KNOXVILLE - Tyler Holt and his wife, Haley, drove more than 270 miles from Waynesboro, Tenn., to watch Saturday's Orange and White Game.
Asked his opinion of the Orange's eventual 34-7 victory over the White, Tyler said, "I thought they looked better than they ever did last year. And when they made a mistake, (new coach Jeremy) Pruitt stopped the game to correct it. I liked that."
Added Haley: "Even better, the players looked like they were making the corrections themselves. You can tell they want to be better."
If the Holts were filled with optimism at the end of Pruitt's first Orange and White Game, the new ball coach was less enthusiastic, though some of his supposed negativity was surely by design, as befitting a former assistant to Alabama's Nick Saban, the current king of both chastising and championships.
So when Pruitt was asked in the minutes after this game to grade the Volunteers' 15 days of spring practice, he pulled no punches. He may have even thrown in a sucker punch or three.
"I'd say we'd get about a 'D,'" he said, before oddly adding, "which is not their fault."
To further explain, he said, "There's a lot of things we're coaching. I could fill up a wall with things we're teaching them."
He even gently chided the absentees from the pretty strong Neyland Stadium crowd of 65,098, noting: "The Vol Walk was spectacular. But some people weren't here. Why weren't they here? We all need to look in the mirror and decide who we want to be."
Unfortunately, we'll have to wait until at least August to ask the players who they want to be because they weren't made available to the media Saturday.
But to the untrained eye, the product seemed better, if only because it can't really get much worse than last season's 4-8 finish, which not only set a record for the most Vols losses in a single season but also directly cost coach Butch Jones his job and indirectly led to the ouster of athletic director John Currie due to his perceived bungling of finding Jones' replacement.
"That's Tennessee football, baby!" exclaimed student Sam Henson, from Desloge, Mo., as he critiqued the spring game. "They looked good. They looked better than last year."
Said Ocoee Middle School eighth-grader J.T. Crumley: "They were great."
Added UT student Hannah Burke: "I just just hope they can beat Florida and Alabama this year. If they could beat Alabama, that would be the story of a lifetime."
After 11 straight losses to Bama, some older Volniacs probably are wondering if Tennessee ever again will beat the Crimson Tide in their lifetimes.
To his credit, Pruitt made no proclamations that that would change, unlike one-time coach Lane Kiffin, who was touting a victory over Florida before his first 24 hours on the job.
Instead, the former Alabama defensive coordinator - fresh off a national championship win over Georgia - said, "We've got to figure out where we're at with these guys. Some of these guys who don't want to do it, and don't want to do it right all the time, they'll just be watching (come the fall)."
He also said, "I saw a couple of guys out there flat quit."
Then again, this was after he'd said of at least a few players, "They're headed in the right direction."
It would certainly seem that redshirt sophomore quarterback Jarrett Guarantano is headed in the right direction judging from his passing stats, which were 15-of-27 for 226 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. His Orange running back Tim Jordan gained 57 yards and scored a touchdown. Receiver Eli Wolf caught five of Guarantano's passes for 63 yards and a score.
Not that Pruitt was going to praise Guarantano publicly for that performance, or tab him the starter for the regular-season opener in Charlotte, N.C., against West Virginia on Sept. 1, 132 days from today.
"Again, we'll know who the quarterback is when we get to Charlotte - probably halfway through the fourth quarter," he said.
With at least 12 players expected to play against the Mountaineers who were sitting this one out - "Only four of those have been injured since I've been here," Pruitt pointed out - it's tough to know exactly what these Vols will look like or play like four months from now.
But just how much the 2018 Vols can reasonably improve remains an unknown after Saturday.
That said, Tyler Holt was probably onto something when he looked into the slightly distant future right before he and Haley headed home and beamed: "I think next year's really going to be our year."
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com