Tennessee football head coach Jeremy Pruitt said he is excited to get back on the practice field and continue to coach his young Volunteers squad in the wake of Saturday's season-opening loss to No.
17/20 West Virginia at the Belk College Kickoff in Charlotte.
"Every week's important for us," Pruitt said. "We have got to take every week as an opportunity to improve as individuals and as a football team. I think we will do a better job as a coaching staff getting them ready for the next week. We have to develop depth on our football team at lots of different positions, so it will be all be important, all the practice reps we get every week throughout the season"The Vols will return to practice at Haslam Field this afternoon looking to fix mistakes and begin the focus on this Saturday's opponent, ETSU, an FCS school located a little more than 100 miles East of Knoxville in Johnson City.
While this will be the first time the Vols and Buccaneers have met in a game, the two programs are very familiar with each other.
Director of Athletics Phillips Fulmer helped resurrect football at ETSU four years ago as a consultant after the program disbanded in 2003, while Bucs' first-year head coach Randy Sanders is a Tennessee alum, playing backup quarterback as a member of the Vols from 1984 to 1988 before embarking on a career in coaching at Tennessee, Kentucky and Florida State. He worked alongside Pruitt and Charles Kelly on the Seminoles' 2013 National Championship staff.
"Randy Sanders is a very good football coach," Pruitt said. "He's a good teacher. He did a fantastic job with Jameis Winston when I was there. He was heavily involved in the game planning. He gets it. He was a good team player on the staff, and he is an average golfer."
While Pruitt was taking a playful jab at his colleague's golf game, he wasn't joking about the tough test ahead for the Vols when the Buccaneers enter Neyland Stadium.
"When you watch the tape, they play hard," Pruitt said. "You watch them on special teams, defense, offensively, they are going to be very well coached. They are going to be sound in all phases; they will present you with looks you probably haven't seen before. Randy Sanders will know how to attack you. He will do a great job of breaking all three phases down. We will definitely have to be ready for anything, because he does a fantastic job."
Peterson Joins Vols
Freshman linebacker JJ Peterson officially enrolled at Tennessee on Friday and he is expected to begin practice this week. Pruitt said he typically wants freshmen enrolled in the summer to acclimated to college life and that will temper expectations for the former Colquitt County High School star.
"There will be lots of adjustments for him," Pruitt said. "He obviously missed all of summer conditioning and fall camp, so I wouldn't put unrealistic expectations on him. We'll put him out there and start trying to teach him the fundamentals of things we are trying to get done, and we'll see where it goes from there."
Kirkland Stands Out in Return
Playing in his first game since Dec. 30, 2016, redshirt junior linebacker Darrin Kirkland, Jr. had a career-best 10 tackles against West Virginia. The Indianapolis native made his 17th career start after missing all of last season with a knee injury.
"Darrin is a real instinctive guy, plays with toughness and has a really good understanding on what we are trying to get done," Pruitt said. "He is only going to get better the longer he stays out there on the field."
Kirkland captured All-SEC Freshman Team honors in 2015. He has made 121 tackles over 22 career games.
Here is the weekly press conference of Coach Pruitt:
Opening statement:
"Traditionally, from the first week of the season to the second is when you usually see the most improvement with every football team. With our team, I think there are lots of ways our football team can improve. When you watch film from the past week, we made a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of unforced errors. We can't beat ourselves. You have to make the other team beat you.
"We have East Tennessee State this week, and Coach Sanders will do an excellent job. Offensively, they are very balanced between running and passing the ball. They take care of the ball. Defensively, they created a lot of negative plays last week. They are very sound in the kicking game. I'm sure he is familiar with us, definitely on the defensive side. We are probably a little familiar with him on the offensive side. It will be fun to compete and play, and we are looking forward to it."
On running with the quarterback:
"I think every time a quarterback runs the football there are opportunities for him to take big hits. I think it's important to have a guy who can extend plays and keep the defense honest. If you look in our league, the guys that are running quarterbacks are usually a lot better at the beginning of the year than they are at the end. I would say you want a quarterback that makes the guys around him better and doesn't make many mistakes, and if he can run, that's a plus."
