KNOXVILLE – At the halfway mark of his first spring practice session as Tennessee’s head coach, Jeremy Pruitt’s public image as a hard-nosed, business-first football coach continues to come into focus.
“He’s all football,” athletic director Phillip Fulmer said during an SEC Network appearance Monday night. “He’s all football and recruiting. That’s what we need right now. We don’t need any fluff.”
But the absence of fluff with Pruitt should not be mistaken for a lack of regard for the program’s image.
Pruitt has embraced a public relations strategy that avoids potentially premature praise of individual players on a team that faces a tough 2018 schedule on the heels of the program’s first eight-loss season.
“As soon as you single one out, there ain’t no telling what he’ll do the next day,” Pruitt said. “So I figure we’ll wait until we see a whole body of work and see where it goes from there.”
That approach clearly has been communicated to the Volunteers players. On Tuesday, junior safety Nigel Warrior, redshirt junior offensive lineman Drew Richmond and redshirt junior linebacker Quart’e Sapp became the first players since Pruitt’s hiring to speak with media, and they consistently redirected questions about how their peers at new positions are performing and other player-specific queries.
They instead discussed vague themes about the team in an apparent effort to temper expectations.
“We don’t like to speak on too much,” Warrior said. “We would like to see what everybody has to say about us, not what we can say about each other and not to set that standard too high.”
Pruitt’s naming of individual players in press settings to this point has consisted of addressing position changes and injuries. His most demonstrative individual praise came when he commended quarterbacks Jarrett Guarantano and Will McBride for how they have thrown the football away during scrimmage situations.
The approach to praising individual Vols differs from that of former coach Butch Jones, who even in his first season frequently would arrive at press briefings and voluntarily offer the names of players catching his eye.
The difference in what Pruitt and his team will be willing to share was evident Tuesday when Richmond was asked about how Guarantano has performed during spring practices.
“Guarantano?” Richmond said. “I mean, like I said, you’re so into what you’re doing and worrying about your job and worrying about how the O-line is doing that I really don’t get a chance to see. That’s something Coach Pruitt has got to decide. My head is just down, focused on the O-line.”
The players also downplayed the significance of the defense’s switch from a 4-3 front to a 3-4 alignment under the new staff.
“Most of it’s not different,” Sapp said. “It’s more so a mentality-type deal, mental. It’s a new defense. Being physical and our effort are going to have to be there regardless of what kind of defense we play as a defensive player. It’s more so understanding the plays and the outs and ins of how to play it.”
It all circles back to the no-nonsense, no-fluff mentality that Pruitt wants to project.
“Everything is about ball,” Richmond said. “And that’s a good thing.”
Contact David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @DavidWCobb and on Facebook at facebook.com/volsupdate.