Tennessee Football: Something to look forward to

Tennessee Football is heading into the final two weeks of its season, and Tennessee fans finally have something to look forward to on Saturdays.

There hasn’t been a lot for Tennessee football fans to look forward to this season. After the first two weeks, Tennessee hasn’t been able to find the win column, but things could be looking up for the Vols.

Tennessee’s loss against Florida wasn’t necessarily fun, but it gave me hope for the future. It seems we are going to get an old fashioned quarterback battle out of the Florida game, and it will now involve Jarrett Guarantano.

Tennessee’s head coach Jeremy Pruitt announced on Monday that the Vols will be moving away from Guaratano in hopes to find a new quarterback for the future.

"“We’re going to go with Harrison and JT and stick with the same schedule we had last week,” Pruitt told reporters Monday."

Harrison Bailey didn’t have a breakout debut, but his performance was still good. The offensive play-calling held him back a bit, with Tennessee holding back on the play-calling for most of the game.

Bailey will have some competition, though. JT Shrout came in for the final two drives of the game and led the Vols to the endzone both times. In those two drives, Shrout totaled 121 passing yards compared to Baileys’s 111 passing yards for the entire game.

Both quarterbacks finished with one touchdown also, but there is one statistic I found interesting that separated the two quarterbacks. Bailey only threw seven more passes all game than Shrout threw in his two drives. The offensive play-calling clearly held back during the game, and looking at the stats, it seems Jim Chaney didn’t trust putting the ball in Bailey’s hands to win the game.

The last thing the offense needs is a coach that doesn’t trust his quarterback. Regardless if Shrout or Bailey is in at quarterback, the coaching staff needs to put its full trust behind that quarterback and coach to win. It was evident on Saturday that the Tennessee coaching staff was coaching to survive, not win.

If the coaching staff opens up the playbook for both quarterbacks, we could have a hotly-contested battle on our hands. I think either quarterback could be Tennessee’s quarterback of the future, and they both have a lot of potential.

Tennessee’s game against Vanderbilt this Saturday will be a good opportunity for both quarterbacks to open the playbook and try to put the ball in the endzone for the Vols. The game I’m looking forward to, though, is Tennessee’s season finale against the Texas A&M Aggies.