Is this year’s “Georgia hired Kirby Smart to be the next Nick Saban” going to be “Tennessee hired Jeremy Pruitt to be the next Kirby Smart”? Barrett Sallee takes off down that path.
But Pruitt is still a first-time coach who’s going to make rookie coach mistakes. He’ll forget to call for the punt team, mismanage the clock, unnecessarily use timeouts and do all of the other things that first-timers might plan for, but struggle with when it comes down to execution.
It even happened with Kirby Smart at Georgia in his first year in 2016, and he was with Nick Saban at Alabama and the NFL‘s Miami Dolphins for a full decade. One year later, those two were squaring off for all the marbles.
Easy peasy. Although he goes on to qualify, “That’s not to say that Pruitt will follow in Smart’s footsteps.”
Sallee sees a rockier (topped?) road for Pruitt than Smart had because the talent base he inherits in Knoxville is at a lower level than what Smart started with — amazing how Georgia’s incredible disappearing class of 2013 is already a faded memory — and because UT’s S&C program needs a complete rebuild. I’m skeptical on both fronts about the comparisons, but I do think starting out Pruitt has a harder row to hoe than Smart did in one important aspect: the SEC East in 2018 is a tougher neighborhood than the one Smart moved into a couple of seasons ago.
That being said, if the Vols aren’t playing in the 2019 SECCG, expect the Smart comparisons to crop up in Knoxville. And not in a good way.
Get The Picture 
Maybe Pruitt and Mullen can be like Gus. Win enough of the other games so that beating teams like UGA and alabama once a blue moon is enough for that 50 million dollar contract. That wouldn’t be so bad….for us.
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Let your last paragraph come to pass. Nothing could be finer than another coaching crisis in Knoxville in a couple of years.
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I’m with you Ugly. Anything bad that happens to that fanbase is good for me. They’re just natural assholes.
Case in point: Mrs. Cowdog and I took some of her coworkers (European) to one of our local watering holes for dinner and beers last weekend. Cool place, has different local musicians in a couple of times a week. So we are enjoying the meal, (This is northeast of Atlanta) and the one man band breaks out into “Rocky Top”. At a table of couples close to him, the males all sing along, then laugh and high five. Now we all know to anyone other than a Tennessee fan, “Rocky Top” is the college football fight song equivalent of the Country Bear Jamboree show at Disney, and slightly more painful to listen to than a tooth being drilled. I’m thinking “OK, they got that out of their system” and the OMB goes back to his classic rock repertoire which while not great, is at least not painful. Another round of drinks, guess what gets played again. The sing along is louder this time more high fives. Our guests give the little group a curious look over. Another round of drinks for their table and here it comes again. This time it’s turning into Karaoke night at the vol table. One of our guests looks over and says “That is the most annoying thing I’ve ever heard. Why are they singing it over and over?”
Yeah, I hope that dumpster fire burns brightly for a long long time.
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Man…Kudos for you for keeping it together. I would have gone over and puked on their table.
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I don’t think Pruitt is going to be successful at Tennessee. He is going to piss off some some large donor or the chancellor. The reality is the talent in Knoxville is awful, and the fan base expects a Smart-like turnaround … forgetting that Smart inherited a team that had won 10 games the year instead of going 0 for the SEC.
OTOH, Mullen is going to bring Florida back, and the Cocktail Party is going to be the East’s version of Bama-LSU for years to come.
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I’m betting the exact opposite way. I say Pruitt over Mullen in the long run.
Solid defensive performance breeds consistency.
Mullen hired CTG as DC. Did you watch the end of the MSU/Alabama game?
I know Pruitt is a jerk. But he’s driven and he’s good and his players play hard for him and he is a solid recruiter.
What’s Mullen’s biggest career win at MSU? I just went through it and I can’t find one win over a ranked team that won 10 games that season. I see 2 wins over a then ranked 9 win team. That’s since 2009. That’s a long sample. He did beat some highly ranked teams at the time, but they were all pretenders. The win over a 2nd ranked auburn team is great, but they finished with 8 wins.
Inasmuch as the recruiting pool is bigger so is the competition for them and the expectations are through the roof. That is a place the chews up head coaches and spits them out. Their expectations sent SOS off to the nfl ffs.
