KNOXVILLE – The era of Butch Jones’ cliches and catchphrases is gone at Tennessee, but part of an old Jones buzzword lives on in the program.
The Volunteers have heard it from Jeremy Pruitt seemingly every day since winter conditioning began.
“The first day,” junior linebacker Daniel Bituli said of the first time he heard it. “First day.”
The word is “strain,” defined as “making an unusually great effort,” and it refers to the intensity that Pruitt wants to see every play from the Vols. Pruitt traced the origin of his use of the word back to childhood football drills.
“We used to have some drills we did in the offseason where somebody laid on their back. To win, you had to get off your back,” Pruitt said. “Somebody would hold you down. That was the old-school days we used to have in the gym. You’ve got to strain if you want to get off your back to win the drill, right? So I look at it like that.”