” Seems to me like Brumbaugh is a fine coach, and from what I could tell on the field, the defensive line and entire front seven was able to compete up front and get in the backfield in every game Tennessee has played this season.

This decision could go down as another questionable decision by Pruitt as he could possibly be panicking and looking to fix his offensive problem with a better defense. The only issue is if your offense is non-existent, then no defense will give you a better offense.

The last thing that Tennessee fans want to see is Jarrett Guarantano be trotted onto the field this Saturday after two bad performances. It’s unlikely that Tennessee beats Alabama regardless of the quarterback, so it might not matter this week, but fans still want to feel like they have a chance against Alabama, and they won’t have that feeling with JG at quarterback.

I’m not sure how the coaching staff can look at the young quarterbacks in the locker room and compare talent levels with Guarantano and say that JG is still the best guy, but it looks like Pruitt might be leaning that way again for this game.

"“When you look at it, Jarrett didn’t play his best game but there are other guys who didn’t play their best game too,” Pruitt said. “He’s going to have to go out here and earn it in practice just like everybody else. Am I wanting to put Jarrett Guarantano on the shelf? No, absolutely not. I think the guy has a lot of really good qualities about him. He’s helped us win a lot of football games. Did he make a few mistakes, Saturday? Sure he did, but I think everybody on our football team and organization all could have done better starting with me. This isn’t about one person. It is about everybody within our program and everybody within our program understands that.”"

We will see what happens moving forward. Maybe Pruitt wants more control of the defense, or maybe he thought this needed to happen to make the defense better. No matter what happens with the defense, all eyes will be focused on his decision at the quarterback position.