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I can see that. I hope they both suck at their current locations. While Mullen didn’t win the big ones, he did a pretty damn good job in the worst location outside of Kentucky and Vanderbilt. Good be him Florida high school talent especially spread QBs, and he could be dangerous. On Pruitt, I just think he’s going to struggle with the off-field part of the job. I agree with 3&G … he’s looking at a 3-year rebuild and I’m not sure that fan base wants to hear that. If Kirby had to turn a battleship in open water, Pruitt has to turn the Titanic after it hit the iceberg.
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I’m just underwhelmed by Mullen and a big Pruitt fan. I just saw what he was able to do with a extremely thin and talentless defensive backfield while he was at UGA. Dude is a bad ass and I think he was better without Saban hanging over him.
The guy reminds me of Brother Bill as an X’s and O’s guy. (I’m not sure but he may have played for him at Alabama.) . Most guys are playing checkers and he’s playing 3-dimensional chess.
You go back and look at Swann’s pick vs. USC when Pruitt was here. That design was just sublime. He knew where to set the SOS mousetrap and pulled it off. That sort of thing impressed me.
What doesn’t? Laying a big egg in Athens after a big win over LSU. They didn’t just lose. They never got off the bus. That’s on Mullen.
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All very good points – I just hope Mullen keeps Grantham forever.
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Can he be a head coach, though? Or is Phil going to do all the glad-handing? And are they going to stay out of each others’ ways?
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Certainly to be determined. Hard to predict. I have to go with what I’ve seen not what I can guess about or what the story in the Fall of 2015 that the host has maliciously kept from us over some specious confidentiality concern. sarc
No doubt Saban and Phat phil knew the scoop and they’ve both hired him. So I’m not willing to assume Pruitt’s inability to get along will bring him down.
Also, phil and Pruitt’s fates are tied together. They’ve both been successful coaches. Surely they have enough self-interest not to step on the other one’s toes.
Obviously, my heart wants a disaster at both places, but my head says that its more likely in gainesville.
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Think you’re on the money with your Pruitt projection. Word is he really pissed off the Mays family and Cade himself, made an ass of himself that the kid’s high school.
I’ll be curious what Mullen does in Gainesville. He beat up on the weaker opponents in Starkville, His SEC West record was something like 17-33 and his record against ranked opponents was 2-15 I believe. I understand his talent base was inferior, but that’s still pretty weak. Time will tell. Hopefully, his results in Gainesville are similar to Starkville, beats up on the lesser opponents, doesn’t fare well against the ranked opponents. That’d be ideal for UGA. It’s kind of like Paul Johnson at Tech, you want him to succeed enough that they keep giving him a contract extension.
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Mullen did all of that in Starkville … the worst football tradition outside of Nashville and Lexington (and UK may have better tradition than MSU).
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Mullen should recruit better, there are way too many talented kids in FL who are generational gators. Unless it’s a complete dumpster fire (please let it be a dumpster fire), many will go there just because.
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I’m still nervous that Tennessee lucked their way into a solid hire. Pruitt can coach and more importantly recruit. I know he can be a loose cannon but that can matter a lot less if 1)You’re the guy in charge (insert fulmer comment) and 2) you win big enough fast enough. Also unfortunately for us Florida could have done a lot worse than hiring Mullen.
Here’s hoping both guys struggle against Georgia.
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Charlotte, your #2 is exactly why I think Pruitt isn’t long for Knoxville unless Fulmer protects him. I don’t think he’s going to win big quickly. He has a major rebuild on his hands.
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Do you really think the fan base in Knoxville expects that?
They’ve been pretty battered. I’m thinking anything north of train wreck is probably acceptable up there. Remember when we didn’t think Donnan needed to be fired after the 2nd loss in a row to Tech? I remember and I agreed. Why? At least we weren’t fucking 4-7.
At UF they’re a year away from back to back east titles. And they’re gators.
Mullen better produce quick.
How long does it take before SOS is on the radio suggesting that Mullen doesn’t take his advice? October?
