KNOXVILLE - Halfway through Tennessee's spring football practice session, the Volunteers have been introduced to all of a new defensive scheme, and new coach Jeremy Pruitt said he's sure the players' heads are "swimming a little bit."
Saturday, when the team reports to Neyland Stadium for its first scheduled scrimmage of the spring, Pruitt will be willing to sacrifice complicated schematic nuances for the sake of identifying the team's best competitors.
"When we go scrimmage, we'll make it simple, and if we have to call one call on defense we'll just call one call, so everybody knows what to do, there's no excuse, and the best players show up," Pruitt said.
The scrimmage will be closed to media and the public but open to hundreds of high school football coaches attending this weekend's coaches clinic. Tennessee's new coaching staff has seen its players run through individual drills but little, if any, 11-on-11, full-contact play on the practice field.
That's why the scrimmage will be a critical evaluation tool as the team works toward the April 21 spring game at Neyland Stadium.
"There's a little difference when you go out there and the coaches aren't out there on the field with you and you've got to make the calls, you've got to get lined up," Pruitt said. "They're not there to encourage you; they're not there to correct you. You're playing just your 11 guys on one side of the ball, so that in itself is new."
Offensively, Pruitt said his top priorities for the scrimmage are ball security, sideline organization and other basics such as getting lined up properly.
The scrimmage also presents an opportunity for redshirt sophomore quarterback Jarrett Guarantano to impress the coaching staff ahead of the summer arrival of graduate transfer Keller Chryst, who is expected to compete with Guarantano for the starting job.
"In the throw game, we need to run the right routes, we need to protect," Pruitt said. "The quarterback needs to get the ball out of his hand and make good decisions. When we do scramble, we need to get two hands on the football."
Guarantano, who started six games in 2017, appears to be taking more practice repetitions with Tennessee's first-team offense than sophomore Will McBride, who started one game last year after his redshirt was removed because of injuries to Guarantano and Quinten Dormady.
"I think it's a lot easier to figure out how everyone is developing, and once you put it all together in a scrimmage situation, you can get an idea of exactly where you're at," Pruitt said.
Tennessee released details this week about the spring game, which is set for 2 p.m. on April 21. The event will include a Vol Walk at 12:55 p.m. Attending the game is free. The gates open at 12:30 p.m. There will not be an autograph session this year. Instead, there will be an open practice with an autograph session in August.
Contact David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidWCobb and on Facebook at facebook.com/volsupdate.