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GAINESVILLE, Florida – I do not know what Jeremy Pruitt will do, and I do not know what I would do in its place.
That's what happens after the incredibly frustrating loss of Tennessee 34-3 against Florida, ranked ninth on Saturday at The Swamp.
Days like this create moments that test the souls of men.
Do not misunderstand the reality of this situation. It is very real, very bad and it is almost certain that the situation will get worse before better days are on the horizon.
The words are largely elusive right now. I still can not believe some of the things I saw on Saturday, just as I can not believe what I saw in the Georgia State defeat by Tennessee ( it still looks like a typo) and several things I saw during the defeat of BYU flights.
A team that should be, at worst, 3-1 with a single-digit loss is now at 1-3 and that has the very real possibility of being the worst team in the history of one of the most award-winning programs university football.
Florida is a better team than Tennessee. I thought it would go into Saturday's game, and I think so now.
But I do not know how good Florida is. Truly not.
All I know is that these flights are so much worse than they should, and this quarter game is the main reason for that.
Florida did nothing extraordinary Saturday. The Gators used the same kind of gear the Tennessee defense spent all week watching a movie, but they handled it pretty well. They did the simple things you expect from a Florida football team. They extended the field, found the men open and completed their passes to advance the ball into the field.
Operation. Launch. Contagious. Pretty basic, no?
Not for these flights, it is not.
Football is the ultimate team sport, so picking a player on either side of the ball and making it a scapegoat always feels bad. It's almost never that simple.
But Jarrett Guarantano Curb this Tennessee attack in a way that I never thought possible.
Some of Saturday's Guarantano throws are among the worst throws I've ever seen from a SEC quarterback. Several players were completely open within 15 yards of him and he missed them. I can not explain that. I do not know who could explain it. You should be able to shake a SEC quarterback from a deep sleep at 3 am and watch him finish those throws.
Guarantano had trouble finding open players down the field. It's not good, but it's the kind of thing that we see from time to time at the level of the grandes écoles. You can work around this problem while remaining a decent team. You will not win a championship, but you can win some games.
You can not get around some of the throws and some of the decisions made by Guarantano at Swamp on Saturday. You can not.
We could not believe the first moments of the second quarter of Saturday.
Guarantano was reported to delay the match early in the quarter. The Flights had a three-minute stoppage before going to the scrimmage line to start that quarter, and they still could not get their game played on time. At the next shot, the offensive coordinator of Tennessee Jim Chaney basically made a perfect game call that created confusion on the back of the Florida defense and led to the end of the match Dominick Wood-Anderson run free with absolutely no one within 10 meters of him. He could have grabbed the ball, stopped, tied up his shoes and still have a chance to score a 83-yard touchdown that would have allowed the Flights to be an additional tie to tie the score and silence The Swamp .
And … Guarantano overthrew him from afar.
You can not watch that play enough times to understand it. I do not remember seeing anything like that in a SEC game, much less in a game between Tennessee and Florida. There was no one near Guarantano or Wood-Anderson. The pieces of this level do not become easier than that.
Guarantano, to his credit, shook the shot from two games later and threw a nice shot at the wide wide receiver Jauan Jennings move the chains.
Three games later, however, Guarantano misread a Florida cover and threw a ball 15 meters from the intended receiver. Mark Callaway and 0 meters from the Florida cornerback Marco Wilson.
The Florida attack scored only one goal on the mark, but every Tennessee point awarded to the defense is a point that the Flights offensive will struggle to match.
Later in the second quarter, Guarantano and Ty Chandler failed to connect on a single pass without anyone being near the half-offensive in a third and eighth match. It was a check-down throw. Again, a check-down throw. It would be fair to say he should have checked points 3 and 8, but there is worse in the word that a player as fast as Chandler comes to the ball in the space. But the simplest things have been incredibly difficult to achieve for this Tennessee offense.
Pruitt had finally seen enough of it, and he started the third quarter with a real freshman Brian Maurer quarter.
Maurer led the Vols to their first campaign of the day, but then launched an interception. Guarantano returned to try to resettle the Vols. He took the offensive in the fork before the first race to land Eric Gray Tennessee achieved its fourth turnover of the day. Eight games later, the Gators were back in the end zone to start pouring salt water on the festering wounds of the field.
Guarantano is not the only problem in Tennessee, and he would have given a first touchdown to the flights if the Jauan Jennings had almost never done anything: drop a potential touchdown pass in the end zone and send it back to a Florida defenseman for an interception.
These flights also have defense issues. Their defense is better than their attack, and she forced three turnovers in Florida, but she also had more coverage problems that led to big games and scores. Pass coverage and downhill coverage are extremely inconsistent, but sometimes good, which is more than you say for most Tennessee offenses.
When your defense is looking for dinner, your offense must eat. The Flights did not do it. They scored three points on these three turnovers. Florida, meanwhile, scored 10 points on four Tennessee turnovers.
Pruitt has a problem with many of the upper classes on this team. These are just not winners. I hate the term "loser", but most of these upper classes are not winners. They do not want or can not play football. They are allergic to it. They can not come in a square mile of it.
At some point, Pruitt will have to make a tough decision and involve more newcomers. Most of them will not be ready, but it does not matter. Maybe some of them will surprise us. We know what many veterans will see, and they do not have as much time to improve.
When should this happen, though?
This is the problem as I see it and I guess Pruitt sees the same thing.
On the one hand, next week is the first date of opening of the season. Perfect timing, right?
Not necessarily.
Two of Tennessee's next three games are a lot tougher than Florida. The Flights are scheduled to travel to Georgia, ranked third, before hosting the state of Mississippi before heading to Tuscaloosa for their annual one-way blood drive against the Crimson Tide.
Do not you just start a group of newcomers in this combination and run the risk of bruising their bodies, minds and spirits? I do not know the answer to this question.
Once the flights have been dismantled at Bryant-Denny Stadium, I do not see the point in continuing this song and dancing with many of these veterans. At this point, I think you're playing with the future NFL prospects because, to thank you for the program, you put the rest in the pasture. You start to build again.
Pruitt will not go anywhere during or immediately after this season unless it chooses this path. So, let's not even go there. You have a better chance of going out with Carrie Underwood than watching Pruitt, the Tennessee fire, in 2019. Let this guy recruit another year of his players and see if this situation can begin to improve. Even if the Flights raised the money to send Pruitt and his staff back this year, the amount left to pay for a third head coach at the same time – not to mention the staff he would bring with him – would be a short stack.
It is not easy for a man who has only won at every level of football before coming to Knoxville. But that's where things are. The only indefensible step that Pruitt could take at this point would be to put these same players on the ground every Saturday and wait for a different result.
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