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I don’t think they believe they have a talent (or a culture) problem. They believe they had a coaching problem. I think Pruitt gets the same pass that Smart in 2016 received and then they expect him to win.
The bottom line is the Tennessee people wanted Jon Gruden and no one else is going to suffice unless he wins big and wins quickly.
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They may be very very dumb. I have no reason to argue.
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Derek, I agree with you about Mullen and SOS. It’s going to be very difficult for Mullen in Spurrier’s shadow. Their fan base isn’t just entitled … Spurrier & Meyer made them spoiled. Another trip to the woodshed in Jacksonville would be exactly what the doctor ordered to temper their expectations.
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I think Pruitt probably has more power than Fulmer. If the Pruitt hire does not work out, Fulmer looks worse than Pruitt. The fans are not going to abide another coaching change anytime soon, but they will drop Fulmer if he is perceived as interfering with Priutt.
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I know some folks who are very close to UTK. Fulmer is considered for sainthood up there, and they look at him as a stabilizer in UT athletic program. Pruitt doesn’t have the power in the relationship at all (VERY different than when Kirby stepped foot in Athens with our AD). He was choice #5 or #6 and only got the job because Fulmer got the AD fired.
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This is my exact prediction as well. As I’ve been saying – please show me the talent on UT’s current roster, and where is it going to come from? Their ’18 class is mediocre just like the previous two, and UT these days is a tough place to recruit to.
Mullen is a bit quirky, but UF is a far better job and easier place to recruit to than UT. Grantham is a solid DC though he has his weaknesses (hence my handle), but I suspect he’ll do well with upgraded talent in Gainesville.
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UT needs, at minimum, a three year rebuild. Look at their departing talent (on paper or otherwise), along with their current back to back to back mediocre at best recruiting classes, which are chock full of lower 3 star types. They say that if you want to be an SEC power, you can only have one mediocre/bad recruiting class in any four year period. Well, UT is currently staring at three straight of those, so tell me where the talent will come from?
As I’ve been saying for quite a while, UT is and will continue to be a mess of a program. And when the rumblings start of friction between Fulmer and Pruitt, we will all sit back and laugh while media types like Dan Wolken will say, ‘see, I told you so.’
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Can anyone provide an update on how the AD is doing recruiting wise for UT?
I doubt the AD will stop there regarding football
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Each time I see someone from UT addressing football issues with the press, it is Fulmer, not Pruitt. I am surprised there hasn’t already been an explosion….aiiight? I still don’t see those two co-existing 3 years.
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Both will work to get 9-3 on a regular basis…with the 10-2 being a season to remember.
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Talent and competition are two valid reasons Pruitt will struggle but I would put his managerial skill set ahead of both of those. Unless Pruitt has matured substantially in the past two years, his bull-in-the-china shop impulsiveness, and management approach will be the bigger issues, imo. Everyone is guessing at this point, I will take the under on 4-5 years. TN is at 20 years without an SEC title, I bet it goes 25+.
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This is where I am.
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I also think that we are going to see a change in how far these coaches are allowed to push it. I think that the days of coaches being able to treat any and everyone like trash if they win are quickly coming to a close.
Rich Rod being fired for being a dick and the opening up of transfers means that some coaches are going to have to learn how to dial it back. Some of them will not be able to do it.
I dont think that pruitt will be able to do it.
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Yes.
Just a straight turn and go down the sideline.
As you are catching the ball for a TD, give a wave to Pruitt and Parrish.
Recruited and trained together.
Pruitt knows talent. Hey Nick, Parrish is the weak leak in their weak secondary. I should know. Go after it for a win.
Remember the real UT coach is Phil Fulmer. No former HC who becomes an AD never leaves the sidelines and the coaches meetings.
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Ha, you’re a shoot from the hip guy and I don’t always follow but this post? This post is nailed.
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QB is the difference.
Kirby had a 5* year 1 and year 2.
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Tough to quantify, but I’d say our recently departed Sr. class was forced to be the team leaders since about midway through their sophomores year. Whatever UTs talent level i have no idea how their dynamic is… any cohesion amongst there sophomores and jrs that was just grossly mismanaged ? …. i know we ripped them a new one and it’s the worst Tennessee team of my lifetime (82)
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