KNOXVILLE – It was Tuesday afternoon at the University of Tennessee’s Ray and Lucy Hand Digital Studio inside the Brenda Lawson Athletic Center, and senior defensive back Nigel Warrior was discussing his superb play of late as his Big Orange career nears its end.
“Just having more passion. With all the things that have happened here,” he said, pausing briefly, “more focused than I have been.”
You can overanalyze or dramatize the words of young people. They aren’t always old enough or mature enough to perfectly express their thoughts.
But those eight words from Warrior – “with all the things that have happened here” – does as much to explain the delayed resurgence of UT football under second-year coach Jeremy Pruitt as anything uttered by anyone else since the firing of Butch Jones late in the 2017 season.
Like most of the senior Volunteers, Warrior arrived in Knoxville under Jones, a man given to catchy sayings and motivational tools far more than solid coaching skills. Warrior now ends his UT career under Pruitt, a plainspoken man far more comfortable with X’s and O’s and game video than a banquet room full of boosters.