On working with Randy Sanders at Florida State in 2013:
"Randy Sanders is a very good football coach. He's a good teacher. He did a fantastic job with Jameis Winston when I was there. He was heavily involved in the game planning. He gets it. He was a good team player on the staff, and he is an average golfer."
On a Ty Chandler update and why Todd Kelly Jr. didn't travel:
"Ty got his bell rung Saturday, so our physicians are going through the normal routine with that. Todd has done a really good job of trying to get back from this leg injury. It was a pretty significant injury, and when you come back from something like that, it takes a little while for your muscles and everything to catch back up. When you have fall camp going on, you have the fatigue of trying to get back in the groove. He is getting close, but he's not ready just yet."
On fixing the mistakes from the game:
"I think if you looked on both sides of the ball and special teams too, we made some unforced errors. I think some of the looks that West Virginia gave us was because of that. Some of it was because of a lack of experience. We have to fix that. It's hard to have success on either side of the ball if you make mistakes, especially if they are unforced. We have to improve that part of it. You have to make the other team beat you."
On the confidence level from the team and how they responded to adversity:
"You kind of look at it from an offensive standpoint. Obviously, we didn't start out very well, but as the game went, there were a lot more positives than negatives. Unfortunately, we had a penalty down in the red area late in the game where we went from a first and goal at the seven to first and goal at the 12. We didn't get the ball in. Twice, we had second and two after positive plays on first down and didn't convert on third down and had to punt the football. Some of that had to do with the looks we saw and some had to do with us. We have to be able to finish and take advantage of that. To me, you grade an offense by how many yards you gain per play. I would say four or more is a win and less than that is a loss. Our guys started off with a whole lot more losses than we had wins in the first 25 plays. As the game went, that changed. We have to be able to play a complete game on both sides of the ball. If you look at it on defense, it's the same way. West Virginia started with really good field position in the first half, and our guys played okay. We made some mistakes, they made some plays, but we held them to field goals. In the second half, the field was flipped, and they threw the ball through us two or three times. I guess you could say that we didn't handle adversity as well as we needed to on offense in the first half, but our guys didn't quit. We kept trying to find a way. On defense, we probably handled it better in the first half than the second. Confidence level comes with knowing what you're supposed to do. If you do the same thing over and over, it breeds familiarity and you get an understanding of what you're trying to get done. That develops confidence. We have to find a way to hone in on what we do well and continue to try to do that. We have to fix the things we don't do well and develop some confidence as a team."
On the importance of the next two weeks for young defensive lineman and finding somebody who can rush the passer:
"Every week's important for us. We have got to take every week as an opportunity to improve as individuals and as a football team. I think we will do a better job as a coaching staff getting them ready for the next week. We have to develop depth on our football team at lots of different positions, so it will be all be important, all the practice reps we get every week throughout the season"
On freshman offensive lineman Jerome Carvin:
"Jerome, who broke his foot and didn't get to do a lot of stuff this summer, really just got released right before fall camp started, so he was a little bit limited going in. He was a guy who had a really good spring and needed the summer. He is catching back up, and I think he's got a chance to be a solid football player for us this year.
On the performance and impact of sophomore offensive lineman Trey Smith:
"I think Trey played hard. He obviously made some mistakes and probably things he will improve on just based on taking more reps, but he did compete hard so that's positive, and I think he is only going to get better each week. Obviously, he is going to get to practice and improve and see more looks. He is used to playing with the guys beside him so he will get better each week.
On some of the mental mistakes from the defense:
"Well, you have mental errors which are, you don't know what to do, we didn't have very many mental errors, we had technical errors, which comes from creating the right practice habits, understanding what you are trying to do and why you are trying to do it, and does it come from lack of experience? Probably, but I have seen guys that don't have much experience do it pretty well, and I've see guys who have a ton of experience who cant seem to get it right. So I think its probably according to the individual, but I think we have guys who will learn a lot from this past game and I think we will see a lot of improvement with these guys over the next couple of weeks."
On progress of freshman linebacker JJ Peterson:
"Well, for one its going to be the first time he has attended a college class, I think its important for freshmen to get here during the summer so they can kind of get acclimated to the routine. There will be lots of adjustments for him. He obviously missed all of summer conditioning and fall camp, so I wouldn't put unrealistic expectations on him. We'll put him out there and start trying to teach him the fundamentals of things we are trying to get done, and we'll see where it goes from there.
