All of you who have yearned for a little more Tuscaloosa in your Athens should get a major woody out of some of Gentry Estes’ comments (start at about the 3:25 mark on the clip) on what Pruitt seems to have brought with him to this spring practice.
The players claim to notice something different, too.
“Coach Pruitt has kind of brought a new attitude to this defense and that kind of mirrors and reflects how the offense (plays),” Mason said after Friday’s practice. “When one side of the ball is kind of dead, it’s kind of hard for the other side of the ball to feed off that. But when the defense is energetic and flying around it kind of motivates us to be energetic. It creates a lot of energy.
“So guys are kind of flying around to the ball. That’s not really something you saw last year. A lot more effort on both sides of the ball. We’re just trying to practice and preach the intensity of flying to the ball.”
Then again, as Seth notes in the clip, there is a certain amount of déjà vu all over again going on here.