Pruitt makes his SEC West return
Tennessee and Auburn rekindle an old rivalry when the Volunteers travel to Jordan-Hare Stadium for an early Saturday contest with the No. 21 Tigers.
First-year Vols head coach Jeremy Pruitt makes his return to the SEC West after leaving Alabama’s defensive coordinator position for the head role on Rocky Top. So, yeah, Pruitt knows a thing or two about game planning for Gus Malzahn and Auburn.
“We’ve got a tremendous challenge this week going to Auburn,” Pruitt said. “Auburn is a very difficult place to play, and they’ve got a very good football team, very good on defense.”
Tennessee (2-3, 0-2 SEC) is coming off a bye week after dropping its first two conference games to Florida and Georgia — and is facing its third straight ranked opponent. Auburn (4-2, 1-2 SEC) looks to get back in the win column after being dealt their second SEC West loss by Mississippi State last weekend in Starkville.
For Pruitt, the off week was the perfect time to get back to basics, especially for one of the youngest teams in the nation. Tennessee is the lone FBS program to not have a senior start a game this year.
“We worked really hard on tackling,” Pruitt said.
“We worked really hard on the fundamentals of blocking and block protection. We went back to the ‘A, B, C’s’ that you do during spring ball and fall camp, which we need. We had a lot of guys who didn’t get to do that during camp.
“I was thinking about it over the weekend. I think there’s probably 10 guys that have started for us at some point in time this season that weren’t here during the spring and there’s probably another eight to 10 guys that play a lot that weren’t here.”
Tennessee is a much different team than it was the last time they won a game at Jordan-Hare with Tee Martin under center, and Travis Henry and Jamal Lewis out of the backfield for the 1998 national-title winning Vols.
Saturday’s contest will be the last meeting for quite some time between Tennessee and Auburn, who played every year between 1956 and 1991, prior to the SEC splitting into East and West divisions. The two programs won’t face one another against until the 2025 season.