On what he and his coaching staff can do better:
"Well, from a technical standpoint where they understand the techniques, they understand why we are doing them, and we execute it. You definitely don't want to have mental errors, and we had some up front on the offensive line and with the tight ends at the point of attack. You have to give your running backs a chance. When you are running the football, if you know who to block and you step in the right direction, play with the right pad level and play to the whistle blows, you give yourself a chance. We had guys that played hard, played with the right pad level, played until the whistle blew but weren't always going in the right direction. We have to do a good job figuring what our guys know and giving them a chance to execute so we can have success."
On play and progress of Quarterback Jarrett Guarantano:
"He didn't turn the ball over, which is always a positive from the quarterback position. I thought he was accurate. There was probably three to four plays out there that maybe when we had an RPO zone that he could have taken the pass option when he didn't. I thought Jarrett did really well for the first game. There's lot of things he can improve on, and he knows that. I thought he showed toughness. He took a couple of hits, hung in the pocket, made a good decision down at the goal line on third and two when he sprinted out there wasn't anything there, he got back to the line of scrimmage, which allowed us to go for it on fourth down. He completed some third down balls, so I thought there was a lot of positives."
On the freshmen defensive backs:
"I haven't watched the tape on them yet. We will watch it today, but it's just like I told them the first day I got here. When we play a game, it will be about what we did or didn't do. That's not to take anything away from anybody that will ever play, but if you look at it through every phase of the game, if we execute and do the things we were taught and how we practice, how we train, then we will have a chance to win every game. We were not consistent enough in doing that on either side of the ball, and we were playing a really good football team that is well coached, and it didn't turn out the way we would of liked for it to."
On his first game as a head coach:
"It's a little bit different. I have to do a better job where I can contribute on both sides of the ball. I think there are a lot of lessons that I can take from this game. I am a defensive-minded guy, so when you're watching the offense, I need to know what I can do to give some influence to the offense. I need to do a better job of that in the game, and I think there is one critical mistake from myself in the game. We punted the football when we had 4th and 4 with a minute and 58 seconds left. I should of let the clock run out. I thought that was a critical mistake, we could of ran the clock down to a minute and thirty seconds, and they ended up getting a field goal there."
On biggest lesson learned from game:
"It's always easy to call the game on Sunday or Monday. I think as an offense staff one of the big lessons for all of us was when our guys went in the right direction, we didn't have a lot of mental errors, and we had a lot of success. When we didn't, we didn't have success. The key to the drill is teaching our guys what to do, how to do it, and why it's important to do it that way. When we do that, we will be fine."
On ETSU's football team:
"When you watch the tape, they play hard. You watch them on special teams, defense, offensively, they are going to be very well coached. They are going to be sound in all phases; they will present you with looks you probably haven't seen before. Randy Sanders will know how to attack you. He will do a great job of breaking all three phases down. We will definitely have to be ready for anything, because he does a fantastic job."
On the play from Darrin Kirkland Jr. and Shy Tuttle:
"Starting with Darrin, being the first game back, I'm sure there are some plays he would like to have back. Darrin is a real instinctive guy, plays with toughness and has a really good understanding on what we are trying to get done. He is only going to get better the longer he stays out there on the field. Shy was a bright spot on the defensive side. I thought he played with good pad level and was striking their guys up front. He probably needs to improve on pass rush and finishing on the quarterback, but I thought he was solid."
On what he took from other coaches when building a program:
"To me, I really didn't look at it that way. The people I worked for, the principles and foundations of what they built their programs on, I set there and got to experience it with some really good coaches. I just try to take a little bit from all of them and add some of the things that I believe in."
On Ty Chandler's status update and what he saw from Jeremy Banks:
"Ty would definitely be day-to-day. Jeremy Banks is a big strong guy that is learning what to do. I think he is a really good competitor. He runs really hard in practice, and he's a guy that has a chance to compete on special teams. He has to work on ball security and protections. That is normal with any young running back. I think he plays with the right temperate."