KNOXVILLE - Marquez Callaway said there was a point during the 2018 season when the Tennessee football team bought in to the message from the new staff led by first-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt.
That buy-in appeared to fade last November as the Volunteers lost their final two games to finish 5-7, and a downward trend continued this season as Tennessee opened with back-to-back losses to Georgia State and BYU.
After winning just one of their first five games, though, it appears the Vols realized that maybe - just maybe - Pruitt, a successful defensive coordinator at Alabama, Florida State and Georgia before taking over in Knoxville, had the credentials to suggest they listen and buy in, either for the first time or again if necessary.
"Every time a new coach comes in, they come in with their luggage," Callaway, a senior wide receiver, said earlier this week. "He knows how to win. He came from a place that knows how to win, and he tried to instill that into us. At first, some jumped on board; some didn't. It took us to realize our way didn't work, and we needed that to find out his way did work."
Callaway didn't elaborate on when the light came on last year, but if there was a moment this year, it might have been sometime around the Oct. 12 home game against Mississippi State. Tennessee won 20-10 and has reeled off victories in four of five games since, highlighted by a 13-point comeback win at Kentucky on Nov. 9.
Pruitt has a completely different style of coaching than his predecessor, Butch Jones. He wants to be more direct. Perhaps confrontational. Pruitt also wants to bring in top-level players and help them realize they're more than just recruiting rankings, that they're players who, though talented, have room to grow.
"I definitely think that early on some were surprised by how direct the coaching staff is," Pruitt said Wednesday. "They were about to be confronted by getting everything corrected - every detail. That's the thing about coaching. When it comes to practice, they pay us to coach. We're always looking, critiquing, finding a better way. That's one thing our staff does a good job of: teaching correction, developing guys, building relationship, creating a relationship that's conducive to developing as a football team and getting better as a player.
"If you enjoy being somewhere, you enjoy going to work, you're going to be pretty good at it. I see our guys improving there. Our guys seem to gain confidence in what we're doing, and that comes with age and experience and we've got to take it from the practice field and take it to Saturday."
The Vols (5-5, 3-3 Southeastern Conference) are set for a 7:30 p.m. EST kickoff Saturday at Missouri (5-5, 2-4), where a Tennessee win would make the program eligible for a bowl for the first time since 2016.
The process of the Vols buying in has trickled down to younger players, but it started with the current upperclassmen who were part of the program during that last bonus game, a 38-24 win against Nebraska the Music City Bowl.
For senior linebacker Daniel Bituli, deciding to follow Pruitt's plan wasn't complicated.
Tennessee's progress started up top.
"How can you not buy in to a coaching staff so established?" Bituli said. "Look at Coach Pruitt's record, the guys he's coached and the guys doing so well in the league right now. To bring a coach like that into this facility to help us out, help us become a better defense, a better player as a whole - I'm a sponge when it comes to Coach Pruitt because he definitely knows what he's talking about."
Bituli, whose 62 tackles this season lead the Vols, said his younger teammates "will start to learn" about the sense of urgency necessary to compete but that they're on the right path.
"It's just a growing process," he said. "They'll have to understand that through time, but eventually they will. They're sponges as well. They come in each and every day trying to learn something new every day, and they're doing that."
And that starts up top.
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3 or at Facebook.com/VolsUpdate.