Vols showing a confidence that fuels optimism

Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt is about to kick off his second season in charge in Knoxville.
Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt is about to kick off his second season in charge in Knoxville.

Maybe there's a small sense of optimism around the Tennessee football program as the Jeremy Pruitt-led Volunteers enter the 2019 season. Or maybe it's just relief.

Relief that at least there's belief that the team will be competitive this season. That maybe a bowl game is in the cards after consecutive bad seasons, which have included nine losses of at least three touchdowns and being shut out for the first time in 23 seasons.

The second-year Vols head coach was the culmination of a roller-coaster search in which numerous names were mentioned, then-athletic director John Currie was fired for going rogue during the search and then-chancellor Beverly Davenport lost her job months later.

In addition, the team Pruitt inherited was a fragile one. It was coming off the worst season in school history, a 4-8 campaign that had started 3-1, the only blemish being a 26-20 loss at Florida on a desperation pass to end the game. Then-coach Butch Jones was fired after a 33-point loss to Missouri - his fifth loss in six games - and replaced by Brady Hoke for the final two weeks of the season.

Once Currie was fired, he was replaced by Vols coaching legend Phillip Fulmer, who quickly moved to pry Pruitt away from his defensive coordinator position at Alabama.

So the challenge for the current Vols leader in 2018 was even more difficult than taking the pieces he inherited and automatically turning them into a quality team. It was changing a culture that had become toxic.

To date, he's begun the process with recruiting. He's done it with starting a new culture. He's done it with a weight program - for all of the quality recruiting, perhaps his greatest victory was keeping strength and conditioning coach Craig Fitzgerald from taking a job at Maryland - that has players noticeably bigger than they were a year ago. And he's done so quietly, with program leaks being less and less common. In Knoxville the message will come from the leader.

The 2019 version of the Vols doesn't look too different from the 2018 version, from a roster perspective. Most of the team is back, which at first may not seem a good thing since six of the seven losses in 2018 were by 25 points or more. But there appears to be a different feel around the program, one of confidence.

Sure, there's a long way to go. A LONG way to achieve anything resembling what the program was in the 1990s. Probably another recruiting class that fills in some of the blanks as far as replenishing the level of talent it's going to take to compete beyond this season.

But a survey of the offense shows a competent quarterback with a ton of ability, a solid if not explosive running back, four senior wide receivers who have combined for 226 career catches, an above-average pass-catching tight end who's also a solid blocker and as many as four starters back on the offensive line. A glance at the defense shows some experience gaps on the front two levels but a plethora of returning experience in the secondary, led by senior Nigel Warrior and a trio of sophomores.

Questions still remain: Is Jarrett Guarantano a good quarterback? Will the offensive line be any better? Do the Vols have a run game? This season should provide some clarity, but if it doesn't it won't be because of a lack of quality coaches on staff.

New offensive coordinator Jim Chaney long has been respected as one of the best in the business. Vols national championship quarterback and new receivers coach Tee Martin has eight former players currently in the National Football League. Derrick Ansley has a history of developing defensive backs and will have an opportunity to coordinate a defense for the first time in 2019.

Those three additions were made to make Pruitt's job easier. He doesn't have to feel that he has to have his hands in so many places - which was some of his own doing, the nature of a first-year coach - and he can be an overseer of the program surrounded by coaches that he's confident can competently do their jobs.

Toss in a recruiting class that is likely to have multiple freshman contributors - such as offensive linemen Wanya Morris and Darnell Wright, linebacker Henry To'o To'o and cornerback Warren Burrell - and suddenly there's a level of confidence around that might not scream "championship" this season but certainly yells "competitive."

"I have confidence in our football team," Pruitt said. "I have confidence in our coaches, the plan that we have, the way I've seen our guys work in the offseason to either change the bodies, eat what they're supposed to and be in the classroom.

"It takes a lot to be a good football player - it takes a lot to be a good football team - and we have made a lot of progress in the last six months for this 2019 team. So when you do something over and over, you gain confidence. And when you get good at something, you become confident, and that's something that we have to do. We have to develop confidence as a football program."

And if the Vols do, the program-wide optimism will be for good reason.

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.

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